Saudi Arabia Bans Women From Using Google Drive

A parallel change is expected to go into effect in May: women will then be prohibited from visiting a driving range.

Riyadh, December 29 – New restrictions on women and driving are scheduled to come into effect on Sunday, the most important of which involves a prohibition on women’s use of the online document management utility known as Google Drive.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Transport announced this week that new behaviors on the information superhighway have made it necessary to reformulate age-old laws barring females from getting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. As such, he explained, the new regulations aim to keep women away from controlling devices using the term “drive.” The restrictions are part of a larger set of limits on female behavior that seek to maintain the kingdom’s moral character and traditional values.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference, Prince Ali Hassan ibn Klaud laid out the revamped regulations, which assign penalties to women for using Google Drive. Under the new rules, men in charge of women – i.e. husbands, brothers, fathers, or other legal guardians – can also face fines for allowing such depravity to occur under their watch.

“New technology calls for new types of enforcement and monitoring,” noted the prince. “It may have taken regulations a while to catch up with the pace of change, but we are doing what we can. For a brief period in the 1980’s a proposal was debated in the ministry regarding women’s access to drives of various sorts – both hard and soft drives, as I recall – but women’s use of computers was so limited back then that it hardly seemed a worthwhile pursuit to regulate it. Things have changed, however, and we must maintain the modesty and dignity of the Saudi woman.”

A parallel change is expected to go into effect in May: women will then be prohibited from visiting a driving range. “One cannot be too careful,” observed Alhafa Masseff Harem, a social commentator who writes for the Riyadh Times. “While it is not widely practiced in this country, female circumcision can also be seen in this light. One of the principal goals of the ritual is to reduce the woman’s drive – there’s that word again – for intimacy, thus reducing the risk of her engaging in promiscuity.” Fortunately, he pointed out, the ban on alcohol consumption in Saudi Arabia makes it all but impossible for a woman to drive her husband to drink.

“As you can see, as a society we have given this issue quite a bit of thought, which is a totally normal, healthy thing to do,” he added.

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