How Uber Is Changing Life For Women In Saudi Arabia

An anonymous reader writes: Being unable to legally drive is hard for many women in Saudi Arabia, especially working women. With notoriously poor mass transit options, and the stigma attached to women riding the bus alone, Uber has changed the life of many Saudi women by giving them greater mobility and independence. While there are no official statistics on how many women use the service, anecdotal evidence suggest that 70% to 90% of Saudi riders are women. "A lot of them, I would say, are young women," says Saudi Arabia general manager Majed Abukhater. "We have some data to show that these women are starting to rely on Uber a lot more for their daily commutes; the proportion of trips that we see in Saudi during the weekday is actually very high relative to other locations. That's just kind of one indicator to tell us that women are really starting to rely on Uber for their daily commutes to work, or to school, or to university."

Comments

Uber is not the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Eradicating blatant sexism is.

Re:Uber is not the answer

[sims 2]

Yeah but I am sure the next step will be to ban uber in Saudi Arabia.

Re:Uber is not the answer

[Zeio]

Agree here. Why is the headline stated like this ~ Uber makes things great for Saudi women. It should be ~ Women suffering under Islamic misogyny codified into a Islamofascist totalitarian state find respite and have a slight increase in quality of life with Uber.

Nobody calls a spade a spade anymore.

Re:Uber is not the answer

[ClickOnThis]

Treating women as property, denying them basic education, and encouraging their fathers to kill them if they misbehave is a protected cultural difference.

I'm far from being an apologist for the mistreatments of women in Saudi Arabia, but I must point out that denying them basic education is not one of them. From TFA:

While women comprise only 13% of the Saudi workforce, they make up a full 60% of the college student population

Re:Uber is not the answer

[smooth wombat]

Nobody calls a spade a spade anymore.

Uber is a taxi service but is trying to claim it's not a taxi service even though people use them as a taxi to go from one place to another which is not along the route of the driver. The reason they claim they're not a taxi service, even though they are, is because they would have to abide by the rules all the other taxi services have to abide by, including additional insurance for their drivers and associated fees.

Calling a spade a spade.

Re:Uber is not the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

And amazingly, the rest of the world managed to solve this problem too, WITHOUT such insane gender-based discrimination. Give me a break.

Re:Uber is not the answer

[tompaulco]

Maybe it's the beginning of the answer.

If Uber allows women to move more freely and work at jobs and go to school, something they weren't allowed before then I would think this is a first step.

Uber is not doing it. Taxis are doing it. Uber does not contract drivers in SA, they just use existing taxi services. Uber has nothing to do with liberation of women in SA other than making a claim to be responsible.

Uber is "ride sharing" ?

[jbengt]

From TFA: "for regulatory reasons, Uber in Saudi Arabia does not work with contracted drivers using their own cars—all Uber rides go through existing companies"

So Uber can follow local laws when they're forced to. Who would've guessed?

Uber can't change the chaperoe/mahram law.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The shari-ah holds that women are not allowed to travel alone without a proper male relative acting as chaperone. It is known as maharam or honor law. Women caught in Saudi Arabia without a proper male relative in the company of an unrelated male can be prosecuted. Since all uber drivers are male, (women can't drive in Saudi Arabia) and likely to be unrelated, unless these women have a constant supply of "proper" male relatives, they would not have freedom of movement, uber or no uber. I am no islamic scholar, so not very sure of this: The relatives who can act as chaperones are husbands, brothers, fathers, sons. Not very sure who among the in-laws are allowed to be chaperones as per mahram.

Re:s/uber/taxi.

[gstoddart]

Where I live, they mandated that taxis have an on-board camera with a circular buffer of 24 hours. It had been done in response to allegations a cab driver had assaulted a women ... they later found other evidence for it from another source.

They pushed through the law requiring this, against the objections of the cab drivers who though they were being spied on.

When a cab driver was subsequently robbed, and the suspect caught on camera, the cab drivers were all in praise of it.

It turns out, the mandated cameras made it safer for everybody.

Imposing regulations on cab drivers can work, and despite claims to the contrary, isn't always about protecting the interests of cab drivers.

The licensing, inspection, background checks and safety inspections aren't the only benefits to be had.

Stop listening to Uber who keeps saying the lie that regulations the cab drivers have to follow are something the Uber drivers shouldn't be subjected to ... claims that cities are defending the interests of cab companies in enforcing their laws are complete bullshit.

Uber never has been, and never will be the underdogs ... and this never has been, and never will be, about protecting entrenched players.

It's about cities being able to regulate industry players to a minimum standard.

So, if in my city Uber drivers are willing to get commercial licenses, hold the proper insurance and drivers license, and have the same video devices installed for the safety of everybody (you know, like an actual legal cab company) ... I'm sure people would say they're welcome. But Uber claiming they shouldn't have to is bullshit.

As long as Uber insists that they aren't subject to laws, they continue to be lying bastards in my book. They're just a company whose business model is in trying to insist laws regarding taxi companies don't apply to them.

How come we've never "liberated" SA?

[tekrat]

19 of the hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi. Osama Bin Laden was Saudi. We claimed to have "liberated" Iraq because Saddam's people were oppressed (after the WMD argument fell apart); so, why have we never "exported freedom" to Saudi Arabia?

Exactly what stranglehold do they they have on us (other than having gobs of oil)? And not like that's never stopped us before... I assume they must have Child-Porn pictures with Bush and Cheney. I can't quite understand the thinking of Dubya, assuming he was thinking at all....