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'We won a war': Manal al-Sharif urges next generation of women to fight for change in Saudi Arabia

It's been a decade since Manal al-Sharif carried out an extraordinarily brave act that would change the course of her life forever.
The year was 2011, and Ms al-Sharif was terrified but determined to challenge authorities in her home country of Saudi Arabia who said women were not allowed to drive.
Armed with a mobile phone she filmed herself driving around the city in al-Akrabiyah, Khobar on the Persian Gulf.
Then, with a stroke of her keyboard, she uploaded the video to YouTube, where it was watched 700,000 times on the first day alone.
Manal al-Sharif now lives in Sydney. She has just founded the Ethical Technologists Society, a new project which seeks to throw a spotlight on the lack of transparency of digital and social media companies.
Manal al-Sharif now lives in Sydney. She has just founded the Ethical Technologists Society, a new project which seeks to throw a spotlight on the lack of transparency of digital and social media companies. (Supplied: Manal al-Sharif)
Buoyed by the Arab Spring uprisings that were taking place across the Middle East and in northern Africa, Ms al-Sharif's act of defiance would set off a wave of similar protests and become a catalyst for change.
But Ms al-Sharif, who now lives in Australia, has paid an enormous personal price for her activism.
She was thrown in prison for a few days, lost her job when she continued to speak out against the government and forced to flee overseas.
Ms al-Sharif has not seen her eldest son, Abdullah, in four years.
With no appetite for putting her freedom in the hands of the ruling Saudi royal family, Ms al-Sharif has deemed it too unsafe to return home.
Abdullah, who is now 16 years old, still lives in Saudi Arabia.
"Abdullah is a special case. His dad is preventing him from leaving the country," Ms al-Sherif said.
Manal al-Sharif has not seen her eldest son Abdullah, in four years.
Manal al-Sharif has not seen her eldest son Abdullah, in four years. (Supplied: Manal al-Sharif)
Since 2017, Ms al-Sharif has been living in Sydney with her second husband, and their son Daniel, who is now seven years old.
Her two sons have never met.
But Ms al-Sharif is philosophical about what the women's freedom movement has cost her.
"You lose battles to win the war, and I think a lot of women who lost personal things, we won a war against women in my country," she said.

A closed world opens up

Ms al-Sharif grew up in a devout Muslim family. She remembers feeling her world suddenly constrict when she became a teenager.
"It was kind of devastating. There were a lot of rules suddenly imposed on me as a girl that my brother didn't have to adhere to," she said.
"I had to wear the hijab, the full face covering. I couldn't talk to boys. I couldn't play football with them anymore.
"I couldn't ride a bike or leave the house."
"The school was really good in brainwashing us into adhering to the rules, taming us.
"I was the biggest reader. I love reading and all the books were reinforcing why we had to follow these very impossible rules and not push back."
After years of being exposed to no alternative viewpoint, Ms al-Sharif said she became "heavily radicalised" and believed what she was being told.
All this changed with the arrival of the internet in Saudi Arabia in 1999.
Manal al-Sharif says she has faith in the new generation of women in Saudi Arabia and hopes they will continue to fight for change.
Manal al-Sharif says she has faith in the new generation of women in Saudi Arabia and hopes they will continue to fight for change. (Supplied: Manal al-Sharif)
"I got access to it behind my dad's back because he wouldn't allow us," she said.
Suddenly Ms al-Sharif was finding answers to the questions no-one had wanted to answer.
Ms al-Sharif went on to study and complete a degree in computer science.
"The internet was heavily censored in Saudi Arabia to protect our belief systems, but I had the curiosity and, as a computer scientist, I could bypass all this censorship.
"I didn't know that time it was called hacking, but I could access things no-one could access. And that was really my enlightenment, because it gave me that window to the outside world.
"I felt so much anger because I've been lied to all my life. I felt betrayed and like I needed to make up for the lost years."

