Woman wins council seat in historic Saudi polls

Sabq.org, a news website affiliated with the Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry, reported that a total of 17 women had been elected in various parts of the country.

View galleryA Saudi woman casts her ballot in a polling station …

Though this election is a bold step for women inclusion in Saudi Arabia, it does not mean that women have equal rights as men in the kingdom.

More than 1.35 million men had registered to vote this time around versus a little more than 130,000 female registered voters. There was also complete separation between men and women at events during the campaign, with female candidates required to speak from behind a partition or have a man speak on her behalf.

In spite of the growing female representation on Saudi government bodies, activists complain that women in the country still require a male guardian to transact official business. She loves watching Bravo reality shows and eating vegan food that isn’t too expensive (so, never).

As the polls took place, the hashtag #SaudiWomenVote started trending on social media as this historic elections brought the women in limelight in for the first time.

The 20 female candidates represent just one % of the roughly 2,100 municipal council seats up for grabs, still even limited gains are seen as a step forward for ladies who had previously been utterly shut out of elections. Women were believed to have made up less than 10 per cent of registered voters and there were more than 5,000 male candidates.

The free service to take women to vote is a joint effort between U.S.-based tech company Uber and Al-Nahda Philanthropic Society for Women, a Saudi women’s empowerment group. “With the passage of time, the ratio of women enrolled in universities is equal if not more than men”, he wrote.

And on top of that, in the same election, women were also elected to public office.

Hatoun Fasi, the general coordinator of Baladi campaign in Riyadh which spearheaded the call for women participation in municipal elections, said that winning was a bonus for women as they had already succeeded when over 1000 of them managed to participate as candidates in the elections.

Ruled by the Al-Saud family of King Salman, Saudi Arabia has no elected legislature and faces intense Western scrutiny of its rights record. The results of the election were declared on 13 December 2015.