Saudi women began their first ever campaigns for public office on Sunday, in a step forward for women’s rights in the conservative kingdom’s slow reform process.
More than 900 women are standing in the 12 December municipal elections, which will also mark the first time women are allowed to vote in Saudi Arabia.
Ruled by King Salman, the oil-rich state has no elected legislature but has faced intense western scrutiny over its human rights record.
The country’s first municipal elections were held in 2005, followed by another vote in 2011, but in both cases only men were allowed to participate.
“We will vote for the women even though we don’t know anything about them,” Um Fawaz, a teacher in her 20s, said in Hafr al-Batin city. “It’s enough that they are women.”
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