Saudi Arabia’s historic municipal voting sees 19 women elected

Saudi election officials count votes at the end of the municipal elections, on December 12, 2015 in Jeddah.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday held its first elections in which women were allowed to run for office as well as vote, with at least six female municipal council candidates elected.

Female candidates expressed pride in running, even if they didn’t think they would win, while women voters, some of them tearful, said they were happy at finally being able to do something they had only seen on television.

However, law in Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, doesn’t allow women to drive, and gives men the authority to decide civil matters, including marriage and higher education, for them.

According to the Associated Press, out of the country’s 130,000 registered female voters, 106,000 cast ballots, in other words around 82 percent of the eligible female voters took part in the elections. According to BBC reports, around 1,30,000 women were registered for voting while the male vote count was 1.35 million.

Al-Omar said 19 women won seats in 10 different regions, with results still to be announced in several more regions.

Voters in Saudi Arabia have voted into public office 17 women in their municipal elections in the Islamic, conservative Kingdom this past weekend. The Eastern Province, where minority Shias are concentrated, saw three women elected, he said.

The mayor of the city of Mecca, Osama al-Bar, said that a woman won in a village called Madrakah, about 93 miles north of the city that houses the cube-shaped Kaaba to which Muslims around the world pray.

Saudi citizens require a ID card to vote, but it’s unclear how many woman have one according to Human Rights Watch. The event comes after the 2005 and 2011 polls in which only men were allowed to participate. They ran against about 6,000 men competing for places on 284 councils whose powers are restricted to local affairs including responsibility for streets, public gardens and rubbish collection.

She acknowledged that the support of her large extended family helped her over the top in Saturday’s balloting; she won by 97 votes.

Considering that the women candidates were not allowed to directly address voters of the opposite sex and campaigned nearly exclusively online, mostly through social media, the results were incredible. She said that is because of the continuing political and cultural separation of women and men in the country.