Rocking the female Saudi vote

On Thursday, the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW) hosted a panel discussion, ‘Women and Elections in Saudi Arabia’, discussing the December 12 elections for municipal councils, which is the first time women in the Kingdom have been able both to stand as candidates and to vote.

The panel gave the listeners an intimate view from the local perspective, as it featured four Saudi women involved in activism, one of whom was elected last Saturday for the Jedda Municipal  Council, Rasha Hefzi. The other participants were Hatoon al-Fassi, a professor at King Saud University and women’s rights activist; Nailah Attar, founder and president of Esteshariya Consultancy Office and Jedda coordinator of the Baladi Campaign; and Aziza Youssef, a retired computer science professor at KSU and women’s rights activist. Kristin Smith Diwan, senior resident scholar at AGSIW, moderated the discussion.

The Baladi campaign was started by female activists after women were excluded from the 2011 national elections. Al-Fassi discussed the slow process over the past ten years that women activists and, later, the Baladi campaign, went through to achieve the vote. Though it is still early and the municipal councils have no authority on a national scale, she pointed out that the vote nevertheless is a historical moment, in which women are for the first time recognized as full citizens. There was no legal framework regulating women’s exclusion from civil society and politics, so much of their work was testing the boundaries of what was allowed and reformulating their strategies to conform to those regulations that were gradually postulated, without antagonizing anyone. Baladi also undertook letter-writing campaigns and used social media and emails to raise awareness about the issue. Raising the possibility of the women’s vote in public discourse assisted in familiarizing it with Saudi citizens. Al-Fassi characterized it as a process of ‘reminding’ officials and the public that they were there and they wanted the vote.

Hefzi agreed that awareness about civic engagement is very low in Saudi Arabia. She faced a lot of obstacles in her campaign, especially since women’s visibility is still extremely limited. She also had to create a voter base from nothing and assist in the difficult process of getting supporters to register.

Attar also commented on the gradual process. In 2012, she said, there was a general call to citizens, without specifically prohibiting women, to attend municipal council meetings and participate. So she and an active group of women started showing up at meetings. At first, they were greeted with some hostility, and at that first meeting were separated from the men by a curtain. Yet each meeting got a little better, a little more integrated, and women’s participation became more accepted.

Youssef also recognized the elections’ importance, but she stands out for her decision to boycott them. She will not participate until women are given all their basic rights and treated as citizens fully equal to men. Women still cannot drive and require male guardianship in all aspects of their public life. Indeed, both al-Fassi and Youssef have participated in campaigns to lift the ban on women driving. Youssef nevertheless thinks the elections demonstrate the state’s changing relationship with its citizens, where the latter can prod the government and ask for something, and the state may respond.

Women’s civil society participation has been in an ambiguous space between legality and illegality. Panel participants noted the absence of legislation governing civil society in general, though Attar noted that technically women have been voting for years in elections for educational committees, chamber of commerce, and similar institutions. The participants agreed that the old trope of ‘Saudi Arabia isn’t ready yet’ for progress in women’s and human rights simply is not true, a point driven home by these elections and the several female candidates who were met with success.