There are nearly 7,000 candidates for about 2,100 seats.
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Saudi Arabia is the last country in the world to allow women to vote except for the Vatican City where male cardinals elect the pope.
Few, if any, women are expected to be elected. She also “cried” as it was something she saw “on television taking place in other countries”.
She said that women’s participation may help men see women more as equals “rather than [just] their stakeholders”. “It doesn’t matter if I vote for a man or a woman”, said another northeastern resident, who gave her name only as Noura, 24.
Voting in the first-ever elections open to women in Saudi Arabia has come to an end.
Women are able to stand as candidates, despite the fiercely conservative kingdom being the only nation where women are not allowed to drive. In some cases, they enlisted male relatives to make their campaign pitches.
Saturday’s municipal poll, which was hailed by many as historic, saw a turnout of about 25 percent, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Riyadh Saad al-Saadi reported.
Amal Badreldin al-Sawari waves after casting her ballot in Riyadh, on December 12, 2015. “We are everywhere in our country the same as any man”, she said.
“As long as she has her own place and there is no mixing with men, what prevents her from voting?”
However, among the 6,440 candidates were more than 900 women, heralding change in the ultra-conservative kingdom. They have had to overcome a number of obstacles to participate in the landmark polls.
Gender segregation at public facilities meant that female candidates were unable to directly meet the majority of voters – men – during their campaigns. Eighteen-year-old Ala al-Bani said, “We’re just now finding out now that women could vote”.
In major urban centres such as Riyadh and Jiddah, opposition to women’s participation was mostly confined to hard-line clerics and traditionalists. According to officials, more than 130,000 women registered to vote in the election, along with more than one million men.
“I have a voice and it matters”.
“I think I have won by running”, she added.
Before he died in January, he appointed 30 women to the country’s top advisory Shura Council.
But winning is not the sole objective of some female candidates. Men and women will cast ballots at separate voting centers.
There were many firsts for Saudi Arabia in terms of elections. Under such laws, women can not obtain a passport, work in government, travel overseas or enter university without the permission of a male guardian, usually the father or husband.
Even election overseers – whose words are closely vetted by the ruling system – spoke with unusual passion about women’s rights and the leadership’s pride in the municipal council elections that included more than 950 female candidates.
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The Saturday’s change is part of the late King Abdullah’s legacy that issued a decree four years ago in 2011 and authorized women to vote.
