Throughout the world, women have fought long and hard to secure for themselves the fundamental right to vote — that essentially defines an electoral democracy. In an ultra-monarchist and patriarchal country like Saudi Arabia, the progress towards achieving this tenet of gender equity — the right to vote alongside male citizens has been — not surprisingly — stiflingly slow. Against this repressive background, last week’s election of more than a dozen women candidates in Saudi Arabia’s municipal councils does give cause for hope. True, the smattering of gendered representation — only a fraction of the 2,106 seats on local councils have gone to women — is a mere chink in the armour of patriarchy. But there’s no doubt that an important threshold has been crossed and a difficult barrier breached. Saturday’s election was a watershed moment in which, for the first time, women were allowed to both vote and contest for office. A crucial beginning that one hopes will catalyse women to demand greater powers and more rights in the days to come.
It can be easily argued that having more women local representatives could be hugely beneficial for the communities. Global experience would bear out such a trend. Women tend to prioritise ensuring access to water, toilets, health and educational facilities for the people; in other words, all those aspects making a qualitative difference to the daily lives of the people. Male representatives, on the other hand, are prone to getting drawn into the local and regional level power play. It can also be argued for instance that gender disparity is not unique to Saudi Arabia. Consider the latest data in the 2015 United National Development Programme’s latest Human Development Report (HDR), placing India in the 130th position in the Gender Inequality Index (GII) for 2014, way behind Bangladesh and Pakistan. Gender disparity in political and public life is endemic in most countries, including in the advanced Western democracies.
History of human rights in Saudi Arabia
But then Saudi Arabia is particularly infamous for denying its citizens, particularly the women, rights that are considered to be fundamental by the citizenry in most countries. Let’s consider some of the contemporary cultural and social restrictions imposed on Saudi women: they are legally not entitled to own driving licenses, which means if they want to or have to drive, they can only do so illegally; in public, they have to cover their heads and dress in loose fitting garments such as abaya; that’s not all — adult women have to take the permission of “male guardians” to do ordinary things in life, for instance, work, study or travel. The guardianship laws allow men to control every aspect of women’s lives, denying them the basic autonomy of movement and choice. Consider the statistics that only 978 women were registered as candidates, alongside 5,938 men. That is surely revealing of the extent of gender disparity that exists in the country.
Last week’s historic win by Saudi women in local councils — regardless of their limited powers — need to be understood within the framework of the country’s ingrained patriarchy as well as the repressive political and cultural institution of monarchy. The denial of choice and rights for women is closely linked to Saudi Arabia’s overall sordid record in human rights. One is inseparable from the other and both forms of denial feed into each other. A report of the US State Department in 2013, carried a long catalogue of human rights abuses, which included lack of rights to freedom of expression, assembly, religion, movement, besides including the absence of citizens’ right — legally or otherwise — to change their government. With the election of women representatives, Saudi Arabia has taken an important political step. The government as well as the citizens of that country now need to build upon this foundation.
