For women in Saudi Arabia, 2017 may be remembered as an epic year for gender equality. The announcement of a royal decree allowing women to drive for the first time in history is a significant symbolic event to promote women's advancement.
Saudi women have achieved impressive progress in their academic performance over the recent decades, with their literacy rate reaching over 90 percent from a mere 2 percent in the 1970s. Today, women constitute over 50 percent of university graduates in the kingdom, and yet a very small percentage of these highly educated women are seen in the workplace, where a strict interpretation of Islamic law is enforced. With the lifting of the driving ban, opportunities for societal advances for women and the economic contributions resulting from them are expected to be exponentially bigger.
The news from Saudi Arabia seems like deja vu to many Japanese women who had thought they would be moving from the passenger seat to the driver's seat in the Japanese economy and society in 1986. That was the year the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was enacted, finally allowing women to obtain professional positions called sogoshoku (career-track jobs) in private-sector companies.