Uber and Al Nahda to help underprivileged women learn to drive in Saudi Arabia

This April 26, 2018 article by Stephen White appeared in the  Middle East Construction Journal. You can link to the story here.  The text is below.

Uber and Al Nahda, a non-profit women’s organisation, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work together towards empowering more women to drive in Saudi Arabia.
In a statement, the two orgranisations said the partnership will see Al Nahda, through its catalogue of empowering programs, help Uber identify underprivileged women who are interested in learning how to drive and obtaining a license, but may not have the resources to do so. The partnership is part Uber’s ‘Masaruky’ (your path in Arabic) initiative. Revealed in March, Masaruky has a $270,000 fund to increase women’s participation in the workforce through access to affordable transportation, in addition to increasing women’s access to flexible, part time economic opportunities through Uber.
As part of the agreement, Uber will also become Al Nahda’s “Exclusive Transportation Partner” at all their events across the Kingdom, conversely the non-profit organisation will  become the partner-of-choice for the ‘Masaruky’ initiative.
“Masaruky has provided us with a platform for collaboration with a range of partners that can help increase accessibility and economic opportunities for women – something we’re very proud of. Today’s MoU with Al Nahda demonstrates that Uber’s impact does not end with the flexibility and convenience it has introduced to millions around the world, but that we also strive to drive change that is positive, meaningful and economically empowering to all,” said Barney Harford, Uber’s global COO.
Rasha Al Turki, Al Nahda CEO, said Al-Nahda and Uber share a similar vision towards the importance of women’s increased access to work
“We are excited to be the first partner to collaborate under Uber’s Masaruky initiative as we work together to empower more women to drive. This is a natural progression of our work together and we look forward to building on this partnership as we move into a new chapter for Saudi Arabia,” she said.
Research by Uber and Ipsos found that 78% of Saudi women surveyed earlier this year were likely to get a driving license post ban removal. Almost a third (31%) of those surveyed, indicated that they were interested in driving as an earnings opportunity.
Uber have been running regular women listening sessions over the months, the first of which took place late last year with a number of influential female representatives present, and was led by the technology company’s global CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Discussions have focused largely on Uber’s priorities and upcoming plans for women in the Kingdom. The sessions have proven crucial for both participating women and Uber, giving those in attendance the chance to learn about both the process and economic impact that Uber can have.

1,000 Saudi women have signed up as Careem drivers

In the Gulf region, an Uber-like company called Careem employs thousands of drivers. Here is a story by Harriet Pudney (posted 2/15/18) from Emirates Woman magazine about 1,000 Saudi women signing up to be drivers for Careem. A link to the story is here, and the story is below.

They’ll be hitting the road from June.

Dubai-based ride-sharing app Careem has opened up applications for women in Saudi Arabia, and 1,000 have already put their names forward.
Speaking to Thomson Reuters site Zawya, co-founder Magnus Olsson said Careem was looking to expand significantly in the country.
The Saudi government has ruled that any new drivers for apps like Careem must be nationals. Existing expat drivers are allowed to continue, Zawya reports.
 These changes come as part of Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s ambitious post-oil economy plan which hopes to increase participation of women in the workforce and diversify the country’s industries.
“There is still so much room for growth in the Saudi market. Small parts of the population in Saudi are using services such as Careem, and, as economic activity increases, there will be more need to move around, whether for jobs or other private activities,” Olsson told the site.
In September, it was announced that the ban on women behind the wheel would end in June this year.
The initiative, spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aims to make Saudi a more modern, tourist-friendly destination.
The crown prince is also behind an initiative to turn 200 kilometres of the country’s Red Sea coast into a series of luxury retreats.

10,000 women to drive taxis in Saudi Arabia

This article (one of many covering this story) is from the Khaleej Times of January 12, 2018. You can link to the story here and the story is pasted in below. I believe it originated with AFP.

All drivers employed by the two firms are male -- mostly Saudi nationals driving their privately-owned vehicles.

Ride hailing applications in Saudi Arabia are preparing to hire Saudi female chauffeurs, months ahead of lifting a ban that prevents women from driving or owning driving licenses in the country, a CNN report said.

The ride hailing applications Uber and Careem recruited their first female drivers in Saudi Arabia, after the Kingdom announced plans to lift the ban on women driving by June 2018.

