Controversy over subject-verb agreement in this sentence

The sentence

Women driving cars is, of course, such a foreign sight to a society like Saudi Arabia

The subject is not "women" (otherwise, the verb would have been 'are'); the subject, as I mean to use it, is the rarity of seeing women driving cars. The subject, in other words, is "women driving cars" as a thing. Does this give me licence to use 'is' here? Thank you.

Solution 1:

I'd say that Women driving cars is probably a noun phrase with "women" as head and "driving cars" as a gerund-participial post-head modifier. Noun phrases with plural head nouns take plural agreement, in this case "are":

Women driving cars are, of course, such a foreign sight to a society like Saudi Arabia.

On the other hand, it could be a clause with "women" as subject and "driving cars" as predicate. In that case the correct verb-form is singular "is" (clause subjects take singular agreement):

Women driving cars is, of course, such a foreign sight to a society like Saudi Arabia.

However, neither version sounds wholly felicitous, probably because of this grammatical ambiguity of the subject.

Solution 2:

If We were asked to make the sentence in the post complex the sentece would read something like this.

• That women are driving cars is, of course, such a foreign sight to a society like Saudi Arabia.

The sentence or, for that matter, the phrase is complemented by ' a foreign sight'. I think there is no dichotomy in the use of singular verb form.

A concept of 'foreign sight' enbodied in the whole of the noun phrase, 'women driving cars' is the subject. The speaker has no intention to make the 'women' subject- the only plausible option in such phrase- when a plural verb is required.