Prompted by this article is there any basis for not allowing woman to drive? Can this practice even be termed a 'minhag'? If so, what is the motivation behind this 'tradition'?
As quoted from the article:
One local rabbi told the paper that he supported the policy because it upheld the community’s traditional values. “It’s always been regarded in Hasidic circles as not the done thing for a lady to drive,” he commented.
Answer
Shevet HaLevi 4:1 s.q. 2 by Rav Shmuel Wosner writes that "experience has taught him" that it is proper to completely forbid women driving because the activity of learning to drive leads to immodest behavior, and the driving itself violates the notion of "All glorious is the king's daughter within the palace" (Tehilim 45:14). He also points to the Talmud Pesachim 3 that is not "a woman's way" to ride on a donkey, and says that even though the two activities are different, the idea that it is not "a woman's way" is still present for reasons that are "difficult to explain in writing."
He then goes on the blame the prevalence of this sin for the high rate of fatalities on the roads in Israel.
Rav Binyamin Zilber in Az Nidberu Volume 13 #20 takes issue with this and says that in Talmudic times women rode on donkeys, it just isn't a nice image due to the standard riding position requiring spiting the legs over the animal and says that such stringency when not required leads to leniency when required.
I should also take issue with the statement "It’s always been regarded in Hasidic circles as not the done thing for a lady to drive" as the Lubavitcher Rebbetzin drove her own car (footnote 135). So it should really read "in some Hasidic circles."
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