Saudi Women Granted The Right To Vote And To Run For Office

From The New York Times:

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Sunday granted women the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, the biggest change in a decade for women in a puritanical kingdom that practices strict separation of the sexes, including banning women from driving.

Saudi women, who are legally subject to male chaperones for almost any public activity, hailed the royal decree as an important, if limited, step toward making them equal to their male counterparts. They said the uprisings sweeping the Arab world for the past nine months — along with sustained domestic pressure for women’s rights and a more representative form of government — prompted the change.

“There is the element of the Arab Spring, there is the element of the strength of Saudi social media, and there is the element of Saudi women themselves, who are not silent,” said Hatoon al-Fassi, a history professor and one of the women who organized a campaign demanding the right to vote this spring. “Plus, the fact that the issue of women has turned Saudi Arabia into an international joke is another thing that brought the decision now.”

This is obviously wonderful news — and a great credit to the work of activist Saudi women.

That said, it’s important to keep in mind that voting is a less important right in Saudi Arabia than most places; as Max Fisher points out, “voting in a non-democratic society where elected bodies merely ‘advise’ the monarchy” may not have much practical importance. And there are four years before the next election cycle, giving King Abdullah time to backtrack.

But it’s still a potentially important symbolic victory; it shows that Saudi women’s activism can’t simply be ignored. Next, hopefully, will come the right to drive, which Saudi women have been pushing for.

Juan Cole has more on the political context.

More from the Times story:

Despite the snail’s pace of change, women on Sunday were optimistic that the right to vote and run would give them leverage to change the measures, big and small, that hem them in.

“It is a good sign, and we have to take advantage of it,” said Maha al-Qahtani, one of the women who defied the ban on driving this year, said of the king’s announcement. “But we still need more rights.”

Women require the permission of a male sponsor, or “mahram,” to travel or undertake much of the commercial activity needed to run a business. They inhabit separate and often inferior spaces in restaurants, banks and health clubs, when they are allowed in at all.