Saudi Arabia is going to the polls in unprecedented municipal elections in which women can cast a ballot for the first time, in a tentative step towards easing restrictions on women.
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Karen Young, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington DC, says the success rate of women in the Saudi municipal elections “will be slim to zero”. “Now we feel we are part of society, that we contribute”, said Sara Ahmed, 30, a physiotherapist entering a polling station in north Riyadh.
Naseema Assada is a human rights activist in Qatif who has campaigned for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.
On a recent night in the Saudi capital, municipal council candidate Amal Badredin Alsnari wooed potential voters with heaping plates of hors d’oeuvres and a pledge to bring more public services to neighborhoods in need.
However, the women participation was very low compared to 5,000 men candidates and 1.35 million male voters.
Female candidates also were barred from speaking to male voters and required to segregate campaign offices, the organization said.
According to the kingdom’s strict gender segregation rules, men and women cast their ballots in separate polling stations. As a result, women account for less than 10% of registered voters and few, if any, female candidates are expected to be elected.
Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson said, “The government should fix the problems that are making it hard for women to participate and build on this progress to create momentum for further women’s rights reforms”.
In addition, women revealed some of their biggest challenges that include bureaucratic obstacles amid registration, lack of awareness of the process and its importance, and the prohibition to drive and register themselves. This means that female candidates are not allowed to directly present themselves before a men congregation. But I don’t think they are in the majority.
“I did my best, and I did everything by myself”, said the 57-year-old management consultant, running in the Diriyah area on the edge of Riyadh.
The elections are for almost 300 local councils.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in which women cannot drive and a woman’s male “guardian”, usually a father, husband, brother or son, can stop her traveling overseas, marrying, working, studying or having some forms of elective surgery. They can not appear for campaigns too as they have to meet men and women both.
“It continues to happen in the context of wider discrimination against women, particularly the male guardianship system in which women have to, still, require permission for travelling overseas, to marry or to undertake higher education”, she said.
Of the 40 lakh voters, 1.3 lakh women have been registered in the voters’ list.
Two years later, he ordered that at least 20% of seats in the Consultative Council be set aside for women.
Despite the novel presence of female contenders, Marzooq said she picked a male candidate because of his ideas including more nurseries. “It felt really good”, she told BBC. Women outnumber male university graduates.
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A slow expansion of women’s rights began under the late king Abdullah, Salman’s predecessor who died in January.
