SDG 5: Gender equality >

SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Abu Dhabi

Francesca Pardini is a former Italian racing car driver, and the first woman instructor to teach women to drive in Saudi Arabia.

24 June 2018 was a historic date. On that day, Saudi Arabia lifted the ban that prevented women from obtaining a driving licence and being independent when travelling by car or motorbike.

Before then, Saudi Arabia was the last country in the world not to recognise this right for women, who had to rely on their husbands, brothers or drivers to make even the most basic journeys.

This historical change is the starting point for the story of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 5, which is dedicated to achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.

Guindani’s shots tell the story of three Saudi women as they travel to Abu Dhabi to learn the secrets of driving from Francesca Pardini. The camera focuses on the Italian driver’s daily life, a daily life in which she accompanies many young women towards a completely new experience, that of driving a car. Beautiful and fascinating vehicles that these women learn to know first from a theoretical point of view and then from a practical one, until the exciting experience that completes the course: a lap of the track in a real racing car along the curves of the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.

Pardini is senior instructor at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.