Giving Compass' Take:

• The Conversation explores the recent reforms in Saudi Arabia: While a decades-long ban on women driving has been lifted, there is still a long way to go before the kingdom catches up in gender equity.

• What can advocates and international women's rights groups do to put more pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia to advance more women into leadership roles?

• Here's why the development sector must lead on gender equality.

Earlier this summer, Saudi Arabia lifted the decades-long ban on women’s driving. The move is part of a series of reforms that the country has been implementing. In April the kingdom loosened male guardianship laws — under which women need the permission of a male guardian to work, travel or marry. And in 2015, women were granted the right to vote and run for elections. The reforms serve to revamp the image of Saudi Arabia in the international arena.

More recently, however, in a diplomatic spat, Canada has criticized Saudi Arabia for human rights violations. Saudi officials have responded by cutting all economic and diplomatic ties, withdrawing investments and stopping flights. One of the main issues for the Canadians is the arrest by Saudi authorities of two prominent women’s rights activists. Tweets by Canadian diplomats called on the kingdom to release the activists. Saudi Arabia arrested several women’s rights activists in weeks prior and following the lifting the ban on women’s driving.

As a scholar of gender politics in Middle Eastern societies, I argue that all this goes to show that the kingdom is extending limited reforms to women to represent itself as modern but is adamant on not opening space for more voices.

Read the full article about the rights of Saudi women by Nermin Allam at The Conversation.