By Gayatri Manu
As our 3rd year in college came to an end, a gang of 6 girls and I decided to make a trip to one of the most profitable amusement parks in the country – Wonderla. We were surprised to spot an overwhelmingly short queue for the bumper car rides. We flashed a couple of quick smiles at the ride operator and soon enough we were taking 4 trips on the bumper cars. This was because none of my friends knew how to drive then, and they were using this opportunity to learn. It turns out women in Saudi Arabia have been doing this for a while now.
At the weekly ladies night only at the Al Shallal Theme Park in the coastal city of Jeddah, women are discarding their traditional abayas and slipping into jazzy t-shirts and funky denims to drive the bumper cars. For most of them, it is the only opportunity to get behind the wheel in a country that bans women from driving.
In February, a senior cleric from the country defended the ban by reiterating that men “obsessed with women” and with “weak spirits” could end up causing female drivers harm and male relatives would know not their whereabouts. It is essential to remember that ban on women driving is not written but they require a local license while in the country. Such licenses are not issued for women, hence making it effectively illegal for women to drive.
While the population of drivers in the country is almost entirely male, Uber’s own figures show that more than 80 % of their Saudi passengers are female. Perhaps it is true that in countries like Saudi, apps such as Uber permit women greater mobility, it also appears as though they’re providing a reprieve for the Saudi government from discussing issues about female drivers.
According to reports, the women driving these bumper cars do not intend on driving really rash to achieve maximum impact upon collision, but they enjoy driving the cars at their own mellow pace which they believe mimics reality. Arwa al- Naemi, a Jeddah based artist who began documenting the phenomenon in 2014 as part of an art project called ‘Never Never Land’, decided to chase women with the cars when she visited the amusement park for the first time.
She said, “They would scream: ‘Please, don’t bump me! I am trying to drive!’”
I thought it was interesting that the ladies night allowed the women in the amusement park to work, in a country where only 25 percent of the workforce is female. The men have the night off while women do everything from selling popcorn to attending rides.
While reports of this incident left me feeling half-thrilled and half-sceptical, I scrolled down to the comments section and was appalled at how readers were belittling the women. People were bickering about the Clintons, they were calling Saudis extremely medieval and backwards and one even swore that she wouldn’t exchange her life with the Saudi women if she “was given money.”
What I failed to understand was why people could not see that the surreal nature of the activity might actually have a positive effect. While it might appear like the women in a culture that infantilises them are trying to play grown-up, a slightly sensible commentator added that this sort of paradoxical intervention that is playful and free of condemnation amongst the women themselves, might actually mean that they can let their imagination run loose, for once.
Image credits: Blue Rest of a Blue Photographer on a Blue Pillow All on a Blue Skylark by Hamed Saber via Flickr/CC by 2.0 & Carlos Latuff, Wikipedia & Islamic Women Drive by Denis Bocquet via Flickr/CC by 2.0