Welcome to our 8th woman of the week! Manal al-Sharif is an activist and feminist from Saudi Arabia.
Major Accomplishments:
- The first Saudi woman to specialize in Information Security
- Led the Women to Drive Movement
Early Life
Manal al-Sharif is a computer scientist and political activist. She earned her bachelor's degree from King Abdulaziz University and started to work at Saudi Aramco which was the largest oil company at the time. Al-Sharif was the first Saudi woman to specialize in Information Security.
Career
Manal al-Sharif is well known for being heavily involved with the Women to Drive movement. There was no actual law banning women from driving in Saudi Arabia, but it was just a unspoken rule that women should not be able to drive. Al-Sharif took a video of herself driving a car, and posted it on Youtube. She says “You’ll find a woman with a PhD, a professor at a college, and she doesn’t know how to drive. We want change in the country”. The video she posted got hundreds of thousands of views. She was arrested later, signed a pledge not to drive again, and then was released. She was arrested again shortly after, and released after nine days. On June 17th, 2011, she convinced over 100 Saudi women to try and break the ban by driving that day. There were several police officers, but no one was arrested. Manal al-Sharif and several brave women changed history, and made it a social norm for women in Saudi Arabia to be able to drive.
Legacy
Manal al-Sharif led the Women to Drive Movement but was also involved in the I Am My Own Guardian movement which strives to end male guardianship in Saudi Arabia. Her activism earned her several awards such as Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent, and being one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2012. To add to this, Al-Sharif is a TED, Google, Yahoo! and Harvard speaker. She has also written articles for The New York Times and the Washington Post, and her book Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening received critical acclaim from The Oprah Magazine.
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