Manal al-Sharif (Arabic: منال الشريف, romanized: Manāl Aš-Šarīf, pronounced [maˈnaːl aʃːaˈriːf]; born 25 April 1979) is a Saudi women's rights activist who helped start a right-to-drive campaign in 2011.

[10][11] Following her driving campaign, al-Sharif remained an active critic of the Saudi government, tweeting on issues including imprisoned female foreign workers, the lack of elections for the Shura Council, and the murder of Lama al-Ghamdi.

Manal al-Sharif graduated from King Abdulaziz University with a Bachelor of Science in computing and a Cisco Career Certification.

[12] Al-Sharif's first book, Daring to Drive: a Saudi Woman's Awakening, was published in June 2017 by Simon & Schuster.

[14] Women in Saudi Arabia had limited freedom of movement and in practice were not allowed to drive motor vehicles on public roads.

[15] In 1990, dozens of women in Riyadh drove their cars in protest, were imprisoned for one day, had their passports confiscated, and some of them lost their jobs.

[16][17][19] Inspired by the Arab Spring, a woman from Jeddah, Najla Hariri, started driving in the second week of May 2011, stating "Before in Saudi, you never heard about protests.

[But] after what has happened in the Middle East, we started to accept a group of people going outside and saying what they want in a loud voice, and this has had an impact on me.

Supporters republished the original video and Facebook page and a summary of al-Sharif's five recommended rules for the 17 June campaign were published on a blog and by The New York Times.

[2] The New York Times described al-Sharif's campaign as a "budding protest movement" that the Saudi government tried to "swiftly extinguish".

[10] Associated Press said that Saudi authorities "cracked down harder than usual on al-Sharif, after seeing her case become a rallying call for youths anxious for change" in the context of the Arab Spring.

[9] The conditions of Al-Sharif's release include bail,[8] returning for questioning if requested, not driving and not talking to the media.

"[9] Al-Sharif filed an objection with the General Directorate of Traffic in Riyadh on 15 November 2011 because of officials rejecting her driver's licence application.

"The small fact of the SMS story gives you the idea of the bigger problem with the whole guardianship system", she wrote on Twitter.

[38] Al-Sharif argued that the Saudi authorities "effectively shaped and molded the Twitter discourse by buying trolls and bots, while directly or indirectly threatening, harassing or arresting and jailing those who were influencers and didn't speak favorably of the government policies."

[38] In April 2019, the Saudi embassy in Washington invited Manal al-Sharif via Twitter to meet the new ambassador, Reema bint Bandar.

[42] On 25 January, The Guardian confirmed that she was alive, and that the crash victim was an "unnamed member of a desert community" who was not involved in the female driving campaign.

[47] She was also one of three people awarded the first annual Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent at the Oslo Freedom Forum.