Saudi Arabia Sees First Female Voter Registration

Voter registration lasts for 21 days.

Muna Abusulayman, an influential Saudi who has worked in media, education and philanthropy entrepreneurship, was also optimistic, predicting that if women are elected to office, they “will bring a female point of view, demanding certain amendments to laws that are unfavourable towards women”.

“[Voting is] a dream for us”, Al-Saadi told the Saudi Gazette. Jamal Al-Saadi and Safinaz Abu Al-Shamat earned the honors of being the first two females ever in the kingdom to register (Saadi in Medina, Shamat in Mecca), and they couldn’t be more ready to cast their ballots, per Al Arabiya.

And in a remarkable move for a country where women’s rights are severely limited, women have been allowed to both vote and stand for election themselves. This is a historical moment in the Saudi Arabia.

In September 2011, against the backdrop of protests on the lack of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, then-King Abdullah announced that women would be allowed to vote in local elections in 2015.

This is a big deal considering that until now, women in Saudi Arabia have been marginalised in society, have been under-represented in government and still cannot drive a car.

Officially, elections were scheduled to take place in every four years but in February 2009 the elections were postponed “for evaluation” indefinitely in order to consider the women suffrage.

The poll, planned on December, 2015, is the third time municipal elections have been held since 2005.

The Independent notes that, “activists have hailed the move as progress – but say there is still a long way to go before women have equal rights to men in the kingdom”.

Though more of them are working, women still only make up 16 percent of Saudis with jobs and account for 60 percent of the unemployed, according to the labor report. She admitted that changes are usually expected to face opposition but she is optimistic that there will be a “linear advancement in women’s participation” in the country’s affairs and politics.

“I think there is the realisation from different groups, including the conservative groups, that what happened in the past, where their voice was the only representative in society, would no longer continue”, she said.