The Saudi activist who filmed herself driving on International Women’s Day in 2008 was Wajeha al-Huwaider.
Al-Huwaider was a Saudi writer and women’s-rights campaigner who had already challenged restrictions on women’s public and private lives. In 2007, she helped petition King Abdullah for the right of women to drive. The following year, she posted a video of herself driving in a rural area, deliberately linking the act to International Women’s Day and the campaign against Saudi Arabia’s driving restrictions.
At the time, Saudi women could not obtain driving licenses, and the ban had become an international symbol of the country’s gender restrictions. The video attracted global media attention because it turned an ordinary act of transportation into a highly visible political protest. Al-Huwaider also campaigned against the male-guardianship system.
A common mix-up is with Manal al-Sharif, whose driving video became prominent in 2011 during the later Women2Drive campaign. Loujain al-Hathloul and Samar Badawi were also important Saudi activists, but neither is the woman identified in the 2008 International Women’s Day video.