It’s easy to be cynical about yesterday’s announcement from Saudi Arabia’s ageing ruler about granting women the vote, being allowed to stand as candidates in local elections and being selected to serve in the ruling Shura Council in four years, but in a deeply conservative country run by religious autocrats this is a significant step although more still needed to be done.
So why now, reports have said there has been significant lobbying by women in Saudi Arabia on a range of issues for change in recent months and despite the culture Saudi women aren’t as uneducated, downtrodden or sidelined as in other Islamic Middle Eastern countries – but the real reason is the Arab Spring, it is still alive and worrying the despots who after decades of brutal uncompromising rule are rattled enough to start conceding even a tiny amount in the hope it placates their populations and stop their regimes crumbling.
But there is still work to be done to better the lives of women in Saudi Arabia because they still need permission from a male relative to drive cars, travel alone and have medical operations and who’s to say the changes will be implemented, but it’s a start and if you need any more reason to understand the changes it is still less than 100 years since all women in the UK got the right to vote.Any source
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