A Woman’s Right to Drive

The male leaders of the Saudi world are considering allowing women to drive. I don’t know what the restrictions will be if this happens but I assume, minimally, that women will need male permission to drive. Some clerics and conservatives are worried that allowing women to drive will “corrupt” them. The women, that is. Men (especially clerics and conservatives worldwide) are presumably beyond corruption.

Abandoning the issue of the easy corruptibility of the wanton female body and psyche for the moment, let’s turn to the issue of women and driving.

I remember when there were essentially two cars in India, the stalwart Ambassador and the Premier Padmini. There were others, but I believe these were the two major ones on the road. My memory might be flawed; I was considerably younger then. Anyway, I’ve tried driving both these cars, and they’re pretty hard to drive. They require some strength for things like changing the gears and so on. Moreover, they’re just big and clunky.

Enter the Maruti 800. This remains my favorite car, because it was the first one I ever drove. A dinky little ~800cc car with a shell like a matchbox, the 800 was the product of a joint venture with Suzuki. The 800 was small, light, and easy to drive. It had a low bonnet that made it easy for women to look over the top at the road. The gears were easy to change. The tires were easy to change. The engine didn’t seem complicated. Basic maintenance tasks were easy to do. The size of the car increased traffic navigability. In short, the car was non-threatening and attractive to women. It drove easily, and zipped in and out of traffic like an experienced Delhi pedestrian. It could be easily parked anywhere, and if you couldn’t find parking, you could pick it up and slip it into your purse. Alright, I’m kidding, but you get the point. It was convenient.

Now, we know that women – all over the world – face a lot of flak about their driving. One reason is that a number of women are timid about their driving, which can be annoying on the road, but that is because women face a lot more flak about their driving. Women have more to lose if things go wrong, because men will blame accidents or mishaps on the light, or a stray animal, or the car, but if a woman is behind the wheel, she will always be blamed. Her gender assures it.

Another reason is because driving gives women a measure of independence. Women took to the 800 in droves. It was something of a gender revolution. No longer were women trapped in their houses, restricted to walking distances, or forced to endure public transport. The car was relatively inexpensive, and so it also launched a middle-class revolution. And middle-class women didn’t hesitate. They went to work, went shopping, to the movies, took their kids out, and sometimes went out – alone.

And this, I think, is what many men fear. This independence, perhaps, is what will “corrupt” women. It’s not that women are bad drivers, but that a woman driving, per se, is a fearful thing, a cause for concern. And it has nothing to do with how women drive, and everything to do with the fact that we drive. We do things for ourselves. It’s just another thing that chips away at the restrictive control of a patriarchal order.

My father, who is a king among men, made sure to teach all his daughters how to drive (and drive well), how to change a tire, and how to do regular checks on things like oil. He taught us to ignore things like people honking impatiently, and to drive with confidence. He taught us to drive like drivers, not “women drivers” – without the timidity that is driven, so to speak, into many women who learn to drive. And, he taught us to effortlessly navigate Delhi traffic by taking us through rush hour traffic time and again until we could do this confidently. I learnt to love driving. It was my stress-buster, my daily dose of freedom and solitude.

Every woman should have the chance to leave her house as and when she chooses, and go as far as she chooses. It frees the mind and spirit, not just the body. The right to drive is a wonderful thing, and every woman should have access to not just driving, but all the wonders of modern technology.

The crux of the matter here is choice. If I can drive, I may choose to, or not. If I can’t drive, I don’t have a choice. Feminism, to me, is about women having choices on par with everyone else.

Here are some links to good related articles:

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2383

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/7001348.stm