My answer was simple: I hadn’t thought about it.

Thinking globally isn’t easy. I have always been taught to write what I know, and what I know is how middle-class women in the US spend their money and make ends meet. I don’t know about the experience of women in Egypt, and what their daily lives were like before the revolution. I don’t know what percentage of European or South American women work 60 and 70 hour work weeks. I don’t know how mothers in Mexico or India or China provide for their children.  Our American personal finance columnists don’t cover those women, and I only know a handful of people who travel outside the US regularly. Heck, I think I only have one friend living abroad right now.

So it’s easy to ignore the fact that women around the world experience life vastly differently than we do in America. But every once in a while, I am reminded.

Today’s reminder? There is a protest going on in Saudi Arabia to empower women to drive. Because they currently are not allowed to. Or to travel or take a job without “male guardian” permission.  Um, how are you supposed to get a good job or an education without being able to drive to one?  Oh, right, you aren’t. And that’s the point.

I read “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” and “Persepolis” and I follow the news, so I know that women in Middle Eastern countries are extremely oppressed, even when on the surface things don’t seem so bad and even if Taliban jerkfaces aren’t forcing them to wear burkas and cutting off their hands and throwing them in jail because their husbands can’t keep it in their pants. But after I read the books and the articles, I go back to my desk and I work for long hours and I commute home and I cook dinner and I pay my bills …. and you know, life  just has a way of making me quickly forget to focus on social justice and fight for female equality in far-flung places.

Besides all the forgetting, sometimes I also think it’s easy to falsely believe things are better for women in countries just because you don’t hear about them regularly. For instance, it never occurred to me that women in Saudi Arabia can’t drive. Sure, I could have told you that if I really thought hard about it. But without stories being shared about this oppression, it falls off the radar. And since I don’t hear stories about, oh, I don’t know, schools for women being burned in Saudi Arabia, I kind of assume things are going OK.

I plead total ignorance and lack of a global network.

But today, in Saudi Arabia, women are getting behind the wheel and experiencing a taste of the freedom that comes with access to the road. Dangerous? Yes. But conventions are not challenged without risk.  And beyond a few women tasting that little drop of freedom, even under heavy oppression, women around the world are reminded of the inequalities that exist. And judging from the #women2drive campaign on Twitter, support is flowing in.

To those women driving  in Saudi Arabia today, I wish you the best of luck. I waited 28 years to get my drivers license because I was terrified of taking the wheel. Driving is scary and comes with a lot of responsibility. It puts you in control of a giant machine that goes fast, but leaves you to fend for yourself among chaotic traffic patterns, bad drivers, texting teens, and angry individuals. But driving is also liberating and educational. It enables you to say yes to opportunities you might have missed before, to visit new places, to expand your horizons. Saving for your first car teaches you financial responsibility, as does buying gas, insurance, and paying for maintenance.

Because it took me almost 15 years later than most of my friends to learn to drive, I’m probably the last person my friends would expect to be writing a post about empowering women to become road warriors. Yes, I worry about the number of cars on the road and generally advocate for walking or biking or public transportation whenever possible.

But driver’s license or not, I’m also fiercely independent. More so than advocating for public transportation in crowded cities, at the heart of this issue is finding your voice, empowering yourself, and standing on your own feet, unbound by the chains of inequality, free to roam as you please and discover your passions. And that I can wholeheartedly support.

So ladies, again I say good luck as you take the wheels. I’m cheering for you, and praying for your safety and freedom.