“My Guardian Knows What’s Best for Me” is a web campaign by conservative Saudi women who say they support the current male guardianship system that reduces women to the status of perpetual children, requiring them to obtain permission from a male legal guardian for just about anything grownups normally decide independently. They say they do not want to drive—preferring the convenience of having a foreign driver chauffeur them around. They do not want to travel alone, abroad or within the kingdom, and they probably wouldn’t dream of working against the wishes of their male guardians, usually husbands, fathers, or brothers. After all, they say, those guardians know best, by virtue of being male.

It seemed odd at first in mid-2009 that a conservative group would launch such a campaign or that the campaign’s website attracted over five thousand signatures within a few months. But, in a strange twist, the campaign is part of a renewed focus on women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.

After decades of frozen progress, the continued denial of women’s basic rights in Saudi Arabia is coming under sustained attack. The upheavals in Arab countries in 2011 have given new impetus to calls for reform in Saudi Arabia, too, and calls for women’s rights have been the most prominent among them.

No longer is it chiefly Western activists grabbing headlines about sexist discrimination. Courageous Saudi educated and middle-class women—even a few princesses—are now also taking up the cause. Online social media have allowed these activists to connect with one another and, crucially, with the many other women who were silent before but can now express their support for women’s rights at the click of a mouse button. The nascent women’s rights movement in Saudi Arabia may be on the cusp of becoming a broad-based wave, lobbying fathers, husbands, and brothers within their homes, and public opinion on the Internet. Those are their two means of exerting pressure, as there are no formal mechanisms for decision making in which Saudi women are allowed to participate.

Ironically, under the current system in Saudi Arabia, it will be men who institute changes for women, if at all. The leader of the movement for Saudi women’s rights is King Abdullah himself.