拉玛·阿尔苏莱曼每天都在数还有多少天到6月24日，因为那天她就可以在沙特开车上路了。她是沙特城市吉达商会的副会长，在国外有多年驾龄，但两周前才终于获得人生中第一张沙特的驾照。她表示，报名驾校的沙特女同胞们心情复杂，有喜也有忧。

“这让人百感交集。”在出席《财富》杂志最近于伦敦举办的全球最具影响力女性峰会期间，阿尔苏莱曼这样表示。她指出，过去很多年沙特禁止女性开车有多种原因，既有安全方面的担忧，也因为传统观念里认为女性不愿开车。“众多女性努力争取才有今天的突破……经历了（多年来）自下而上的不断推动。”

阿尔苏莱曼还说，允许女性驾车的另一个益处是，国际社会讨论沙特时终于可以转向其他话题。“我非常希望讨论其他内容，”她说，“女性驾驶权力变成了一种负担。人人都在讨论女性开车，却忽略了沙特其他的重要问题。”

阿尔苏莱曼是沙特女性先驱，曾两次当选吉达商会的领导。2015年沙特首次有女性参加的市政议会选举中，她是20名当选市议员的女性之一。后来由于沙特政府制定法规，要求在市政委员会会议上女性座位必须和男性分隔开，她辞去了议员职位。阿尔苏莱曼表示，驾车方面的进展最积极影响在于，沙特女性拥有了选择。

阿尔苏莱曼表达了沙特女性的挫败感，因为沙特国内的保守派男士和世界各地的自由派人士都自以为了解沙特女性的需求，主动为沙特女性代言，然而往往离实际很远。她指出，大多数沙特女性仍然更喜欢办公室里与男性隔开，还有很多女同胞蒙上面才觉得更舒服。她说：“都是之前女性无权选择的结果。”（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审稿：夏林

Lama Al Sulaiman is counting down the days until June 24, the day when she can finally get behind the wheel. The vice chair of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce & Industry in Saudi Arabia, who has long driven outside her country and who received her first-ever Saudi driver’s license two weeks ago, said the mood of fellow women enrolled in driving school has been both happy and frustrated.

“It’s very emotional,” she said at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International Summit in London recently, noting that over the years the rationale for keeping women off the road ranged from safety concerns to the sense that it wasn’t what women wanted. “A lot of women have worked hard to make this happen…there has been a lot of bottom-up struggling” over the years.

Al Sulaiman added that another benefit is that the world can finally move on to other conversations about Saudi Arabia. “I’m excited to talk about other things,” she said. “It became a burden. No one wanted to discuss anything that was important about Saudi Arabia except that women can’t drive.”

Al Sulaiman, a pioneer who was twice elected to the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and who was one of 20 women to win a spot in her country’s first co-ed municipal elections in 2015—she resigned from her position when Saudi Arabia made regulations that women had to be segregated from men at municipal council meetings—said the driving development is most positive in that it gives Saudi women choice.

She expressed frustration that Saudi women are often spoken for by both conservative men in the country who think they know what women need and by liberals around the world who think they know what they want. She noted that the majority of Saudi women still prefer segregated workplaces and that many feel more comfortable having their face covered. “It’s the choices we’ve been missing,” she said.