Female customers currently represent 80 per cent of Uber's Saudi rider base and 70 per cent of business for its Dubai-based counterpart Careem, according to statistics shared with CNN by both companies.

The apps are a lifeline to women with no independent way to get around the Kingdom.

All drivers employed by the two firms are male -- mostly Saudi nationals driving their privately-owned vehicles.

Following the ground-breaking royal decree that announced plans to lift the ban on women driving in September 2017, both companies have been preparing to hire their first female drivers.

San Francisco Protest of Uber on February 9, 2017

Today I heard from Michael Stone about an upcoming protest to be held in San Francisco on Thursday, February 9, 2017 regarding Saudi women driving and Uber. His message is below. His message includes links - to sign a petition and learn about the event from the facebook page.

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I have enjoyed some recent blog posts of yours regarding Saudi Women Drivers.

We thought you might be interested in an upcoming protest created by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and author of Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.

On Thursday, 9 February, at 1pm, CODEPINK & supporters will deliver a petition signed by over four thousand people to Uber's San Francisco headquarters. The petition demands that CEO Travis Kalanick call on the King of Saudi Arabia to lift the ban on women driving!

The event: https://www.facebook.com/events/648485408689170/

The petition: http://www.codepink.org/uber

We hope you write about the action! Thank you very much for all you do.

Michael Stone
San Francisco

How safe are Saudi women in taxis driven by Saudis?

This opinion piece appeared in the October 28, 2016 Saudi Gazette. Uber and other car service apps have revolutionized the mobility of Saudi women. Now the government is proposing that all drivers must be Saudis. I am not certain whether official yellow taxis must be Saudi, or if this law includes the 'apps' as well. As a note, back in the 1970's, there was a period of time when all taxi drivers had to be Saudi nationals. This was done to immediately give employment to able bodied men who might not have the education or other skills to find employment. It seems this idea has come full circle. A link to the story is here, and the text is pasted below.

by - Samar al-Migrin
THE issue of smartphone apps for taxis is a controversial topic everywhere. When they were launched, many taxi drivers lost their jobs and customers. Taxis booked via an app are usually cleaner than traditional taxis found in the street and offer better services at reasonable rates, especially inside cities where conventional taxis are expensive.
When I visited New York last year, I saw dozens of yellow cab drivers protesting about these apps. They were angry because their business had been negatively impacted and they were no longer able to compete.
Although I felt sad for them, the truth is that the taxis that are booked via smartphone apps are way better than traditional taxis in terms of quality of service. Moreover, the drivers speak nicely to customers and do their best to make customers happy because they know if they do not, then customers will give them a negative review.
In the Kingdom, these apps play an important role in helping Saudi families travel, especially in light of the ban imposed on women driving. In other countries, people use taxis for certain errands. Saudi women are happier and no longer feel worried about riding alone with a taxi driver. In fact, these apps are a solution to the transportation problem that women used to face.
The Ministry of Transport recently issued a decision to Saudize taxis and replace expatriate taxi drivers with Saudis. I was glad when I read the news and thought that Saudi taxi drivers should be given an opportunity to prove themselves. But a few days after the decision, I started to carefully think about this matter.
The decision will result in Saudi women being alone with a Saudi taxi driver in the same car. I think there is a contradiction between this decision and the ban imposed on women driving in the Kingdom.
Saudi women are banned from driving because of Saudi drivers, most of whom are young and reckless. If young Saudi men are dangerous and they are the reason why women cannot drive, then what is the justification for the decision to allow young Saudi women to get in a car with young Saudi men?
I would like to reiterate that I am not against Saudization, but we need to look at this issue more carefully.

Saudi Arabia bought a huge stake in Uber. What does that mean for female drivers?

Adam Taylor writes in the Washington Post on June 2, 2016. A link to the story is here, and the text is pasted below.

