Saudi Arabian women voted and stood as candidates in municipal elections for the first time at the weekend. It was a symbolic assault on their deeply unequal status in that male-dominated absolute monarchy and another small step on their long road to greater freedom. Significantly too, it draws attention to these and other challenges faced by a more modern and complex Saudi society whose stability can no longer rely on huge oil revenues.
Only a handful of women were elected and the 130,000 who registered to vote were barely a tenth of the number of men. Some four to five million of the country’s 20 million population were eligible to vote. The women candidates stressed community, childcare and environmental issues; showing how important gender priorities could be for public policy; but these municipal authorities have little real power.
And the small step taken in these elections is dwarfed by the monstrous legal framework of inequality which makes male guardianship compulsory for all women, discriminates against them in marriage, divorce and inheritance rights, requires a husband’s permission to travel, work or study, separates male and female public spaces and prohibits them from driving. All this is justified by a puritanical and sexist interpretation of Muslim texts and enforced by a zealous religious police.
But women make up one half of Saudi Arabia's citizens – as do those under 25 years of age. Its rapidly increasing population is far more urbanised and educated than before, with much more access to modern culture and media. Social divisions and inequalities accumulate. The ruling monarchy is also in transition. It faces major challenges financing its huge military and welfare spending with cheaper oil prices – down to a seven year low earlier this week – and fighting a proxy war in Yemen against its major regional rival Iran. In these circumstances Saudi women can find allies among other groups demanding change. Those who took the lead on this occasion are the tip of a larger social and political iceberg.