Women Voted To Public Offices In Saudi Arabia

Dec 12 vote for local council seats marks two milestones for Saudi women: Not only can they run in a government election for the first time, it is the first time they are permitted to vote at all.

The number of women in the Saudi workforce also has been increasing, from 23,000 in 2004 to more than 400,000 in 2015, according to the government.

With 2,106 seats at stake in last Saturday’s vote, the 20 women will comprise less than one percent of the elected council membership. Women are nonetheless not allowed to drive & are governed by guardianship laws in that give men remaining allege over aspects of their lives like marriage, travel and better education.

However, the election was for only two thirds of seats in municipal councils that have no lawmaking or national powers, and follows men-only polls in 2005 and 2011. However, among the 6,440 candidates who participated in the elections, more than 900 were women, which marks a change in this conservative country.

At least four women are confirmed elected to public office in the country’s capital, Riyadh. Municipal council representatives deal with issues such as parking facilities and hospital improvements, and not the overarching issues that affect a society where women are still banned from driving and need a male guardian’s permission to have some surgical procedures.

Many female candidates used social media to help their cause, but others, including women’s rights activists, said they had been disqualified from campaigning. This meant candidates could not directly address voters of the opposite sex. Female candidates also barred from speaking to male voters and required to segregate campaign offices. In contrast, only about 44 percent of the more than 1.3 million men voted in the election.

In Jiddah, three generations of women from the same family voted for the first time.

Saudi Arabia is dominated by the puritanical Wahhabi movement of Sunni Islam.

“I never thought there would be seats for women”, says Albakr. “Only in the movies, ‘” one woman said exiting the polling place. “Only in the movies.’ It was a thrilling experience”.