Saudi Arabia Elects First Women to Office

She was an activist who campaigned for the Saudi Arabia women’s right to vote for ten years.

A Saudi woman casts her ballot in the coastal city of Jeddah Saturday during historic municipal elections.

She was running against seven men and two women, he added.

In this Friday, Dec. 11, 2015 photo, Saudi women shop at a mall in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabian voters on 12 December 2015 voted to elect women in at least 18 municipal council seats.

“The day of the Saudi woman”.

For the first time in the monarchy’s history, women have been elected to municipal councils in Saudi Arabia.

Women also said voter registration was hindered by bureaucratic obstacles, a lack of awareness of the process and its significance, and the fact that women could not drive to sign up.

She won a seat on the municipal council in Mecca in elections held yesterday. “Three of them are woman and 17 are men (in Riyadh) and we are very glad for these results and looking for those winners that will participate in our council and we will see the fruitful of their participation”, said Engineer Ibrahim Al-Sultan, mayor of Riyadh, following the results announcement.

Two women were elected in Saudi Arabia’s most conservative region, Qassim, but their names were not released as well as the name of another female councillor from al-Babtain.

Salma bint Hizab al-Oteibi was elected to the council of Madrakah, a region in Makkah the official SPA news agency reported, citing election commission president Osama al-Bar.

Results from the northern borders province, the southwestern province of Asir and the Eastern Province district of al-Ahsa, the only others to have been announced, had no successful women candidates.

The outcome was hailed with similar enthusiasm by local media, with the Jeddah-based Arab News saying – before the number reached 20 – that the victory of the “19 glorious women” had defied “the general expectation of people across the Kingdom that fewer of them would win”.

We can tell that the political landscape of Saudi is changing, what with women now being allowed to not only vote but also register as electoral candidates.

The elections are for almost 300 local councils. They do not have legislative powers, but advise authorities and help oversee local budgets.

The country’s strict public separation of sexes meant that during the campaign, female candidates could not directly address the majority of voters: men. There were 130,000 women who registered to vote compared to the 1.35 million men. In total, some 47 percent of registered voters took part in Saturday’s election.

The election was the first where women were allowed to vote and stand as candidates, and is being viewed as a landmark in the conservative kingdom. The oldest woman in the family was 94 year-old Naela Mohammad Nasief.