Manal al-Sharif(1979 — ?)
Manal al-Sharif
Arabie saoudite
7 min read
Saudi women's rights activist who rose to international prominence in 2011 after posting a video of herself driving in Saudi Arabia, defying the ban imposed on women. Her arrest sparked a global movement for women's right to drive.
Famous Quotes
« It's not about driving. It's about freedom. »
Key Facts
- 2011: she posts a video of herself driving in Saudi Arabia and is arrested
- 2011: launch of the Women2Drive campaign on social media
- 2013: she receives the Oslo Freedom Forum Award
- 2018: Saudi Arabia officially lifts the driving ban for women
- 2017: publication of her autobiography 'Daring to Drive'
Works & Achievements
The founding act of her activism: filmed by her brother, Manal drives and comments on the situation of Saudi women. Viewed millions of times, the video sparked the Women2Drive movement.
A civil disobedience movement organized on social media, calling on Saudi women to get behind the wheel on June 17, 2011. The first Saudi feminist campaign to achieve international reach.
Manal al-Sharif received the Václav Havel Prize at the Oslo Freedom Forum and delivered a widely noted speech on nonviolent civil disobedience and digital activism.
An internationally broadcast talk in which she shares her journey and calls for Arab women to be recognized as agents of their own emancipation.
An autobiography translated into numerous languages, tracing her childhood in Mecca, her feminist awakening, and her fight for the right to drive. A landmark work on contemporary Saudi feminism.
An organization supporting Saudis in the diaspora and human rights activists, established from Australia to maintain international pressure on the kingdom.
Anecdotes
On May 19, 2011, Manal al-Sharif got behind the wheel in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, while her brother filmed the scene. She posted the video on YouTube that same evening. Within 24 hours, it had been viewed millions of times around the world, before Saudi authorities had it taken down.
Arrested two days after posting the video, Manal was held for nine days in a women's prison. During her detention, her colleagues at Saudi Aramco — the national oil company where she worked as a cybersecurity expert — organized a petition calling for her release.
Before taking action, Manal al-Sharif had drawn inspiration from Rosa Parks, the American woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus in 1955. She would later say: “I wanted to be the Saudi Rosa Parks.” This reference to the American civil rights movement allowed her to connect her struggle to a universal history of activism.
After her release, Manal was forced to sign a document promising never to drive again and not to speak to the press. She nevertheless left Saudi Arabia a few years later and settled in Australia, from where she continued her activism on an international scale, including founding an organization to support women across the Arab world.
On June 24, 2018, Saudi Arabia officially lifted the ban on women driving. Manal al-Sharif, then in Australia, learned the news from afar. She savored the victory but lamented that several activists who had fought the same battle — including Loujain al-Hathloul — had been arrested just weeks before the ban was lifted, in May 2018.
Primary Sources
I was not only fighting for the right to drive. I was fighting for the right to exist as a full human being — to make my own choices, to live my own life.
The day I got behind the wheel was the day I stopped being afraid. Fear is the real prison, not the cell they put me in.
We, Saudi women, demand the right to drive on our own land, in accordance with the rights recognized by sharia law and our country's international commitments.
I was arrested not because I had broken the law, but because I had dared to show that the law was unjust. I regret nothing.
Social media gave us a weapon that no autocracy had faced before: the ability to show the world what they were trying to hide. My camera was my most powerful tool.
Key Places
Manal al-Sharif's birthplace, a holy city of Islam where she grew up in a conservative religious environment she would come to question as an adult.
A city in the Eastern Province where Manal al-Sharif lived and worked in 2011, and where she took the wheel to film her landmark video on the coastal road.
Manal al-Sharif worked here as a cybersecurity specialist. It was in this professional setting that she developed the digital skills she would turn into tools for activism.
Where Manal al-Sharif was held for nine days in May 2011 following the release of her video. Her imprisonment sparked an international wave of solidarity.
The city where Manal al-Sharif settled in exile from 2013 onward, continuing her fight for Saudi women's rights from abroad.