This week the Silicon Valley-based ride-sharing app Uber announced it was getting a huge new injection of funding. But the money wasn't coming from any of the standard investors from the U.S. tech world.
Instead, it was coming from Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi state's Public Investment Fund (PIF) was putting $3.5 billion into the company, the largest investment in Uber to date. The move has raised eyebrows, however, due to one of the kingdom's most notorious domestic policies: Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women cannot legally drive.
While the act of driving for women is not specifically banned, various religious edicts in the country have meant women are restricted from applying for a driving license, effectively making the act of driving illegal for Saudi women. While some women in rural areas do drive without licenses anyway and some women with foreign driving licenses occasionally get behind the wheel (a legal gray area used largely in protest), for the most part women in Saudi Arabia simply don't drive. Polls suggest that support for the policy within the country is mixed.
Uber, of course, does not deliberately restrict female drivers. At the end of 2015, the company said that only 19 percent of the drivers using the app were women but that it was actively trying to increase that percentage. The Saudi government will now be given a direct say in Uber's decision making process — PIF was given a seat on the board as part of the deal — but a representative of Uber said that the investment would definitely not limit women drivers on the app in the United States or other countries where women are allowed to drive.
What's more complicated, however, is the role that Uber already plays in Saudi Arabia's gender politics. While the country's drivers are almost certainly entirely male, Uber's own figures show their Saudi passengers are more than 80 percent female. For many women in the country, the app and its competitors offer a chance at greater autonomy. Public transportation in Saudi Arabia is largely poor, and it can be difficult to find a regular taxi at times. Many families can't afford to hire a driver to take women places on their own.
The end result is that if you are a Saudi woman and you want to commute to work or run errands on your own, a ride-sharing app can become an important tool. “There are some [women] that take five to 10 trips with us every day,” Mudassir Sheikha, the founder of local Uber rival Careem told the Los Angeles Times last year. “We don’t see that kind of traffic anywhere.”
Uber has acknowledged the role its app plays in the country, usually portraying it as a strength. In December the company offered free Uber rides to Saudi women during the first election in which they were legally allowed to vote.
“Of course we think women should be allowed to drive,” Jill Hazelbaker, an Uber spokeswoman, told the New York Times this week. “In the absence of that, we have been able to provide extraordinary mobility that didn’t exist before — and we’re incredibly proud of that.” It's expected now that the Saudi investment in Uber should end lingering questions about the legality of the service in the country.
Yet the company could also be accused of providing a reprieve for the Saudi government from dealing with the issues surrounding female drivers in the country. Members of the Saudi royal family have repeatedly suggested that they believe women should be able to drive — Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a powerful voice in the country, recently suggested that "women don’t get their complete rights granted them by Islam.”
Yet no real moves toward lifting the restrictions on female drivers have been seen recently. Crown Prince Mohammed said in April that the country was still "not convinced about women driving."
The problem is likely opposition from the Saudi kingdom's powerful religious community, which largely opposes female drivers. While one cleric infamously suggested that driving could damage women's ovaries, many focus on more practical reasons: What happens if a female driver is pulled over by a male cop? Saudi Arabia's religious customs would find this type of interaction between male and female strangers inappropriate (the interaction between Saudi women and male Uber drivers raises fewer eyebrows because it is transactional in nature). Saudi Arabia has announced its intentions to hire more female police officers, but progress remains slow.
Meanwhile, public transport projects are also making slim progress. Riyadh's planned metro station is not slated to open until 2018. And while Uber is an option for some women, for many it's still too expensive for any kind of regular use. Some observers wonder if the eventual end of Saudi Arabia's restrictions on female drivers will come from self-driving cars rather than anything else.
The Saudi government gets more complicated still when you consider the broader economic factors at play. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed has become the figurehead of a widely publicized push (dubbed Saudi Vision 2030) to modernize the Saudi economy and end its "addiction" to oil. The hope is to diversify the country's business world, using the country's vast wealth it has accumulated over the years to invest in profitable ventures and focusing on underdeveloped industries like tourism and arms.
There's a social component at work here, too, most notably in the significant cuts being made to the subsidies given to Saudi citizens. Female citizens are being encouraged to enter the workforce, with Mohammed stating the aim was to increase their participation from 22 percent to 30 percent by 2030. Such moves may soon put the ruling Saudi royals at odds with the country's religious elite, potentially shattering a partnership that has provided relative stability to the country for decades.
The investment in Uber seems to be a sign that the Saudi state is willing to bet big on the country's economic future. How those economic bets will translate socially is hard to predict.

Banned from driving, Saudi women turn to Uber and other ride-share apps

Article from the May 7, 2015 Los Angeles Times by Alexandra Zavis, who is reporting from Riyadh. The story is pasted below and a link to the story is here.

