Saudi Arabia’s Driven Women

On Monday evening, shortly after the call to Isha prayers had sounded from hundreds of mosques across Riyadh, a half dozen women gathered for a small dinner party—gender-segregated, like most Saudi social gatherings—in a residential compound in the eastern part of the city. Their black abayas and headscarves put away in a cupboard near the villa’s front door, most of the women wore trousers and silky evening tops. As a maid carried in a platter of roast lamb, one of the women, Fawzia al-Bakr, a writer and university professor, peered distractedly at her iPhone.

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