Saudi Women Make Electoral Breakthrough

Two candidates became the first women to win elected office in Saudi Arabia yesterday when they took seats on the board of Jeddah's chamber of commerce.

In a country where women are generally excluded from public life the surprise result was viewed as significant. When the conservative kingdom held local government elections earlier this year - the first in more than half a century - women were not allowed to vote or run for office.

"I'm a bit in shock, but this shows people are ready for women to play a role," Lama Sulaiman, one of the winners, told Reuters. She and fellow-businesswoman Nashwa Taher will join 10 elected men on the board, along with six other people to be appointed by the government.

Some 21,000 members of the chamber were entitled to vote, with a choice of 71 candidates - 17 of whom were women. Voting was spread over four days and, in accordance with the Saudi tradition of segregating the sexes, the first two days were reserved for female voters.

It became clear yesterday that the women, who both secured more than 1,000 votes, had been elected mainly through male support. About 100 women voted, compared with around 4,000 men.

By tradition, attitudes in the port of Jeddah are far more liberal than those in the capital, Riyadh. Some businessmen said they voted for female candidates because they believed in women's participation, and others said it was because women were running on an electoral list they favoured. A banker, Mazen al-Tamimi, told the Jeddah daily, Arab News, that he had voted for three women. "They are able women, otherwise I wouldn't have voted for them," he said.