When I passed through Riyadh in the summer of 2018, on a stopover between assignments in Yemen, the kingdom was days into its most photographed reform: women had just been allowed to drive. But the rest of my visit felt like the old Saudi Arabia. My visa required repeated trips to the consulate. On the state airline, men and women sat apart, and the flight opened with a prayer. My local contacts told me to cover my head and wear a black abaya, and I ate in the “family” sections of restaurants because men and women couldn’t mix.
Loujain al-Hathloul, the woman most closely tied to the campaign for that right to drive, was in a prison cell. She had been arrested that May along with several other activists.
When I returned a few winters later with a policy delegation, I barely recognized the country. Foreign women no longer had to cover their heads, and nobody looked twice at those who didn’t. Black abayas had given way to florals, business suits and designer heels. A Jeddah billboard sold winter sunshine with a woman with uncovered hair. Women smoked hookah in public, ate with male friends and traded stories about dating apps. The religious police, who once prowled malls for loose headscarves, were nowhere to be seen.
“People should just go and see for themselves,” a Saudi government official told me.
I did. However, I also recognize that what a visitor sees is only part of the picture.
Some of the change is measurable. In 2019, the government let women over 21 obtain passports and travel abroad without a male guardian’s permission. Participation among Saudi women in the labor force rose from 19.7 percent in 2018 to 36.3 percent in early 2025, exceeding the Vision 2030 target of 30 percent. More than a million Saudi women now hold private-sector jobs, double the number when Vision 2030 launched.
Lately, the curve has flattened. In the first quarter of this year, participation among Saudi women slipped to 33.9 percent. Their unemployment rate fell to 9 percent over the same stretch, but part of that drop comes from women who stopped looking for work and so stopped counting as unemployed.
The law has moved even less. In 2022, the kingdom passed its first written family code, the Personal Status Law, which the crown prince promoted as a step toward progress and equality for women. Human Rights Watch found that it formally codifies the male guardianship system. A woman still needs a male guardian’s consent to marry, and only a husband has the unconditional right to divorce. Marital rape isn’t a crime. A man can still bring a “disobedience” case against a wife or daughter in his care, and it can end with her arrested and returned to his home.
During that return trip a few years ago, Huda Alhailisi, a member of the Shura Council, the kingdom’s appointed advisory body, walked our group through the reforms. When I raised Loujain’s case, she didn’t want to get into it.
“There is more always to the story, but we [Saudi Arabia] will always be attacked,” she said. “I’m not justifying or denying what happened, but I’m saying that we will always be the focus of media.”
Loujain was held for close to three years. She walked out of prison in February 2021, according to Human Rights Watch, but as of last year, Amnesty International said the authorities still wouldn’t let her leave Saudi Arabia.
Salma al-Shehab was marginally more fortunate. Saudi authorities released the Leeds University PhD student in February 2025, four years after she was jailed over posts on X backing women’s rights. At the height of her case, an appeals court had sentenced her to 34 years.
Then there is Manahel al-Otaibi.
The fitness instructor was taken into custody in November 2022 after she shared photos online without an abaya. A secret meeting of judges sentenced her to 11 years in January 2024, which was later reduced to five years. Yet, according to her family, she hasn’t been heard from since December 2024. Human Rights Watch calls this an "enforced disappearance."
So what has really changed? Saudi women can move, work, and spend more freely than at any point in the kingdom’s history. What they still can’t do is set the agenda. Every reform of the past decade, it seems from the outside looking in, came from the palace, on the palace’s schedule, and the women who tried to push faster were jailed, silenced, or barred from leaving.
Go and see for yourself, by all means. Just bear in mind that, perhaps, the women who can tell you what hasn’t changed are likely the ones you won’t be able to meet.
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