Saudi Arabia gets first women councillors after historic polls

That women campaigned and voted is itself a step forward, said Dr Hatoon Ajwad Al Fassi, general coordinator of the Baladi Initiative, a Saudi Arabian NGO that has for years promoted women taking part in elections. Riyadh, the Saudi capital saw the most women candidates win, at four.

Saturday was a historic event for Saudi Arabia because women not only voted, but they also stood as candidates in the local elections.

About 702,000 Saudis cast ballots Saturday, including 106,000 women out of 130,000 registered, meaning nearly 82% female participation.

Early results Sunday show Salma bint Hizab al-Oteibi is the first confirmed victory for a woman running for a municipal council seat, beating out seven men and two other women for the position in Madrakah, about 150 kilometers north of Mecca.

“Any woman who won in this council is equal to 10 men, because there is a wall that we are trying to break”, she says.

This election was the first in which women could vote and run as candidates, and many have portrayed it as a progressive step toward democracy and gender equality. Additionally, a woman won in Saudi Arabia’s southern border area of Jizan and another won in al-Ahsa.

Female candidates could not meet face-to-face with male voters during campaigning, while neither men nor women could publish their pictures. As per the decree, only 978 women were registered as candidates on 284 councils, however many were barred from registering by the authorities.

While the councils do not have legislative powers, they do oversee a range of community issues, such as budgets for maintaining and improving public facilities like parks, roads and utilities.

“Saudi Arabia is a relatively new country and implementing a system like this, it takes time”.

It was also only the third ever election in Saudi Arabia.

In 2011, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia said that getting women involved in politics was “opening the door to evil”.

A female voter, Najla Harir, said: “I exercised my electoral right”. “Only in the movies”, the daughter said, referring to the ballot box.

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