Kuwaitis vote in landmark polls

Having grown up in Kuwait it's exciting to see that change seems to be on the horizon. I'm praying God uses this to re-dress a lot of inequalities in that society, as well as throughout the middle-east.

Thanks for seeding this.

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#2 - Thu Jun 29, 2006 9:22 AM EDT

It is progress but more is needed. But it took over 100 years for American women to get to vote.

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#3 - Thu Jun 29, 2006 8:18 PM EDT

Leon K

Change comes in steps. Unless you bring out change in a "French Revolution" style, in which case someone gets decapitated because it came too quickly.

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#3.1 - Thu Jun 29, 2006 8:41 PM EDT

Actually, thinking about it, I hope that this is more than a token gesture; where the men in society take the view of "Look, we gave you the vote, what more do you want?"

Like yar said, much more is needed, and in fact, in the face of apparent progress, it may take even more effort to keep the momentum gained. Because it's too easy to rest/be rested on what one has appeared to achieve.

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#4 - Thu Jun 29, 2006 10:06 PM EDT

I had the opportunity to meet with one of the women who ran for office in this election earlier this week and I thought you all might be interested in hearing what I learned from her.

First of all, women were granted the right to run for office in the "next election" several months ago, at a time shortly after the Kuwaiti parliament had been seated. They were thus planning on running their campaigns during the next scheduled election, which would take place in 2007. The election we have been talking about here was actually a snap election called by the Emir, who dissolved Parliament in an unrelated dispute about redistricting. The rules of snap elections in Kuwait require that the election be held one month from the date that Parliament is dissolved. Thus, the women who were planning on running in 2007 were caught totally off-guard. No one was expecting that the "next" election would come so soon and consequently they were unable to get their message out in the very short time allowed for campaigining. While 30+ women ran, none were elected this time around. This is unfortunate, but they were again not expecting to be successful because there was no time for them to conduct a campaign of any kind. The fact that no women were elected should not be taken as evidence of Kuwaiti convervatism, then, but simply evidence that Kuwaitis would not vote for people they had never heard of before. The women who ran did so only to get some initial exposure, but they hope and expect to be elected in the next regularly held election-- which remains in 2007.

Also, I thought it worth mentioning that many Arab and Islamic countries have several women in their parliaments, and more than one have a higher percentage of women than we do in Congress. Also, more than one Muslim country has elected a woman to the post of Prime Minister, while I think that a woman President is still out of the question for many Americans. I'm only saying this to highlight that the issue we should be talking about is one of political and social conservatism, not an intrisic problem that is limited only to Islam or Arabs. (Of course, many Muslims believe that women need to be covered up and kept in the home, etc. but this is culture masquerading as religion).

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#5 - Tue Jul 4, 2006 8:14 AM EDT