Saudi women hit back at hashtag claiming men 'don't want girls on Twitter'

Over 350,000 tweets with the hashtag were posted on Twitter

Women and men are often segregated in the ultra-conservative Kingdom

Women in Saudi Arabia are fighting back against calls from men to leave social media, after tweets with the hashtag "we don't want girls on Twitter" were posted over 355,000 times over the weekend.

The origins of the hashtag are unclear but it spread rapidly in just a few days, the BBC reports.

Women and men are often segregated in the ultra-conservative Kingdom.

Women are also heavily restricted in what they can do; they cannot drive cars and need permission from men to travel, marry or pursue higher education.

One female user mocked the hashtag with a crying emoji face and the caption "Why? What have we done?"

Another tweeted a picture of a goat with the caption ‘This is the person who started the hashtag’.

Meanwhile, some women chose to play those behind the hashtag at their own game and responded with their own hashtag: “we don’t want men on Twitter”, although this failed to trend.

The joke backfired even further when men joined in and began mocking it as well.