When Hala Radwan returned to Saudi Arabia after obtaining a business degree in France, she was eager to put her new skills to use.
She found a job in the marketing department of a big international company. There was just one problem: How would she get to and from work in the only country that does not allow women to drive?
The mass transit options are notoriously poor. The cost of hiring a chauffeur was prohibitive. And she didn’t want to deal with the negative comments she would face if she tried to hail a cab in the conservative kingdom, where a woman using public transportation on her own is often seen as lacking morals.
“It was a nightmare,” she said.
Friends tipped her off to a solution: Uber and a regional competitor called Careem.
Smartphone-based ride services are becoming increasingly popular in Saudi Arabia’s major cities, especially among the large number of tech-savvy young people. Customers include foreign businessmen who don’t want to deal with the country’s sometimes chaotic taxi system. But more than 80% of individual users are women, the app companies say.
The apps have increased the mobility of and given a measure of independence to women who would otherwise have to rely on a male relative to ferry them around in the country which enforces a strict form of Islam. But with prices starting at about $5 a ride, even proponents concede it is not a solution for the poor.
Radwan, 29, spends nearly $700 a month on rides from Careem, with which she has a standing order to get to and from work.
The cost is slightly higher than for a taxi, but she finds the apps safer and more reliable. Both Uber and Careem use GPS technology to track their cars. With a few taps, she can see who will be driving her, the type of vehicle he uses and his customer ratings.
Better still, no one can tell she isn’t using a private car.
At least four ride-booking apps are available for download in Saudi Arabia, with more launches said to be in the works. The technology is the same as that used in the U.S. or Europe, but there are some notable differences in approach.
None of the companies work with drivers who use their personal cars to convey passengers at a fraction of the cost of a taxi or limousine service, a practice that has stirred conflict with transportation operators and regulators elsewhere. In Saudi Arabia, they say, they get their cars and drivers from licensed companies and charge comparable rates.
“We recognize that disruption is not the right model for this market,” said Careem’s founder, Mudassir Sheikha. “We’re trying to be good citizens and stay within the rules and offer a better quality of service.”
 His company, which is headquartered in the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, was one of the first to enter the Saudi market in summer 2013. It now has nearly 100,000 users in the kingdom, a figure growing at about 40% per month, he said.
The service is available in five cities, including the capital, Riyadh, and the commercial hub of Jidda. Other options include the cab-hailing apps Easy Taxi and Mondo Taxi.
San Francisco-based Uber, which operates in more than 300 cities in 56 countries around the world, entered the fray a year ago. In that time, the number of users has increased twentyfold, one of the fastest growth rates in the Middle East or Europe, said Majed Abukhater, who serves as the company’s regional general manager.
“A lot of Saudis have used Uber globally and were really excited to see it launched here,” he said. Limo and car rental companies also like the arrangement because they are getting more business, he said.
Late last year, the transportation committee of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry said it was looking into the operations of several apps, which it accused of using drivers who were not authorized to carry customers in the kingdom – charges denied by Uber and Careem.
The companies say the response from government officials has been mostly positive. There were challenges getting started, however.
Many drivers needed training to provide the premium service touted by the apps. They weren’t used to opening doors for their passengers or helping them with luggage. Their cars weren’t well maintained, and punctuality was a problem.
“Drivers were not even wearing proper uniforms. They were wearing slippers,” Sheikha said. “So we ended up having to buy them uniforms. ... Then we had to start putting incentives in place for them to wear those uniforms.”
Although many Saudis own smartphones, credit card use is low. So Careem introduced a cash payment option. The company also operates a 24-hour call center, a reassuring feature for customers who may not be used to doing all their transactions online.
Customers say they appreciate the more professional and reliable service. There are few other transportation options, especially for women. Riyadh is building a metro system, but it is years from completion. Buses operate on limited routes and are mostly used by men.
“There are some [women] that take five to 10 trips with us every day,” Sheikha said. “We don’t see that kind of traffic anywhere.”
There is no law prohibiting women from driving in Saudi Arabia, but there are fatwas, or religious edicts issued by conservative Muslim clerics. As a result, the government won’t grant women licenses.
The effective ban, which is not enforced in other Muslim countries, is a product of the rigid segregation of the sexes in Saudi Arabia. Concerns have been raised here that allowing women to drive could put them into contact with male traffic officers, or in the case of an accident, male medics. One cleric even suggested that driving could harm a woman’s ovaries, a suggestion ridiculed by many Saudis on social media.
Female activists who have defied the ban, posting images of themselves behind the wheel on social media, have in some cases been arrested. Two women who were detained at the border when one of them attempted to drive from the United Arab Emirates into Saudi Arabia spent more than 70 days in custody before they were released in February.
Families with means will hire a chauffeur to take female members to work, to school, out shopping or to friends’ houses. But even that option has limitations.
“I have a driver, but sometimes he is too busy bringing my sisters from school,” said Gamar al-Douh, 24, who comes from a family of three girls with no brothers to help with the driving. “If I don’t have someone to take me, I use Uber.”
Radwan and her husband considered a chauffeur, but decided against it. The couple got married two years ago and are trying to save money to buy a house and raise a family.
Monthly salaries for a driver start around $400, but can be twice as high if the person is experienced and pays for his own accommodation.
Few Saudis are willing to do the work, so families typically face the additional expense of sponsoring a foreign driver for a work permit. Obtaining the visa and other documentation can cost between $4,000 and $7,000, Radwan said.
Even if the couple could afford a chauffeur, she doesn’t know where they would put him. They live in an apartment building in Jeddah that does not have rooms available for servants.
Her husband could give her a lift to work, but that would take him considerably out of his way.
Radwan used taxis while living abroad but avoids them in Saudi Arabia. Many cars are old and dirty, she said. In most cases, the meters don’t work, leaving passengers to haggle over the fare.
She and her friends used to be constantly swapping phone numbers for good drivers, but she said they weren’t always available.
“If you can’t find a driver, you have to wait for your husband. If not your husband, then your brother. And you know sometimes everyone is just so busy that going from point A to point B is really difficult,” she said. “You can’t even walk because [often] there’s no sidewalk, so you’re afraid of getting hit by a car.”
Now, the conversation with her friends has changed. If one of them needs a driver, they tell her, “Why don’t you take Uber or Careem?”
Follow @alexzavis on Twitter
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times

