Saudi women head to the polls, enter elections for the first time

It’s a historic day in Saudi Arabia, where officials are touting municipal elections in which women are not only voting for the first time, but also standing for office. They stated almost 1,000 women and seven, 000 men competed for seats on 284 municipal councils, which oversee a assortment of local issues, together with budgets for the maintenance of public facilities.

Elections themselves rarely happen in Saudi Arabia.

The late King Abdullah granted women the right to participate in elections before he died in January.

At the King Salman Social Centre in north Riyadh, where men and women went into different parts of the building to cast their ballots, voters of both sexes were greatly outnumbered by both election officials and journalists.

Despite women’s participation in the vote, however, there’s a widely held sentiment among many Saudis that women usually do not belong in public life.

According to United Nations statistics, the country has a population of about 30 million, with about 17 million men and 13 million women.

The move to allow women to vote has been described as a step forward for equality in the male-dominated kingdom.

Two years later, he ordered that at least 20% of seats in the Consultative Council be set aside for women.

“This is really silly”, said Sahar Hassan Nasief, a women’s rights activist in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

She and others hope the election opens the door to other reforms, such as allowing women to travel outside of the country without permission from a male relative.

“As long as she has her own place and there is no mixing with men, what prevents her from voting?” The turnout was high, as reported by local media.

Iman al-Mashrawi, a pediatric surgeon in Riyadh, said she had been persuaded to vote by a friend who was running for office. “Her role is at home managing the house and raising a new generation”, he said. “If we let her out of the house to do such business, who’s going to care for my sons?”

Their chance of success, however, is “slim to zero”, according to Karen Young, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute.

Candidate Latifa Al-Bazei, a 53-year-old public school principal told the paper: “I’ve served 23 years as a teacher and school administrator…”

But women still face many restrictions. “It doesn’t matter if I vote for a man or a woman”, said another northeastern resident, who gave her name only as Noura, 24. She wrote: “We take this opportunity to call on his Majesty King Salman to act on his promises and pardon my husband, end his and his family’s ordeal and unite him with his wife and children”.