20 Saudi women win local council seats for first time, initial results show

Up to 20 Saudi women have won seats on local municipal councils a day after women voted and ran in elections for the first time in the country’s history, according to initial results released to the Associated Press last night.

The women who won hail from vastly different parts of the country, ranging from Saudi Arabia’s largest city to a small village near Islam’s holiest sites.

Though not many women were expected to win seats, even limited gains are seen as a step forward for women who had previously been shut out of elections.

Hamad Al-Omar, general election commission spokesman, told the AP that out of 130,000 female registered voters, a staggering 106,000 cast ballots, or roughly 82%.

More than 1.35m men had registered to vote, with 44%, or almost 600,000, casting ballots.

Al-Omar said 20 women won seats in 10 different regions, with results still to be announced in several more.

The conservative capital of Riyadh saw the most women candidates win, with four. The Eastern Province, where minority Shiites are concentrated, saw three women elected, he said.

Mayor of the city of Mecca, Osama al-Bar, said a woman won in Madrakah, a village about 150kms north of the city which houses the Kaaba to which Muslims around the world pray. Saudi Arabia’s second largest and most cosmopolitan city, Jiddah, elected two women, as did one of the most conservative regions, Qassim.

Around 7,000 candidates, among them 979 women, were competing for 2,100 seats across the country. The councils are the only government body elected by Saudi citizens. The two previous rounds of voting for the councils, in 2005 and 2011, were open to men only.

Other women hailing from the kingdom’s northernmost areas won, with two elected in Tabuk, and one in al-Jawf. Additionally, a woman won in Saudi Arabia’s southern border area of Jizan and another won in al-Ahsa.

Many women candidates ran on platforms that promised more nurseries to offer longer daycare hours for working mothers, the creation of youth centres with sports and cultural activities, improved roads, better garbage collection and overall greener cities.