JEDDAH: Hamsa al-Sonosi’s new red Range Rover has been sitting in her driveway for two months, its engine only started for brief, furtive trips around the block. Just after midnight yesterday, both Sonosi and her car will no longer have to hide, reports The Guardian.

A goal she had aspired to for most of her life – to drive herself wherever she pleased – will become a reality for Sonosi, as well as for a selected minority ofother women in Saudi Arabia, who for the first time will legally be able to take to the roads.

“I didn’t think I’d see this day in my lifetime,” said Sonosi, in her home office, surrounded by equally enthusiastic friends. “People have come back from abroad for this day alone. It’s momentous.”

The much-heralded move is the centrepiece of a reform programme that has reached previously forbidden corners of the rigid kingdom, stripping away decades of repression that severely limited women’s role in society and left Saudi Arabia as the last country in the world where women were banned from driving.

The overturning of the ban has been used by the country’s leaders as a marker of a new era, with repressive social conservatism ostensibly replaced by newly bestowed rights. Not long ago, images of women behind the wheel caused conniptions in the kingdom. Now, photos of beaming women holding driving licences are being used to herald lasting change.

Sonosi is one of 30 women in Jeddah, the kingdom’s second city, to have been granted a licence. Many thousands more have applied. Those allowed to drive have been carefully selected. The politics of women driving, and who gets to claim credit for it, has become increasingly loaded.

Up to 17 Saudi women at the forefront of the campaign have been detained in the past two months. Nine remain in prison, among them prominent activists accused of undermining the kingdom and aiding its enemies. Several have been accused of “treason” by state-run newspapers.

Those released have been told not to talk to foreigners, prompting a belief among many Saudis that their detention was more about who gets to claim credit for the move.

“This has to be seen to come from the top,” said one prominent activist. “It must be a gift from the rulers, not the result of grassroots pressure. They don’t want to look like they bowed to a specific demand.”