Loading ...Still Can’t Drive But Women Running in Saudi Local Elections
Activists Hope Female Candidates are First Step to Full Equality
For the first time in Saudi Arabia’s history, more than 1000 women will compete in municipal elections next month. It is the first time that women will run for election in the desert kingdom, and activists hope it signifies a change in the status of women.
“This is hugely significant,” Hatoun al-Fasi, a professor of history at King Saud University and long-time women’s rights activist told The Media Line. “We have over 1000 women convinced they can make a difference and who convinced their families to be part of this experience.”
Al-Fasi said that about 30 women have dropped out of the race because of pressure from their families, but 1031 remain in the race. Saudi King Abdullah, who has been replaced by King Salman after his death, ruled in 2011 that women could both vote and participate for the first time in the current 2015 election. Planners said they expected only a few dozen women to run, and were surprised at the outcome.
The municipal councils in Saudi Arabia, like their counterparts almost everywhere, deal with local issues such as local budgets and planning regulations. Some analysts said that including women in these elections was less significant than al-Fasi claims.
“Psychologically speaking it’s good, but in terms of changing the reality on the ground it won’t change anything,” Ali al-Ayami, the Director, Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, (CDHR) told The Media Line. “It is just to appease the international community and to silence their critics. These councils don’t have any power.”
He said that power in Saudi Arabia is concentrated in the hands of the royal family which has done little to encourage women’s rights. Women are still not permitted to drive, and still need consent from male guardians for many activities.
However, one of the biggest changes has been in the area of women’s education. Women now make up 60 percent of university students, and tens of thousands of women now have advanced degrees, including PhDs. In addition, Saudi Arabia has sponsored 750,000 students to study abroad including in the US over the past ten years. About a third of those are women, many of whom return to Saudi Arabia.
“The position of women has changed radically in the past 15 or 20 years,” Richard Spencer, the Middle East editor of the Telegraph newspaper told The Media Line. “Hundreds of thousands of women have now traveled abroad and that’s something you can’t undo.”
Until a few years ago, Spencer said, there were few women shop assistants in Saudi Arabia. That meant that women shopping for lingerie were waited on by male workers, often migrant workers from outside Saudi Arabia. In 2012, however, the King began allowing women to work in shops, and tens of thousands have followed.
The municipal elections are not the first time that women have participated in governmental bodies. For the past two years, the King has appointed 30 women of the total 150 members of the Shura Council, the Consultative Assembly. But the Shura Council has little power to disagree with the King.
Saudi Arabia is a young country, with three out of four citizens below the age of 30. They are among the most prolific consumers of social media in the world, using platforms like Instagram and SnapChat to meet each other and to hold political discussions.
“This is the 21st century and the age of social media,” al-Ayami said. “Women are out in front demanding their rights and are even willing to go to jail.”
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive, and the World Economic Forum ranks Saudi Arabia among the countries in the world with the largest gender gap. Only about 15 percent of Saudi women are employed, many of them as teachers. That number is increasing, however, as more women join the work force.
Many say it is only a matter of time until women will be allowed to drive.
“It’s not an issue for the upper class because most of them have drivers,” al-Ayami said. “But it is an issue for working-class women who want to pick their children up at school.”
At the same time, women’s activist Fanoun al-Fasi says she does not expect change to happen so quickly.
“We really hope and we pray for this,” she said. “But we know that change is very slow.”
Source: www.themedialine.org