Saudi Arabian voters have elected twenty women from municipal council election held on Saturday, December 12.
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Preliminary results show that there were at least six Saudi Arabia women elected in public office, CNN reported.
Though not many women won seats, even limited gains are seen as a step forward for women who had previously been completely shut out of elections.
“What we have started, we will continue”, declared Rasha Hefzi, a Saudi businesswoman who won a seat in Jeddah. Additionally, a woman one in Saudi Arabia’s southern border area of Jizan and another won in al-Ahsa. Four of them won from the capital city of Riyadh, and two each from the Eastern Province, where the minority Shia community is concentrated, and Jeddah.
Khadra al-Mubarak in the Gulf coast city of Qatif confirmed to AFP that she was also among the victors.
Saudi officials first proposed allowing women to vote in 2005, according to Human Rights Watch. Another was elected in al-Babtain district.
One of the voters Sara Ahmed, a 30-year-old medicine specialist, told Al-Wafd newspaper on the day of elections in Riyadh, “This is a big achievement for a first step, as now we feel like a part of the country. They have always been there for me to win”, she says. They ran against about 6,000 men competing for places on 284 councils whose powers are restricted to local affairs including responsibility for streets, public gardens and rubbish collection.
They had to overcome a number of obstacles to participate in the landmark poll.
It said distant registration centers made it hard for some women to register.
General Election Commission spokesman Hamad Al-Omar said that out of 130,000 female registered voters, a staggering 106,000 cast ballots, or roughly 82 percent.
According to the Saudi government, more than 1.3 million men registered to vote. She was using social media as a way to reach out to voters since, as a woman, she couldn’t use any traditional advertising methods. The councils are the only government body elected by Saudi citizens.
Many women saw the election as a turning point in this absolute monarchy where the political system remains firmly in the hands of the royal family, and women are still deprived of many basic rights-such as driving or traveling overseas without the permission of a male relative.
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Ruled by the Al-Saud family of King Salman, Saudi Arabia has no elected legislature and faces intense Western scrutiny of its rights record.
