RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, considered a reformer by the standards of his ultraconservative kingdom, decreed Sunday that women will for the first time have the right to vote and run in local elections due in 2015.
For the nation’s women, it is a giant leap forward, though they remain unable to serve as Cabinet ministers, drive or travel abroad without permission from a male guardian.
Saudi women bear the brunt of their nation’s deeply conservative values, often finding themselves the target of the unwanted attention of the kingdom’s intrusive religious police, who enforce a rigid interpretation of Islamic Shariah law on the streets and in public places such as shopping malls and university campuses.
In itself, the decision to give the women the right to vote and run in municipal elections might not be enough to satisfy the growing ambition of the kingdom’s women who, after years of lavish state spending on education and vocational training, improved their standing but could not secure the same place in society as that of their male compatriots.
Women must wait four more years to exercise their right to vote, though the next local elections are scheduled for Thursday.
“Why not tomorrow?” asked prominent Saudi feminist Wajeha al-Hawaidar. “I think the king doesn’t want to shake the country, but we look around us and we think it is a shame . . . when we are still pondering how to meet simple women’s rights.”
The announcement by King Abdullah came in an annual speech before his advisory assembly, or Shura Council. It was made after he consulted with the nation’s top religious clerics, whose advice carries great weight in the kingdom.
It is an apparent attempt at “Saudi-style” reform, moves that avoid antagonizing the powerful clergy and a conservative segment of the population.
It also can be construed as an attempt by the king to insulate his vast, oil-rich country from the upheavals sweeping other Arab nations.
Ramifications unclear
Even under the new law, it was unclear how many women would take part in elections. In many aspects of life, men — whether fathers, husbands or brothers — prevent women from participating in legal activities.
Saudi women inhabit separate and often inferior spaces in restaurants, banks and health clubs, when they are allowed in at all. Women were granted the right to national identification cards in 2001, a major step that many hoped would lead to greater public freedom, but it failed to materialize.
The Saudi judiciary has yet to allow female lawyers, a new phenomenon, to argue in court. And a royal decree issued this year that women should be allowed to work in public to sell lingerie has not been enacted — leaving Saudi women to buy their bras from male clerks, who mostly hail from South Asia.
The New York Times
