Holy Shit! Saudi Women Get the Right to Vote!

[Tuckerfan]

Careful, guys, you don't want to creep into the 20th Century all at once!

Having officially determined that God is totally cool with women voting, Saudia Arabia's King Abdullah announced that starting in 2012, women will be allowed to vote and run in municipal elections. Which are the only kind of election anyway!

Wonder if women can still be stoned for being "too uppity"?

[Lounsbury]

Note quite as surprising as it might seem, I might add. The Neaderthalic religious establishment is Saudi is rather less widely supported than many think. Saudi society is a weird and dysfunctional beast, and deeply reactionary, but the lunatic caveman Wahhabite establishment is just too reactionary for wide swathes of the middle class.

If the Ibn Saud were not on such weak ground, in re legitimacy, there would be less pandering to them.

[Glazer]

Allahu Akbar! What's the world coming to?

Next thing you know women are going to be allowed to drive. Or leave the house along. Then where will we be? How can we defeat the great satan if we do this?

[Khampelf]

Originally Posted by Glazer

Allahu Akbar! What's the world coming to?

Next thing you know women are going to be allowed to drive. Or leave the house along. Then where will we be? How can we defeat the great satan if we do this?

Actually, from what I understand from NPR is that it was pushing/lobbying/protesting for the right to drive and getting it preceded their enfranchisement.

Slippery slope indeed!

Started with allowing them to read and write of course.

I keed, I keed. I'm glad to see progress for women anywhere.

[KidVermicious]

Originally Posted by Khampelf

I believe they can drive now

Well, allowed to drive, anyway.

d&r

[CaveMike]

I've been confused by this news story. I thought Saudi women were promised these rights a few years ago, but they never materialized. I thought that was the motivation for a lot of women protesting.

Is this declaration more binding than the one in the past? Is it because it sets a date, 2012?

[Khampelf]

I was wrong, again.

Much more of this and I'll be mistaken for a GOP presidential candidate.

Saudi women do not have the right to drive yet, but there have been protests in the form of some women driving anyway.

Originally Posted by KidVermicious

Well, allowed to drive, anyway.

d&r

Originally Posted by Khampelf

Actually, from what I understand from NPR is that it was pushing/lobbying/protesting for the right to drive and getting it preceded their enfranchisement.

Slippery slope indeed!

Started with allowing them to read and write of course.

I keed, I keed. I'm glad to see progress for women anywhere.

[Pere]

Originally Posted by CaveMike

Is this declaration more binding than the one in the past? Is it because it sets a date, 2012?

2015, actually.

[CaveMike]

Originally Posted by Peremensoe

2015, actually.

Thanks for the correction. The gawker.com linked article has an error for the year.

This change is four years away. I believe the last one was four years too. I guess the promise is always 'next election'.


There was a story earlier this year that Saudi women-activists were going around to polling places and attempting to register to vote for the municipal elections. Supposedly one set of women were able to register at one polling place, but the rest were denied. I don't think many expected to be allowed, but they were trying to demonstrate peacefully and challenge society's norms.

[Random Precision]

Originally Posted by CaveMike

This change is four years away. I believe the last one was four years too. I guess the promise is always 'next election'.

From the bit of an NPR story I heard earlier, the difference this time is that it's an edict from the King. From this I gather that the former promise was not. According to the Saudi interviewed for the story, when it comes directly from the King, no one else can set it aside. So there's that.

[The Futility of Nihilism]

What is the world coming to? First you let women vote, then you'll have fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

[WednesdayAddams]

This is Saudi Arabia we're talking about, here. They still have a king. Elections are municipal, and only half of those are up for the electoral process; the rest are appointed. All key posts are occupied by the royal family, and the king appoints ministers. The municipal councils have next to no authority. Still, yay. It's a victory, regardless of how hollow.

[mswas]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

This is Saudi Arabia we're talking about, here. They still have a king. Elections are municipal, and only half of those are up for the electoral process; the rest are appointed. All key posts are occupied by the royal family, and the king appoints ministers. The municipal councils have next to no authority. Still, yay. It's a victory, regardless of how hollow.

Well...I think you have to look at victories in context. People get disappointed when victories are not all consuming. I don't think that's a fair way to look at it. I don't think it's hollow at all. It's a step forward no matter what. The reality is that the system in Saudi Arabia ain't gonna change soon. They are entrenched, and they have the backing of the First World governments due to their position in the global economy. But nonetheless, women being empowered, that's something, it's a step. Women getting the franchise led to a cascade of change in the United States, but it took half a century to really see it.

[ulfhjorr]

The Saudis better watch out. We let women vote, then we got Prohibition...

[Glazer]

Originally Posted by ulfhjorr

The Saudis better watch out. We let women vote, then we got Prohibition...

They already have that one covered.

[Khampelf]

Heard on NPR that one of the Saudi women protest drivers was sentenced to be flogged.

Ten lashes. Ouch.

With the Saudi sense of propriety, is a woman flogged by another woman with only women present, flogged by a blindfolded man, flogged by a husband or male relative, or just flogged through the burka?

[rayh]

Saudi woman to be lashed for defying driving ban

In recent months, scores of women have driven vehicles in Saudi cities in an effort to put pressure on the monarchy to change the law.

The sentence comes two days after the Saudi leader King Abdullah announced women would be allowed to vote for the first time in 2015.

Two other women are due to appear in court later this year on similar charges, correspondents say.

[rayh]

Saudi woman driver's lashing 'overturned by king'