Saudi women campaign for office

More than 900 women are running for public office in municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, a country that granted partial suffrage to women only four years ago, CNN reports.

“For 10 years, since men first voted, we have waited for this chance”, said Fawzia al-Harbi, one of hundreds of female candidates who began campaigning this week. “The General Election Committee has set conditions or campaigning such as curbs on publishing candidates” photos in public promotional material. The forthcoming election will fill half the seats in the country’s municipal councils; King Salman, who took the throne in January after Abdullah’s death, will appoint the rest. A woman candidate is prohibited from holding rallies attended by men and only a spokesman can communicate on her behalf with male voters.

Data cited by the Saudi electoral commission show about 7,000 candidates are vying for seats on the 284 councils.

Despite the growing female representation on government bodies, activists complain that women still required to use a male guardian to transact official business. Women must cover themselves in black from head to toe in public, and require permission from a man in their families to travel, work or marry. However, according to a National Geographic article, founder and director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia Ali H Alyami says that this step will act as a means of “psychological empowerment” for women nevertheless.

Restrictions remain in place despite a slow expansion of women’s rights under the late King Abdullah, who introduced the elections in 2005 and said women would participate this time around. “I think that women are really very important in this society, in any society, but even so men are always the ones with the power”. “It’s a first step”, she says.

Saud al-Shammry, 43 of Riyadh, said it was time for a new approach. Because of the kingdom’s strict separation of sexes – which applies to election facilities as elsewhere like restaurants – women will gather one day and men the next.

“It’s very, very hard for us to win and to target our voters”, she says. “They don’t discuss it publicly, but in private they talk about elections for the Shura Council”, said Khaled al-Dakhil, a Saudi political scientist. “We try and be reasonable when calling for our rights”, said Dr Fassi.

“I thought: ‘We have to go out in force saying, yes, we are engaged wherever we can make a change, and we are going to be involved in decision making, ‘” she said.

Hiba Dialdin, a petroleum engineering consultant at oil giant ARAMCO based in Dahran, said she was on the fence for a long time.