Women in Saudi Arabia Vote for the First Time

For the first time on Saturday, women will be allowed to participate in elections in Saudi Arabia, both as voters and candidates in a historic milestone in a country that still imposes strict rules such as a ban on women driving.

Saudi Arabian women voted and ran for office for the first time in the country’s history on Saturday. Almost 130,000 women registered to vote, a number that remains much smaller than the numbers of men registered to vote in the country (nearly 1.35 million men are registered) and represents 1 in 10 Saudi women.

A slow expansion of women’s rights began four years ago under Salman’s predecessor Abdullah, who announced that women would join the elections this year. Also, female candidates were not allowed to directly address male voters, having to either make presentations from behind partitions, relying on projectors and microphones, or via male supporters and relatives.

Over 900 women were contesting for seats against about 6,000 men who were competing for places in 284 councils looking after local affairs.

Saudi Arabia’s first election campaign open to women ends on Thursday but voters see little chance of a breakthrough for female candidates. Candidates were running male an additional 5,968 in the election.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not running to win”, said Amal Badreldin al-Sawari, 60, a paediatrician in central Riyadh. Hefzi is running for a seat on her local municipal council. “Even if men take all the seats, I feel we still won”, said Munifa, a nurse who lives outside Hafr Al-Batin city in the kingdom’s northeast.

Despite the novel presence of female contenders, Marzooq said she picked a male candidate because of his ideas including more nurseries.

According to the report, Bokhary is among the 979 women vying for a seat in the municipal councils of Saudi. They also cannot attend town hall meetings if men are present due to gender segregation, so could not participate in all of the campaigning, which prohibited any photos of the candidates.

Sharif said she was thrilled to vote for a woman, and said all her family members, including her brothers, were excited to do the same. She has proposed opening community centers with daycare for children, in part to relieve the burden on women.

Uber had gained popularity among the women of one of the wealthiest desert state where women’s are not allowed to drive.

“There is no reason, if this is applied to municipal councils, that they would not apply it to the Shura”, Riyadh Najm, a retired former government official, told Reuters.

Male-only polls were first held in 2005.

Campaigning for female candidates was more hard than for their male competition as well.

The vote that started at 8am local time will continue until 5pm.

Alturki, a self-described avid Uber user, said she would likely not use the auto service tomorrow to cast her vote.