Women to take part in Saudi Arabia municipal elections

Saudi Arabia was the last country in the world where only men were allowed to vote before today’s historic poll.

The results of the election will be announced on Saturday.

“It felt really good”, she said.

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

Voting in the first-ever elections open to women in Saudi Arabia has come to an end.

Certainly, America denied women the right of women to vote for too long, with Congress finally ratifying the 19th amendment, allowing women to vote, in 1920.

And they can’t go to the polling stations without male chaperones.

As candidates, saudi women are facing several difficulties because of the country’s strict laws, which forbid female candidates to address male candidates. Most of the women asked the media not to take their photograph before they were whisked away.

“Now women have a voice”, said Awatef Marzooq after casting her ballot at a school in the capital.

“Her role is not in such places”.

More than 900 women are running for seats.

Meanwhile, the change has been widely accepted by people and there was little public criticism against women participation in the polls. Bokhary is a local council candidate who casted her votes in the city of Riyadh. 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.

In addition, women revealed some of their biggest challenges that include bureaucratic obstacles amid registration, lack of awareness of the process and its importance, and the prohibition to drive and register themselves. According to BBC, a total of 978 women have registered as candidates, alongside 5,938 men.

The free service to take women to vote is a joint effort between U.S.-based tech company Uber and Al-Nahda Philanthropic Society for Women, a Saudi women’s empowerment group.

One-third of council seats are appointed by the municipal affairs ministry, leaving women optimistic that they will be assigned some of them. But win or lose, the female contenders said they were already victorious. “So maybe the woman can concentrate more than the man on those needs”.

While restriction remains extremely tight on what women can and cannot do, Saturday’s poll will see more than 130,000 women cast their vote – compared with 1.35 million men.

Ruled by the al-Saud family of King Salman, Saudi Arabia has no elected legislature and faces Western scrutiny of its rights record.

A Saudi woman has won a council seat in landmark elections held in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

Such is the low public expectation for any rapid changes despite the election, which was set in motion by the late King Abdullah as part of reforms that included adding women to the Shura Council that advises the kingdom’s rulers.