Saudi Arabian Women Vote for First Time in Local Elections

But they had to be driven to polling stations because women are still not allowed to take the wheel in the country that is an absolute monarchy.

In another first, women were allowed to stand as candidates in the polls for municipal councils, the country’s only elected public chambers.

Female candidates had to speak behind a partition during campaign appearances or be represented by a man.

According to election rules, female candidates would be fined if they were caught speaking directly to male voters.

Voting results are expected Sunday afternoon.

Municipal councils are the only government body in which Saudi citizens can elect their representatives.

Women and men remained segregated, as per the laws of the Kingdom, throughout the election campaign.

But win or lose, the female contenders say they are already victorious.

Iman al-Mashrawi, a paediatric surgeon in Riyadh, said she had been persuaded to vote by a friend who was running for office.

Amna Ahmed, a 23-year-old Quran teacher, didn’t trouble to register to vote because she also believes Saudi women have no place in government.

The campaign has been a struggle however, with some women candidates barred from taking part and others withdrawing under pressure.

“It’s the right of being a citizen that I concentrate on and I consider this a turning point”, she said. “I thank God I am living it”.

But not all women trying to break the mould in the conservative kingdom had such a positive experience.

An appeals committee reversed her disqualification just two days before the end of campaigning, Ms Hathloul said on Twitter.

Alturki, a self-described avid Uber user, said she would likely not use the auto service tomorrow to cast her vote. “This is really silly”, said Sahar Hassan Nasief, a women’s rights activist in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

As many as 6,917 candidates are running in the election, including 979 females.

Of 142 countries ranked by the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index Saudi Arabia came 130th: among those countries below the Kingdom were Oman, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Morocco and Iran.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia has a population of 21 million people and boasts some of the most modern infrastructure of highways, skyscrapers and shopping malls.

“It continues to happen in the context of wider discrimination against women, particularly the male guardianship system in which women have to, still, require permission for traveling overseas, to marry or to undertake higher education”, she said.

Human Rights Watch welcomed the ballot as a move towards greater political participation for women.

“The global media sometimes has narrow views; they only report the bad stories”.

Women were allowed the right to participate in elections before he died in January by the late King Abdullah. Saturday’s election is only the third time in recent decades that Saudi men have been able to cast their ballots.

Hossaini hopes, optimistically, that at least 10 per cent of female candidates can win.