The struggle is not about driving a car; it's about being in control of our destiny - Václav Havel Oslo Prize Acceptance Speech 2012 In late May 2011, a YouTube channel called ksawomen2drive published an eight-minute video. From the first day of its release, it became the most watched music video in Saudi Arabia and became so popular that it started trending around the world. Any non-Arab viewer might have been slightly disconcerted by its popularity. To them, it would simply be a clip of a woman in a hijab driving while talking to her passenger, and a poorly filmed clip at that. The hundreds of thousands of Arab viewers, however, saw something entirely different. They were witnessing a crime, an act of dissidence. The video gained more than 600,000 views in the few days it was released, but was removed following the arrest of the driver shown in the clip. Manal al-Sharif was that driving force. The place of women in Saudi society is determined by a deeply conservative culture, justified by a narrow interpretation of religion and imposed by law. It would seem that this place is their home, submissive and legally dependent on their male guardian. Saudi society suffers from pervasive gender segregation and women's freedom of movement is hampered, forcing them to rely on male escorts. There is one place where Saudi women can escape marginalization: ; online. Twitter does not yet have a separate site for both sexes and women are not confined to their own account page on Facebook, where they can have as many male friends as they want. As is the case in all oppressive societies, the Internet has had a delightfully corrupting effect in Saudi Arabia, not only by providing access to the free flow of information on a global scale, but also by facilitating the organization and dissent. ...... middle of paper ...... and threats of violence against her. Fighting an unjust system is difficult enough, but women's emancipation remains on the wrong side of popular opinion in this still deeply conservative kingdom. And although progress has been made; the first Saudi female athletes at the 2012 Olympics and women's promise to participate in the 2015 municipal elections, progress is slow. Compared to other injustices faced by Saudi women, the right to drive may seem insignificant, but for someone who expects to stay home and remain submissive, the sudden freedom to come and go as they wish is incredibly stimulating. This means more women are being seen in public. This means more women will find jobs and build their own careers. This means more women are going about their daily lives independently and without supervision. Nothing adds weight to calls for equality than the roar of an engine.