Saudi voters elected 20 women for local government seats, according to results released to reporters on Sunday, a day after women voted and ran in elections for the first time in the country’s history.
The women who won hail from vastly different parts of the country, ranging from Saudi Arabia’s largest city to a small village near Islam’s holiest site.
The 20 female candidates represent just 1 percent of the about 2,100 municipal council seats up for grabs, but even limited gains are seen as a step forward for women who had previously been completely shut out of elections.
Photo: AFP
Women are still not allowed to drive and are governed by guardianship laws that give men final say over aspects of their lives like marriage, travel and higher education.
Though there are no quotas for female council members, an additional 1,050 seats are appointed with approval by the king who could use his powers to ensure more women are represented.
About 7,000 candidates, among them 979 women, competed in the election for a seat on the municipal councils, which are the only government body elected by Saudi citizens. The two previous rounds of voting for the councils, in 2005 and 2011, were open to men only.
Riyadh saw the most women candidates win, with four elected. The Eastern Province, where minority Shiites are concentrated, saw two women elected, said Hamad al-Omar, who heads the General Election Commission’s media council.
Saudi Arabia’s second-largest and most cosmopolitan city, Jeddah, also elected two women, as did one of the most conservative regions, Qassim.
Mecca Mayor Osama al-Bar said that a woman won in a village called Madrakah, about 150km north of the city.
Another woman won in Medina, where the Prophet Mohammed’s first mosque was built.
Other women hailing from the kingdom’s northernmost areas won, with two elected in Tabuk, one in al-Jawf and another in Hail. Additionally, a woman won in the southern border area of Jizan, another in Asir and two won in al-Ahsa.
Many women candidates ran on platforms that promised more nurseries to offer longer daycare hours for working mothers, the creation of youth community centers with sports and cultural activities, improved roads, better garbage collection and overall greener cities.
It is precisely these kinds of community issues that female candidates hope to address once elected to the municipal councils. The councils do not have legislative powers, but advise authorities and help oversee local budgets.
Most ran their campaigns online, using social media to get the word out, due to strict gender segregation rules that ban men and women from mixing in public. This meant candidates could not directly address voters of the opposite sex.
In an effort to create a more level playing field for women who wear the traditional full-face veil, the General Election Committee banned both male and female candidates from showing their faces in promotional flyers, billboards or online. They were also not allowed to appear on television.
Still, al-Omar said the historic election drew a 106,000 female voters out of the 130,000 or so who had registered. Out of 1.35 million men registered, almost 600,000 cast ballots. In total, some 47 percent of registered voters took part in Saturday’s election.
In Jiddah, three generations of women from the same family voted for the first time. The oldest woman in the family was 94-year-old Naela Mohammad Nasief.
Her daughter, Sahar Hassan Nasief, said the experience marked “the beginning” of greater rights for women in Saudi Arabia.
“I walked in and said ‘I’ve have never seen this before. Only in the movies,’” the daughter said, referring to the ballot box. “It was a thrilling experience.”
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