Saudi women welcome taxi app Uber

Story by Lisa De Bode in AlJazeera America. You can link to the story here - and it's pasted in below.  @lisadebode

February 27, 2014 4:16PM ET

In the only country in the world where women can’t drive, the launch of an app that allows users to book cars online might just offer women some relief from the stifling rules that forbid them to operate a vehicle.

Uber, a San Francisco-based technology company that developed the software, used in more than 29 countries, entered the Saudi Arabian market this week and is running a test program in the capital of Riyadh. By initially offering rides at promotional rates, the company hopes to tap into a rich vein of customers looking for a ride in one of the most congested cities of the Middle East.

While Uber stands to profit off a culture in which half of the population is forced to rely on a driver, the company told Al Jazeera its app could empower women. “Choice is a beautiful thing, and that is especially true for those women who currently have limited access to reliable transportation options,” Uber said. Riyadh does not have a public transportation system.

In October an estimated 100 women staged a driving protest as part of an ongoing campaign for women's right to drive. Madeha al-Ajroush, a leader of the action who proudly planned on buying a car in her own name in Riyadh Thursday, told Al Jazeera she has already downloaded the app and welcomed the technology.

“You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to wait. You know how long it’s going to take,” she said.
Ajroush said the technology enhances women’s mobility but remains expensive and stops short of helping those “who really need it,” she said, such as the women who live in remote areas or don’t have Internet access or credit cards.

“It’s still very costly,” she added, with rides starting at about $5, which have the potential of becoming more expensive when demand is high. Uber's algorithm adjusts the price, depending on factors of supply and demand. And of course, “you’re still under the mercy of finding a car,” Ajroush added.

Despite drivers’ being an exception to the social rule that women can’t be alone in the company of an unrelated man, there is still some stigma attached to using taxis, which often operate solo, without the backing of an official entity.

Reem Taibah, a physics student from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, who shares a driver with her mother and is discouraged by her family from using taxis, told Al Jazeera that booking a car online wouldn’t expose women to the social stigma that’s still attached to hailing a cab on the streets.

“You don’t really trust the cab driver. For example, my mom would be pissed at me if I used one,” Taibah said, adding, “It’s not safe. It’s a stranger driving you. That’s why cabs are not preferable here.”

