In their fight to overturn the oppressive and outdated laws banning women driving, the ladies of Saudi Arabia have turned to social media sites such as facebook and twitter to aid their cause.
Protests rallying female drivers were organised via twitter, and now the women are launching facebook ads calling for Subaru to stop selling cars in Saudi Arabia because of its discriminatory laws. While in the US, Subaru is seen as a woman-friendly car, and often sponsors female-centric events such as the women’s triathlon series- somewhat hypocritically they continue to profit by selling cars in a country which does not allow women to drive. The women2drive movement hope that this will put further pressure on the leaders to change the unjust laws.
Facebook and Twitter were pivotal to the Arab uprisings in places such as Egypt, Libya and Tunisia earlier this year- and the social media sites were used as never before to overthrow dictators and liberate millions. They evolved from being sites where meaningless exchanges and updates occurred to being instruments of real change- where people rallied about a common cause and tried to improve their world.
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A recent study by Pew has revealed some interesting statistics about the role of social media in our lives- affirming what we already knew (that women dominate social media- making up 58% of facebook users and 64% of twitter) as well as demonstrating just how important it has become.
Social media keeps growing and growing, with the number of adult users jumping from 26% to 47% in the past two years. Furthermore, facebook users are shown to be much more politically engaged than others- they were twice as likely as non-users to attend a political meeting and 78% more likely to try to influence someone’s vote.
With social media being female friendly, increasingly popular and an excellent platform for politics- it seems the women of Saudi Arabia have all the elements on their side in their fight for equality.
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