Landmark rights victory for Saudi women
Two women have won seats on a Jeddah chamber of commerce, the first to win any elected position in Saudi Arabia, where women remain largely barred from political life, officials said today.
Lama al-Sulaiman and Nashwa Taher were elected to the Jeddah Trade and Industry Chamber, the officials said.
The chamber’s elections at the weekend were the first polls in Saudi Arabia in which women could either vote or stand. In the kingdom’s first nationwide municipal elections this year, women were neither allowed to vote nor stand as candidates.
The Jeddah Trade and Industry Chamber had initially rejected the nomination of 10 women for its board of governors, but the government ordered it to allow female voters and candidates.
The two women will become members of an 18-person board that had previously been exclusively for men.