The power of the social network

The arrival of social media brought with it more freedom as it gave women a vital chance to connect.
"That's when I started talking to people like me who had the same questions and were so scared to talk about it, it was very empowering," Ms al-Sharif said.
It was, Ms al-Sharif said, the "innocent" early days of Facebook, before there were any algorithms controlling what appeared on news feeds.
"It was organic, the power of the network was that everyone you knew was on there, Facebook and Twitter, and you could see when you logged on in the morning what they were up to."
Manal al-Sharif with her Emirati driver's licence.
Manal al-Sharif with her Emirati driver's licence. (Supplied: Manal al-Sharif)
Ms al-Sharif was continuing to question the limits imposed on women in her country and there came a night in 2011 when all of her frustrations came to a head.
She was walking in al-Khober city, trying unsuccessfully to find a taxi home.
"I couldn't find a ride back home and that's the moment when I was almost kidnapped from the street," she said.
"I was terrified and shaking.
"I was thinking I'm sick and tired of this, it doesn't make sense.
"I knew how to drive, I had an international drivers' licence, but there I was - an adult woman - not trusted to drive her own car."
When Ms al-Sharif related the incident to a colleague at work, he told her there was no official law which made it illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia.
"I think that was my 'aha' moment," she said.
Ms al-Sharif turned to Facebook where she set up a page called Women2Drive.
The page helped connect women who wanted to learn to drive with women who could teach them.
Manal al-Sharif has been living in Australia since 2017.
Manal al-Sharif has been living in Australia since 2017. (Supplied: Manal al-Sharif)
Then came her YouTube video and a day of action in June 2011, where dozens of Saudi women got behind the wheel to drive.
It would be seven more years before the Saudi Arabian monarchy lifted the driving ban at last, in June 2018.
Ms al-Sharif said she copped criticism for focusing her efforts so solely on women's rights to drive, which some believed was superficial considering the many other human rights abuses occurring in her country.
"They didn't understand, this was a public display of women's empowerment," Ms al-Sharif said.
"Divorce, domestic violence, injustice in courts - that all happens behind closed doors.
"But when you walk in the street and you see a woman behind the wheel driving, that's a paradigm shift. It's a public display of forming power.
"It was a huge battle for us … but when that battle was won, it had a domino effect and a lot of things followed."

Tools turn to weapons

While technology and social media played a huge role in Ms al-Sharif's fight for freedom, she said she is increasingly horrified to see the same tools now being used to oppress dissent in authoritarian regimes.
"A lot of people are now being radicalised by these tools," she said.
"I see my friends back home, how their views of the world have changed because the government is pushing hate.
"A lot of friends have stopped even talking to me because they are living in this world that the government created for them."
Manal al-Sharif, pictured with former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Manal al-Sharif, pictured with former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. (Supplied: Manal al-Sharif)
In democracies like Australia and the US, social media's role in growing the alt right movement was also disturbing, she said.
"I see my friends being radicalised in the US, they have gone to the far right because they've been sent all this angry stuff on their social media feed," she said.
"I talk to them and I don't know them anymore.
"It scares me, I don't want my kids to live in this world."
Ms al-Sharif is now using her expertise in cyber security to begin a new project, forming the Ethical Technologists Society.
Examining the space where digital and human rights meet, Ms al-Sharif hopes to bring experts together to help advocate for more transparency in the sector.
Ms al-Sharif also hosts a podcast, tech4evil.com, which aims to educate people on their digital rights.
While Twitter has recently made some progress in the area of transparency, launching a service to provide more detail about government requests, more action was needed, particularly from Facebook, she said.

A new fight for a new generation

Back in Saudi Arabia there is still much work to be done to unlock freedoms for women.
But Ms al-Sharif said she had hope the next generation of women would build on the progress that had been so hard won.
"I do believe in the new generation. These girls are highly educated, very outspoken, and I love that. They don't like to be brainwashed and told what to do," she said.
Women in Saudi Arabia were now able to get a good education, and gain financial independence with a job, she said.
The time was ripe for change, Ms al-Sharif said, with oil – so central to Saudi Arabia's economy - losing its strategic importance on the world stage amid the climate change crisis.
Ms Al-Sharif said the next generation of women were well-positioned to push for political change "in a soft way, without torturing or killing or assassination".
"They have the wealth, they have the knowledge, they have the population - they just need to push against that system."
Contact reporter Emily McPherson at emcpherson@nine.com.au.
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