Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
She was probably the first to put foot to pedal.
It was 12:44 a.m. and middle-of-the-night dark. She turned the ignition key, lit the headlights, and drove.
In the backseat, her supportive husband filmed his wife making history as the earliest participant in Friday?s campaign by Saudi women to get the right to drive on the roads of their country.
IN PICTURES: Behind the veil
?I felt great,? the university student said later in an email exchange. ?I couldn't believe that I was in Riyadh and driving! I look forward for the day that all of this becomes as natural as men driving.?
The woman, who posted the video on YouTube, said she wanted to remain anonymous ?because I'm afraid of the authorities.? She?s also not certain, she wrote, about how her extended family would react to news of what she called ?my small mission.?
Overall, the driving campaign got off to a slow start with just shy of 50 women reporting ? mostly via Twitter ? by the evening that they had gotten behind the wheel in violation of the kingdom?s national ban on female drivers.
The campaign is perhaps the largest and most genuinely grass-roots campaign by Saudi women to demand one of the many rights they are denied in this country, which severely restricts female independence.
Under the guardianship system, women need the permission of their father, husband, or brother to marry, travel outside the country, work outside the home, and have certain kinds of medical procedures.
Though there is no law prohibiting women from driving, the government supports the social custom that women not drive, at least not in the urban areas. In rural parts of the kingdom, women drive regularly without interference.
Many senior members of the royal family and the government have no objection to women driving. But they are reluctant to upset conservatives, both men and women, who argue that their Islamic society should not follow the same pattern of women?s liberation as in Western societies.
The last time the driving ban was challenged in an organized fashion was in 1990 when more 48 Saudi women drove in a convoy around Riyadh for an hour. The women were harshly punished ? banned from international travel and suspended from their jobs. Mosque preachers labeled them ?whores.?
Danica Patrick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Danica Patrick
Nationality American
Date of birth March 25, 1982 (age 29)
Place of birth Beloit, Wisconsin
Related to T. J. Patrick (father)
Beverly Patrick (mother)
Brooke Patrick (sister)
Paul Hospenthal (spouse)
2011 IndyCar Series
Debut season 2005
Current team Andretti Autosport
Car no. 7
Former teams Rahal Letterman Racing
Starts 105
Wins 1
Poles 3
Best finish 5th in 2009
Awards
2005
2005?2010 IndyCar Rookie of the Year
IndyCar Most Popular Driver
NASCAR Nationwide Series statistics
Car no., team No. 7 - JR Motorsports
First race 2010 DRIVE4COPD 300 (Daytona)
Wins Top tens Poles
0 2 0
Danica Sue Patrick (born March 25, 1982) is an American auto racing driver, model and advertising spokeswoman currently competing in the IndyCar Series and the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Patrick was named the Rookie of the Year for both the 2005 Indianapolis 500 and the 2005 IndyCar Series season. With her win in the 2008 Indy Japan 300, Patrick became the first woman to win an Indy car race. Patrick currently drives the #7 GoDaddy.com Honda/Dallara for Andretti Autosport. In 2010, Patrick began racing in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, driving the #7 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet Impala for JR Motorsports part-time. She also has an equity stake in her #7 team.[1] She placed 3rd in the 2009 Indianapolis 500, which was both a personal best for her at the track and the highest finish by a woman in the event's history. In 2011 in the NASCAR Nationwide Series Patrick became the first woman to lead a lap at Daytona International Speedway. She had her best career finish of 4th in the NASCAR Nationwide Series on March 5, 2011 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. By doing this, she set a record for the best finish by a woman in a NASCAR top-circuit race.
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I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
on a side note... I think Indian women are very attractive. I don't think they should be hiding behind anything. Theyre beautiful! I have a friend who is from Egypt and if her father knew that her and I hung out, he'd flip. :\
on a side note... I think Indian women are very attractive. I don't think they should be hiding behind anything. Theyre beautiful! I have a friend who is from Egypt and if her father knew that her and I hung out, he'd flip. :\
Think you're confusing your wogs Brit. The muslims do the veil thing but Hindus in the US just dress for weddings. Some are attractive but rarely the arab ones. I think Somali women may be the loveliest on Earth and they certainly have the best bone structure.
An Inn I managed had the poor luck to have two young married Indian doctors spend two years there. He was a saint but she was lucky we never acted on our dark inner thoughts. She was rude, lazy, spoiled beyond the word's definition and had even the Pennsylvania State Police ready to try her out for taser practice.
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I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
See what a difference living in Christian America benifits one's self?
Just one more thing to be thankful to God for.
Not to pick an argument but the cultural progression from where Islam is (15th Century) to where Western Culture finds itself is irrespective of religions. We gave up repressing women just recently and it's far from a done deal. It's the backward culture of tribal fundamentalists that retards their growth and fundamentalists of all stripes are sorta late for dinner when it comes to growth.
We Western European types were dragged kicking & screaming from our own dark ages but Islam still wallows in it.
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I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
As I believe you don't have to be faced a lot of problem as in Saudi both men and women has maintain perdah with their non mehram you just have to face the law while driving as they don't have any women in such a profession, but these days saudi arabian women are more independent than before.
See what a difference living in Christian America benifits one's self?
Just one more thing to be thankful to God for.
what are you talking about "christian america" didn't allow women to vote for quite a while and it was fairly common initially for restrictions on women driving when cars began to appear, so get off your high horse there. historically speaking we just recently changed in our attitudes towards women and in many ways we still are behind many other countries when it comes to personal freedoms,
"christianity" has done more in america to make it worse for personal freedom wise than it has to help it.
we could get into this nations sex laws and how backwards they have been for so long, with many just recently being removed from law
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