Saudi Women Fight For The Vote

In the early 20th century, women fought hard for the right to vote. In 2011, some still are.

Suffrage may have been a battle women won in countries like the United States, where the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920 and put a halt to the males-only rule at the polls, but it’s an ongoing struggle for Saudi Arabian women like Sara Abbar. When she took her daughter to register to vote for the upcoming municipal election in Saudi Arabia, she was outright rejected.

Although there are signs all over encouraging people to “be a part of the decision-making process,” it’s implicit that these signs only speak to men. Ironically, men are opting out of voting altogether, saying that the elections are just a formality. Where it may seem like authorities give some power to the people, the power actually lies in the hands of a monarchy that’s adamant about enforcing their customs.

In the case of who gets the vote, it’s crystal clear what gender these severe laws disadvantage. Women are asking for the vote and will continue, as Abbar said, “We will keep trying again and again until we get our right,” but the light at the end of the tunnel is not yet visible. Women are campaigning for voting rights, but getting no straight answers–just excuses. It’s logistics, they are told. Banning nine million women from registering and voting in a municipal election seems more like complete dismissal to me.

It does to Saudi Arabia’s women too, who are forming a frontier to get what they should really be entitled to as citizens. They plan to go to municipal centers and protest their lack of choice when it comes to the affairs of their homeland. It was bad enough they didn’t get to the vote in the country’s first election, which was held in 2005. Six years later, nothing has changed.

Nailah Attar, one of the Saudi women pushing for the right to vote, believes that giving women this victory in a country where the sexes are segregated and women need permission to travel, work and even undergo certain operations is just too big a risk to their whole socio-economic and political system. A gender hierarchy has been established and giving women the right to vote in this small election will make a large statement. They fear fault lines may begin to form is women are given this concession.

As a result, Saudi Arabian women have been shut out of what Americans consider the first wave of feminism–granting women the right to vote.

What’s important now, though, is that Saudi women are pulling out all the stops to catch up to this enormous wave. Even if nobody’s vote counts, it still counts that women fighting for equal opportunity.

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