Women to Vote in Saudi Arabia, King Says

[TomCADem]

Source: NY 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 gender separation, 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 earlier 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.”

Although political activists celebrated the change, they also cautioned how deep it would go, and how fast. Some women wondered aloud how they would be able to campaign for office when they were not even allowed to drive. There is also a long history of royal decrees stalling, as weak enactment collides with the bulwark of traditions ordained by the Wahabi sect of Islam and its fierce resistance to change.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/world/middleeast/women-to-vote-in-saudi-arabia-king-says.html

---

While people throughout the globe fight for the right to vote, the corporate media tries to convince liberals, Democrats and the left, that the path to power is to boycott elections and sit on the sidelines. While the right is trained to express their anger by winning elections, the left is trained to boycott them in the U.S.

[bluestateguy]

1. Well whoop dee do!

Do they want a gold sticker? A pat on the back? For doing something that the rest of the world did at least 50 years ago?

That would be like an all white private school in the U.S. that finally integrates in 2011. Are we supposed to give them a medal for their "courage" for that?

[TomCADem]

2. I Think Women In Saudi Arabia Should Be Admired For Their Courage

Here many folks take their right to vote for granted to the extent that right wing funded groups like Latinos for Reform masquerading as a pro-immigration advocacy group can run a campaign urging Latinos not to vote in order to show thier anger at Democrats for not fighting against Republicans in 2010. Of course, the results of the 2010 election show the folly of such an approach to empowerment.

[xchrom]

3. I posted this earlier - I don't think it got 1 comment.

You're doing better than me.

Course - it could be me.

[jberryhill]

6. It's the garlic smell

Sorry.

[DRoseDARs]

8. It's the weekend, VERY hit-or-miss with threads getting responses.

That, or it's the garlic... ;)

[StarsInHerHair]

4. at the very least vote for real Dems in all your local elections & the Pres. election

hopefully we can grab both the house and senate-look at the way the right only has 1.......look at the destruction they've caused

[Left Coast2020]

5. Does Saudi Aribia ban womens access to the internet?

Would be nice if they knew this website. Then they can really raise hell. Maybe their own version of Elizebeth Warren running for office?
:shrug:

[Muskypundit]

7. There is some irony in a near absolute monarchy giving ANYONE the right to vote.

[demosincebirth]

9. Ditto!

[mistertrickster]

15. +1 nt

[pampango]

10. Analysis from Juan Cole: Saudi Women’s Vote: Does it Go Far Enough?

http://www.juancole.com/2011/09/saudi-womens-vote-does-it-go-far-enough.html

The surprise announcement on Sunday by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia that women will be allowed to vote in and run for office in the municipal elections scheduled in four years is another sign of the pressure the kingdom is under to reform. Although this announcement wasn’t anticipated, it comes as a result in part of nearly a decade of women’s activism, beginning with a January 2003 petition from Saudi women demanding their political rights. The recent Facebook campaign for driving rights for women, and the act of civil disobedience by some 80 or so in daring to drive, probably helped impel the king to make this decision.

Treatment of women in Saudi Arabia has much more to do with Gulf customs and feelings about gender segregation and male honor being invested in protecting the chastity of the family’s women than it has to do with Islam. The Qur’an sees women as spiritually equal to men. One of the prophet’s wives later led a battle, so women in early Islam were hardly shrinking lilies. Islamic law gives women extensive property rights (unlike in Europe, women did not lose control of their property to their husbands when they married). The real question is whether the Gulf societies can, after 1400 years, catch up to the rights granted women in Islam.

An even bigger question is whether the Saudi dynasty, among the last absolute monarchies in the world, is moving fast enough to avert a revolution. This article is a few years old, but it lays out many of the social problems that persist to this day. There are just few safety valves for discontent. Workers cannot unionize. Political dissidents are treated harshly.

In the wake of the Arab Spring and the overthrow of the iron-fisted rulers of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the Saudi royal dynasty has clearly been frantic with apprehension that a similar movement will get going in their country. There were some small protests last spring, as Aljazeera English reported at the time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMRhj35vatU&feature=player_embedded

[No Elephants]

11. What if no male agrees to escort a woman to the polls? .

Here's hoping Saudi Arabia will also allow women absentee ballots.

[lunatica]

12. Watch and see if they don't rescind that

They don't want women to vote. It might upset the apple cart of the male chauvinist world. Women might ban the beating of women or they might actually, gasp!, vote women into office! Who wants that?

:sarcasm:

[AverageJoe90]

13. We need to LEARN from these people.

[mistertrickster]

14. And since this feudal monarchy is run by a KING, who exactly will they vote for? nt