Booktalk: Manal al-Sharif’s “Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening”

Manal al-Sharif, author of DARING TO DRIVE, grew up in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. In her teens she was a religious radical, by her twenties she was a college-educated computer security engineer.

Then she lived for a while in Boston, learned to drive and became a women’s rights advocate. Back home she was the first Saudi woman who defied the ban on driving and immediately put the video on YouTube. And, yes, she was arrested.

This interview originally aired June 23, 2017. One year later the Saudi government made it legal for women to drive. Yet several years later, the number of women who have licenses to drive is only a few percent.