Women Elected in Kuwait
In what is hopefully a bellwether, women were elected to Kuwait’s parliament. Kuwait is a semi-constitutional monarchy which actually allows free elections. In a very conservative society, this comes as a welcome surprise. Iraq seems to have started the trend, having 25% of its Parliament mandated to be filled by women.
Women were given the right to vote and run for office in 2005, but until now hadn’t been able to win a seat in this conservative Muslim society. This year, 19 women were among the 280 candidates for 50 seats in Kuwait’s parliament.
Note from RM: It should also be mentioned that the Islamists lost big time. The Islamic Constitutional Movement (a Muslim Brotherhood branch) and the Islamic Salafi Alliance lost four seats, bringing them down to three (the total parliament consists of 50 seats). The tribal supporters of the Islamists fell from 14 to 8 and Liberals went from 7 to 8.