海角大神

An outspoken Saudi prince and billionaire investor said Thursday it鈥檚 about time the kingdom let women drive, framing his argument in social, economic, and religious terms.

鈥淪uch a ban on driving is ,鈥� Prince Alwaleed bin Talal wrote in a four-page letter on his personal website last week.

鈥淧reventing a woman from driving a car is today an issue of rights similar to the one that forbade her from receiving an education or having an independent identity. They are all unjust acts by a traditional society, far more restrictive than what is lawfully allowed by the precepts of religion,鈥� he writes. 聽

Prince Alwaleed鈥檚 statement is unlikely to affect policy. Mohammed bin Salman, the deputy crown prince and a contender for the throne, said in April he was 鈥溾�� Saudi society would accept women drivers, according to The New York Times. But the comment from the American-educated Alwaleed adds to the chorus of voices demanding that women drive and be accorded more rights in Saudi Arabia.

鈥淔or decades, women鈥檚 rights have been seen through the eyes of a handful of wealthy, Western-educated Saudis whose driving campaigns and Twitter hashtags ignite the global media. However the inability to drive 鈥� and many restrictions like it 鈥� are the bread-and-butter issues of working-class Saudi women,鈥� Elizabeth Dickinson reported for 海角大神 in March. It鈥檚 women 鈥渨ho can鈥檛 afford drivers or cars, whose families object to taxis, and who persist nonetheless 鈥� who are shaking up society. They don鈥檛 use the rhetoric of human rights and wouldn鈥檛 consider themselves campaigners. But with their actions alone, they are pushing the boundaries of what鈥檚 possible.鈥�

While Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that doesn鈥檛 allow women to drive, the law does not technically forbid them from getting behind the wheel. Rather, , according to BBC. Saudi Arabia鈥檚 religious police enforces this ban.

In his argument against this ban, Alwaleed, who is chairman of Saudi鈥檚 Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), framed the debate in religious and economic terms. He said that fatwas, or religious rulings, used to justify it were the 鈥減roduct of their times,鈥� and that the decision was 鈥渃learly and intrinsically political.鈥� He added that it is an economic detriment at a time when Saudi Arabia is trying to wean itself off its economic dependence. He estimates more than one million drivers are employed to drive women around, many of whom are foreigners that receive 3,800 riyals, or about $1,000, a month to chauffeur women.

"Retaining foreign drivers not only has the effect of reducing a family's disposable income ... but also contributes to the siphoning of billions of riyals every year from the Saudi economy to foreign destinations in the form of remittances," he writes.

But Khaled Al Maeena, former editor of the local newspaper the Saudi Gazette, told the Monitor in March that the Saudi elite, in particular, don鈥檛 want change.

"The elite can pay 1,500 riyals ($400) a month for drivers," he said.

The divide between men and women in Saudi Arabia is one of the widest in the world. The World Economic Forum ranked the kingdom 聽in its 2013 report on the global gender gap.

The kingdom has relaxed some of its other stances on women under the late King Abdullah, as the Monitor鈥檚 Michael Holtz reported. 聽

In 2011, Abdullah聽 and run in municipal elections starting in 2015. The royal decree highlighted his willingness to challenge Saudi Arabia's conservative movement鈥�. Abdullah also contributed to women鈥檚 gains in education. Women study beside men at the $12.5 billion research university he built and named for himself: The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. When it opened in 2009, the university became the first school of higher education in Saudi Arabia to allow co-ed classrooms. (Its dorms have remained single-sex.)聽

But driving remains a holdout, with protests against the ban extending back 20 years. 聽