Also, many cabs don’t have meters, are "very cheap" but are known to charge women more because they know they can, she said.

And in a country where the middle class is rapidly eroding, a growing number of families cannot afford to pay a driver, leaving many women reliant on their husbands to take them to work or have to wait for hours to leave home until someone has time. With no money for a driver, they end up using ad hoc chauffeurs, people who hold other jobs but make money on the side from driving. “A respectable driver who works somewhere — it’s like an upgraded taxi,” Taibah said.

Tapping into an informal market that already serves some women, Uber capitalizes on female users’ need to access a network of trusted drivers when other options are lacking. Detailed information about the drivers, including photos and license plate numbers, increases safety, the company said in a statement.

For some women, the app could be a useful tool in the struggle for greater mobility. “I think it’s really good. I think it can really work,” Taibah said.

Uber's Move to Saudi Arabia Could Be Good for Women

From Slate Magazine. A link to the story is here, and the text is below.

By Ariel Bogle

Since Uber launched in 2009, its co-founder Travis Kalanick has consistently shared his passion for disruption and disdain for regulation. Nor has the company been shy about its plans for global domination. Now set up in 29 countries, the smartphone-based car service has been expanding rapidly. This year alone, it officially launched or began test phases in Guangzhou, Rotterdam, Mumbai, Shenzhen, Moscow, Shanghai, and other cities, according to the Uber blog.

Uber has also been rolling out its services in the Middle East. Only this morning the company announced that Uber had arrived in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. But in Saudi Arabia, the San Francisco-based “disruptors” will face regulations of a stronger flavor than those that govern the Washington, D.C. or New York taxi commissions.

Saudi Arabia bans the issuing of drivers licenses to women—just one of many restrictions that curtail the movement of women unless accompanied by a male relative. While no specific traffic law prohibits women from operating a vehicle, religious edicts are interpreted as forbidding it, and women are often arrested if caught. The oil-rich nation only recently suspended a controversial program that automatically sent a text message to a woman's male guardian if she was traveling out of the country, even if the two were together. And it’s consistently ranked one of the worst countries for women’s rights in the World Economic Forum’s annual gender gap index.

While women in Saudi Arabia have been slowly winning concessions that allow them to work, access to cheap and safe transportation is still an obstacle to economic independence. Taxis are not considered to “count" as khilwa (or the offense of being alone with a member of the opposite sex who isn’t family), a journalist who travels often in the region told me. But they’re expensive, not abundant, and only wealthier households are able to hire a car and professional driver.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, told me that the soft launch is good timing on Uber’s part. An edict last year forbad people from hailing taxis on the street, making it much harder for women (and men) to use them. Not to mention, many neighborhoods in Riyadh don’t really have street addresses, so Uber’s GPS function is a huge benefit.

While Uber is helpful in terms of basic mobility, Cofman Wittes stopped short of calling it an opening up of transportation for all women in Saudi Arabia. After all, they’ll still need to have enough money to own a smartphone. Nevertheless, a reliable and quick car service with minimal driver and passenger interaction like the one Uber offers could be helpful to a large number of Saudi women, if only they’re allowed to use it freely (let alone drive it).

And will the religious leaders smile on Uber and its potential for women? “Typically, if there’s some segment of society that perceives a modernizing element as threatening, there’ll be a backlash in the press or from the clerics,” Cofman Wittes told me. “Uber is brand new, so we’ll have to see.”

Riyadh should be able to indulge in the wonders of surge pricing, too. But the expansion does raise questions about what responsibilities Uber should have, if any, in markets that restrict the movement of certain groups of people. Uber defines itself as a platform—merely connecting drivers and passengers—but if a woman wants to drive an Uber, will the company follow Saudi Arabia’s gender-based norms and restrictions or the law of supply and demand?

There has been no official statement from Uber or Saudi lawmakers about whether women will be able to drive Uber cars, but it seems safe to assume that they won’t be. When asked for comment, an Uber spokesman wrote: “Uber is everyone’s private driver in nearly 80 cities around the world. With efficiency, reliability and style, Uber will help ensure that residents and visitors in Riyadh—men and women alike—have a great way to seamlessly move around their city. Following launches in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, Riyadh marks the latest city in our Middle East expansion.”

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.

Ariel Bogle is a researcher for Future Tense.