Few Saudi women expected to vote for first time in landmark election

Saudi Arabia, a kingdom known for its stringent rules against women, held an election Saturday, where women were allowed to vote and run for the first time in the country’s history, according to reports.

In another first, women were allowed to stand as candidates in the polls for municipal councils, the country’s only elected public chambers.

Saudi women cast their votes for the municipal elections at a polling station on Saturday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The decision to include women in the vote was made by the ate King Abdullah, who said before his death that Saudi women “have demonstrated positions that expressed correct opinions and advice”. There are almost six times as many men running for office as women, and women candidates faced restrictions in the campaign process that men didn’t – including not being able to show their faces in campaign posters and not being able meet with any male voters face to face.

The post Saudi women head to the polls, enter elections for the first time appeared first on PBS NewsHour. Saudi Arabia has been slowly drifting towards allowing women take a greater part in public life. An additional 1,050 seats are appointed with approval from King Salman, who could use his powers to appoint female candidates who don’t win outright.

Before he died in January, he appointed 30 women to the country’s top advisory Shura Council.

Ms Sawari said she wanted to be a candidate out of patriotism and because Islam gives women rights. Many women said they also could not afford the high cost of running a public campaign, the Associated Press reported.

“Female candidates”:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34985939 have had to speak behind a partition during the election campaign.

Mohammed Al-Shammari, who had just dropped off his daughter, a teacher, said he had encouraged her to vote.

There were no elections in the 40 years between 1965 and 2005. She tells Agence France-Presse, “To tell you the truth, I’m not running to win”.

Few clerics in mosques across the kingdom Friday, there appeared to be no reference of the election in sermons, and have dared to openly criticize the royal decree to permit women the right to vote. The ballot is being ignored by the majority of Saudi citizens and no women may be elected in the end.

Heavy resistance remains in Saudi Arabia’s conservative circles against giving women more rights, which is perceived as crippling westernization by critics.

Ms Al Qahtani said women being allowed to vote “is good for people and good for society…”

Before Abdullah announced women would take part in this year’s elections, the country’s Grand Mufti, its most senior religious figure, described women’s involvement in politics as “opening the door to evil”. Saudi academic and women’s rights campaigner Hatoon al-Fassi voted in an nearly empty polling station, for women only. This move, I think we can all agree, is crazily overdue.

Landmark election… A Saudi woman casts her ballot at a polling centre.