Saudi Arabia Opens Election to Female Voters and Candidates

Women across Saudi Arabia marked a historic milestone on Saturday, both voting and running as candidates in government elections for the very first time, but only outside polling stations they waited for male motorists – a reminder of the limits still firmly in place.

Sawari said she wanted to be a candidate out of patriotism and because Islam gives women rights. In another story, reflecting the deeply-embedded barriers that women face to equal rights, it challenged a memo at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that issued a “harsh” warning against men and women meeting together in staff meetings, ordering them, instead, to meet via at “TV circuit system”, typically used absurdly when male professors teach female students.

Elections themselves are a rare thing in the Saudi kingdom – Saturday was only the third time in history that Saudis went to the polls.

Salma al-Rashed, the first woman who to registered to vote, told the BBC, “It felt really good”.

So even if women did not step out to cast their vote, these elections were a step toward providing women greater rights and greater influence.

Several restrictions were imposed on female candidates during the campaign, including making them speak from behind a partition while addressing the public or having to be represented by a man. That a Saudi woman has won a seat on Mecca’s municipal council in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia is surprising enough.

The candidates are vying for about 2,100 council seats, with another 1,050 seats appointed with approval from the king.

Saudi officials first proposed allowing women to vote in 2005, according to Human Rights Watch. Ms Aljazi al-Hossaini waged her 12-day campaign largely over the Internet, putting her manifesto on her website, where both men and women could see it. “I did my best, and I did everything by myself”, said the 57-year-old management consultant, running in the Diriyah area on the edge of Riyadh.

Rosana Al Banawi holds her registration papers as she goes to vote. They dislike seeing women in public-facing roles.

Female candidates will also contend with a deep societal belief among many Saudi voters that women do not belong in public life. “I feel empowered and proud”, she said.

Hundreds of Saudi men and women streamed into polling booths on Saturday to cast their votes in the much-publicized municipal elections. Many others said they simply didn’t care. More than 130,000 women registered to vote compared with 1.35 million men.

But women still require permission from male family members to travel, work or marry. “The other two were women’s appointment to the Shoura Council and the amendment to nine articles of the Saudi Civil Law”.