No woman, no drive

Late last month a handful of Saudi women took to their cars to protest the kingdom's ridiculous ban on women driving. As I argue in a column for the New York Times' Latitude blog, the ban is a cornerstone of the country's gender segregation system (in a country that has been built around the automobile, it reduces women's mobility to nil), which in turn is a foundation of the religious establishment's authority -- over both women and men. That's also why Saudi men's support for this challenge is necessary and promising. 

I fantasize of a campaign to pressure US automakers to boycott the Saudi market (the industry's second-largest foreign market) until women there are allowed out of the back seat.