Saudi Arabia’s King Allows Women to Join National Advisory Council
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Version 0 of 1. Women are not allowed to drive and cannot yet vote in Saudi Arabia, but on Friday they were given a voice in an advisory council that debates the kingdom’s legislation. The Saudi king, Abdullah, issued a decree that for the first time gave women seats on the Shura council, an assembly whose members are appointed to discuss laws and other issues and advise the king, but that has no legislative power. The decree, published by the official Saudi Press Agency, gave women 30 of the 150 seats on the council with all the duties of their male counterparts. In line with a strict interpretation of Islam that segregates the population by sex in many areas of society, it added that women would wear hijab, a conservative Islamic head covering, and would use doors, offices and seating areas separate from the men. The decision was met with a mixture of optimism that the country was inching forward with reforms and skepticism from activists who are pushing for greater freedom for women in the conservative kingdom, one of the world’s few remaining absolute monarchies. Some used social media to express their disdain for the gesture, saying the women were joining a powerless assembly and creating a hashtag phrase on Twitter in Arabic that said, “The new Shura council does not represent me.” The number of Shiites on the council, a minority, rose to six members from five. A women’s rights activist from Saudi Arabia, Manal al-Sharif, who has started a campaign for women’s driving rights, wrote on Twitter: “The amendments ignored Saudis’ demands of electing the members and increasing the council powers! It still cannot pass or enforce laws.” Iyad Madani, a former minister, said the inclusion of women was worth “celebrating” as “a confirmation of her participation in the political process.” Two of the women appointed are princesses. Another is Thuraya Obaid, who was appointed in 2000 by Kofi Annan, then the United Nations secretary general, as a director of the United Nations Development Program. In a decree in 2011, King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and run in municipal elections scheduled for 2015, the biggest change in a decade for women in the puritanical kingdom. He also promised to name women to the Shura council at that time. But Saudi women still cannot make ordinary decisions, like marrying or traveling abroad, without written permission from a legal male guardian, “effectively treating her as a minor all her life,” Ms. Sharif wrote in a separate statement on the Web site of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. Women also continued to be arrested for driving. In one case in 2011, a woman was sentenced to 10 lashes for violating the ban. The king later revoked the sentence. |