The suffragists of Saudi Arabia: 'We try and be reasonable calling for our rights'

The suffragists of Saudi Arabia: 'We try and be reasonable calling for our rights'

This week, Saudi Arabian women registered to vote for the first time in the country’s history. It’s a glorious victory for campaigners – but what will they negotiate next?


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Saudi women in Riyadh City in September 2011, the day after legislation granting women the right to vote was set in motion. Photograph: FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images



In 2011 the late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud declared that Saudi women would, for the first time in history, be permitted to run as candidates in local elections and would have the right to vote.
Saudi women to be given right to vote and stand for election in four years
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This week, that ruling finally came to pass as women began registering to vote. According to local press, 70 women are looking to run as candidates in the December elections and 80 women have registered as campaign managers. The king’s decision came during the fervour of the Arab spring, but this long-drawn-out win for Saudi suffrage came with a deliberated internal campaign led, in part, by Dr Hatoon al-Fassi – historian, writer and women’s-rights campaigner. “This wouldn’t have been possible if not for women’s mobilisation from within,” she told the Guardian. "We are not going to accept anything less than being acknowledged, or granted our full legal capacities and rights

Al-Fassi, an associate professor of women’s history at King Saud University, has been heavily involved in improving the slow progress of Saudi’s social shift towards women’s inclusivity. “We’ve been campaigning tirelessly to claim our rights,” Al-Fassi explained over the telephone. “At the moment, we’re recalibrating by taking our first steps into the world of elections, voting and running for the council that we’ve been demanding since 2004.”

This history of Saudi’s rigidity with regards to women’s rights lies in its religious and political context. In the late 1800s, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the creator of Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative sect of Islam, and Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the Saudi dynasty, formed a pact offering mutual support – political obedience in return for the propagation of Wahhabism. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 and has since been ruled by the autocratic, hereditary monarchy. The dualism of the alliance – between al-Wahhab and bin Saud – has resulted in a durable political legacy, until, perhaps, now.

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http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/aug/28/saudi-arabia-women-voting-suffragettes