The United States on Sunday welcomed Saudi Arabia’s first ever election open to female voters and candidates, calling it a historic milestone.
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According to Osama al-Bar, mayor of the city of Mecca, one woman was elected in Madrakah village which is about 93 miles north of the city and houses cube-shaped Kaaba where Muslims from across the world come to pray.
In October, the Saudi Gazette reported that harsh road conditions and long distances to the nearest hospital had forced some women in the village of Madrakah, where one female candidate was elected, to give birth in cars.
The women who won hail from vastly totally different elements of the country, starting from Saudi Arabia’s biggest city to a little village near Islam’s holiest website.
It was the last country to allow only men to vote, and polling stations were segregated.
Al-Bar also confirmed through election officials in Saudi Arabia’s second largest city of Jiddah that another female candidate, Lama al-Suleiman, had won a seat there. There was also complete separation between men and women at events during the campaign, with female candidates required to speak from behind a partition or have a man speak on her behalf. Only two rounds of voting have been previously held in the country in 2005 and 2011, in both of which women were banned from participating.
Despite pushback from some opponents, more than 130,600 women have registered to vote.
“Even if men take all the seats, I feel we still won”, said Munifa, a nurse who lives outside Hafr al-Batin city in the kingdom’s northeast, where camels and sheep awaited slaughter at a celebration to follow declaration of the winners.
Almost 7,000 candidates competed for over 2,100 council seats in local councils, of which over 900 candidates were females.
“I walked in and said “I’ve have never seen this before”.
Of course women’s participation was met with discrimination and refusal, according to Alarabiya, a lot of religious police forces were seen handing out pamphlets that accuse anyone who votes for women in elections as a sinner.
Overall turnout in Saturday’s municipal polls throughout the Gulf kingdom was 47.4 per cent, with a total of 702,542 voters, Municipal and Rural Affairs Minister Abdullatif bin Abdulmalik al-Shaikh said.
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Many female candidates used social media to help their cause, but a handful of others, including women’s rights activists, were disqualified from campaigning. Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy with no elected parliament, is coming under increasing Western scrutiny owing to its human rights record.
