[LANMaster]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060405/D8GPIPV04.html

Kuwaiti Women Take Part in First Election


Apr 4, 10:35 PM (ET)

By DIANA ELIAS

(AP) A Kuwaiti woman voter, right, and two young camapign volunteers walk by at a polling station in Salwa, Kuwait, on Tuesday, April 4, 2006. Women cast ballots and ran as candidates for the first time ever in Kuwait on Tuesday when the conservative country held a municipal by-election.

KUWAIT CITY (AP) - Kuwaiti women voted and ran as candidates for the first time Tuesday in a municipal election in the conservative country's capital, but light turnout for the municipal by-election showed that persuading women to practice their newly won political rights was a difficult challenge.

The vote to fill a seat in the city's Municipal Council came almost a year after parliament passed a bill enfranchising women and enabling them to run for office. It was seen as a preview of how women might fare in the parliamentary elections due next year in this oil-rich state.

"They have given us some attention. We became equal," said Iman al-Issa, 28, as she waited to vote outside a polling station's female entrance. Men and women voted separately to conform with Islamic traditions.

The voting was organized so that a woman could vote without speaking to a man except for the judge who checked her name on the register and presented her with a ballot.

Women - most of them covered by a head-to-toe black abaya robe- chatted in small groups, sometimes drinking coffee and eating sweets, in the segregated section of the polling stations.

Judge Fawzi al-Wheib, a supervisor at a polling station, told The Associated Press he was disappointed by the "very light" turnout among women voters.

"We have to prove we are worth the support we got," said a beaming Amal Hamad, a 40-year-old civil servant who had just voted for one of the two female candidates. "This is just the beginning."

BRAVO LADIES!

[ekim68]

Good for them. Equality takes a long time in some places. The volunteers' clothes
surprised me. Welcome to the 21st century Kuwait.

[LANMaster]

Originally Posted by ekim68

Good for them. Equality takes a long time in some places. The volunteers' clothes
surprised me. Welcome to the 21st century Kuwait.