In a 4-page essay entitled, “It’s High Time Women Started Driving Their Cars,” billionaire Saudi businessman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal urged an end to the debate about women’s driving in Saudi Arabia.
The essay is as much a short treatise on modern Saudi feminism and the progress of women’s rights in the Kingdom as it is a statement on the particular issue of a woman’s right to drive. The Prince speaks to the various social and economic arguments in favor of women drivers as well as the arguments against women being allowed to drive.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal at Kingdom Holding Co.
“Such a ban on driving is fundamentally an infringement on a woman’s rights, particularly as it continues to exist after she had won her right to an education and a salaried employment,” Prince Alwaleed wrote. “Preventing a woman from driving a car is today an issue of right similar to the one that forbade her from receiving an education or having an independent identity….They are all unjust acts by a traditional society, far more restrictive than what is lawfully allowed by the precepts of religion.”
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has long been a relatively independent and often more liberal voice in the Saudi royal family.
Alwaleed’s assets, managed through Kingdom Holding Co., are diverse and heavily invested in Western companies, most notably in the media space. Kingdom Holding Co. owns 3% of Twitter, and his regional media company, Rotana, has long employed dynamic Saudi women who make their own choices on how modestly they wish to dress at work. He regularly appears on business cable television networks in the United States. He is also the second-largest voting shareholder in 21st Century Fox.
In 2014, when asked about Kingdom Holding’s reputation for hiring women, Prince Alwaleed said that he always “prefers to side with qualifications regardless of gender” but lamented the lack of progress on women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. “Women’s rights have regressed since the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). In fact they have regressed from what they had been 30 years ago. Despite our sympathy with women, we in the Kingdom Holding Company will never abandon our high quality parameters.”
Prince Alwaleed is Citigroup‘s largest individual shareholder, and he also has global interests in the hospitality sector. His ownership stakes include Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Movenpick Hotels & Resorts and Fairmont Raffles Holding, as well as actual properties including the Hotel George V in Paris and a stake in the Savoy Hotel in London.
Prince Alwaleed also publicly called for the establishment of a Sovereign Wealth Fund for Saudi Arabia more than two years before the Saudi Public Investment Fund was re-energized by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of the Vision 2030 economic plan.
Last year, Prince Alwaleed pledged to donate his entire fortune to charity before he dies and hopes to use the funds to empower women.
