In October, I had the opportunity to take part in a unique project; creating a music video for a social action campaign. The project emerged from several conversations with fellow Annenberg graduate student Rotana Tarabzouni, a woman born and raised in Dhahran (an eastern city in Saudi Arabia). As a Saudi woman, Rotana grew up under a system that imposes restrictions on her individual agency.

This week Saudi authorities resumed a sweeping crackdown on foreign workers violating local labor laws. Officials arrestedmore than 20,000 people over two days, according to the Jeddah-based Saudi Gazette, and deported many of them. The crackdown, which King Abdullah had suspended in July for six months to allow time for workers to regularize their status, primarily targets workers who do not have valid residency or work permits, but also affects workers with valid documents who are not working for the employer the documents designate.

Saudi authorities rounded up thousands of illegal foreign workers at the start of a nationwide crackdown, according to media reports. "Since early [Monday] morning, the security campaign got off to a vigorous start as inspectors swung into action," Nawaf al-Bouq, a police spokesman, told the Saudi Gazette newspaper. Police carried out raids on businesses, markets and residential areas to catch expatriates whose visas are invalid because they are not working for the company that 'sponsored' their entry into the kingdom.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said it was up to Saudi Arabia to decide when the time was right to allow women to drive. "It's no secret that in the United States of America we embrace equality for everybody regardless of gender, race, or any other qualification," Kerry said at a press conference in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia dealt a high-profile snub to the international community and the United States on Friday when it turned down a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council. The unprecedented move was a culmination of months of public derision directed toward the U.S. for its halfhearted approach to intervention in Syria, its tacit support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and, most recently, its overtures to Iran.

With Saudi Arabian women behind the wheel since Saturday to protest their country's refusal to grant driver's licenses to women, they’re challenging not only long-standing restriction, but also a the larger system of Saudi Arabian gender-based laws, some of the harshest in the world.

Saudi Arabia has warned that it will take measures against activists who go ahead with a planned weekend campaign to defy a ban on women drivers in the conservative Muslim kingdom. The women organising the campaign have been posting online footage of themselves driving in Saudi cities, and have called on Saudi women with foreign driving licences to get behind the wheel on Saturday.