Salma bint Hizab al-Oteibi became the first women candidate who won a seat Mecca’s municipal council.
Advertisement
Two women were elected in Saudi Arabia’s most conservative region, Qassim, but their names were not released as well as the name of another female councillor from al-Babtain.
A total of 7,000 candidates, 979 of whom were women, ran in Saturday’s ballots for a chance to win one of the country’s 2,100 municipal council seats.
But female voter turnout far exceeded that of men, with several districts reporting more than 80 percent of registered women voting compared to 40 percent of their male counterparts.
As a result, women accounted for less than 10 percent of registered voters and few female candidates were expected to be elected. His administration also began to send more women to universities and allowed them to work as part of the goal to give women a bigger role in society. Still, local and global rights activists praised the tally as a victory for women in a country where they face many restrictions.
Two-thirds of the seats in the kingdom’s 284 municipal councils were up for grabs in Saturday’s elections. This development is an indication of a major breakthrough in the women rights movement in Saudi Arabia. “In the 1930s, women participated in the election of the mukhtar [village head] for the first time”.
Other women hailing from the kingdom’s northernmost areas won, with two elected in Tabuk, one in al-Jawf and another in Hail.
Saudi website sabq.org is reporting 20 women have been elected to councils around the country. ” This was prior to when the late King Abdullah appointed women into his council of advisers”.
During the election campaign, candidates were not allowed to address voters of the opposite sex but were permitted to use segregated halls with audio and visual links.
In Jiddah, three generations of women from the same family voted for the first time.
Minister of municipal and rural affairs and chairman of the general committee for municipal elections Abdullateef Abdulmalik Al-Asheikh said that 702,542 citizens voted during the elections, local daily Saudi Gazette reported.
Advertisement
Women’s participation in this weekend’s elections is an important step in the struggle for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, but formidable obstacles remain.
