Women in the Gulf state of Kuwait have won the right to vote and run in elections - but is this hard-won victory just a fig leaf for the essentially undemocratic nature of the country, asks Mary Fitzgerald, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
It became known as the Blue Revolution. The banners the women carried were blue, the ribbons they fastened to lapels and hairdos were blue, as were the T-shirts they wore emblazoned with slogans. "Women are Kuwaiti too," read one. Another, just a single word: "alaan", the Arabic for "now".
The women who had spent decades fighting in vain for the right to vote in Kuwait wanted to make a statement that would be difficult to ignore this time, says Rola Dashti, one of the country's leading female activists.
"We chose blue because to us it is the colour of human rights and this was a human rights issue." One of the most popular T-shirt slogans became the campaign's main rallying cry: "Half a democracy is not a democracy." Kuwaitis are quick to label their unique system of governance a democracy, though outsiders might beg to differ. The first Arab country in the Gulf to have an elected parliament, Kuwait is led by a hereditary monarchy in which the ruling al-Sabah family holds the positions of emir and prime minister. The country's 45-year-old constitution vests legislative power in an elected national assembly but does not recognise formal political parties. Government ministers are ruling family appointees and, due to complex electoral criteria, just a fraction of the country's 950,000 citizens are eligible to vote. Kuwait's 1.3 million Arab and Asian "guest workers" substantially outnumber its citizens, but have no political franchise.
"Here in Kuwait they took what they wanted from democracy, left out what they didn't like and called it Kuwaiti democracy," says Khaled al-Fadalah, a US-educated activist prominent in the youth-driven Orange Movement that pressed for electoral district reform in 2006.
Until two years ago, the tiny oil-rich emirate's nominal version of democracy did not even include women, even though Kuwaiti women have long considered themselves some of the most progressive in the Gulf region. Unlike neighbouring Saudi Arabia, women in Kuwait are allowed to drive, and dress codes are relatively flexible, ranging from the full veil to business suits and jeans. Traditionally better-educated than their counterparts in other Gulf states, women account for about a third of the Kuwaiti workforce. The country appointed the first female Arab ambassador to the UN and women hold senior positions in the all-important oil industry as well as the medical, educational and public sectors. It is a matter of national pride that Kuwaiti women played a key role in fighting the Iraqi occupation following Saddam Hussein's invasion in 1990, with many risking torture and death to smuggle weapons for the resistance.
SO WHEN THE actress Meryl Streep, launching a UN report on women's rights in early 2005, declared that "a woman cannot vote in Kuwait and she cannot drive in Saudi Arabia", she drew a comparison that made many Kuwaiti women cringe. It stung all the more given they had already watched other Gulf states such as Qatar, Bahrain and Oman extend the vote to women. Kuwait, so often a pioneer in the Gulf, had been left behind with Saudi Arabia when it came to women's political rights.
It wasn't through lack of trying. In 1999 the emir issued a decree to enfranchise women but it was scuttled by an Islamic-tribal parliamentary alliance. Kuwaiti women had to endure another six years of dogged campaigning and acrimonious wrangling in parliament before they finally won the right to vote and run for office in May 2005. When elections were held the following year, women turned out in droves to vote. "It was a real shock for some Kuwaitis," says Rola Dashti, who ran for election but failed to win a seat. "It was assumed most women had no interest in politics except for a small elite who had been educated overseas and wanted to be western. Instead there were women from all kinds of backgrounds, some completely veiled in black, queuing for hours in 50-degree heat to cast their vote."
While women in other Arab countries such as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon have enjoyed voting rights for decades, it is only since the late 1990s that the more conservative Gulf states have begun to seriously reconsider attitudes towards women's participation in politics and public life in general. In a region where strict interpretations of Islam have melded over centuries with tribal identities to produce tradition-bound societies often highly resistant to change, these recent developments have been nothing short of revolutionary. In the space of just seven years, four Gulf countries have granted women the right to vote and stand for office. Several have appointed women as cabinet ministers and others have selected women as members of various representative bodies.
"It's a process that is putting down deeper and deeper roots across the region. Women are taking on increasing roles, whether politically, economically or in terms of civil society," says Haifa Al Kaylani, chair and founder of the London-based Arab International Women's Forum. While international pressure has played some part, Al Kaylani believes much of the impetus has come from within. "Better and more widespread education has produced a new crop of Arab women who are coming into their own and demanding a bigger role in society," she says. "In addition, men in the region are realising that in a globalised world women's participation in the workforce and politics is essential to epitomise their country's prosperity. Women are now seen as a major human resource for the future."
BUT THE PATH to change has not been smooth, and deeply engrained attitudes have often proved difficult to sway. In many Gulf countries women are finding out that having voting rights doesn't necessarily translate into acceptance of women in the political sphere. "Governments may pass progressive legislation but society can often lag behind in embracing it," says Al Kaylani. Female candidates in Kuwait's parliamentary elections last year were threatened and abused, had their campaign posters defaced and found themselves the subject of scurrilous rumours. Critics dismissed some candidates as "pretty airheads". Others were deemed "too aggressive". Not one of the 28 female candidates was elected and the newly enfranchised women voted overwhelmingly for men. It is a similar story in other Gulf states where women are allowed to run for office, with the exception of Bahrain which elected the region's first female MP last year.
"Remember that more than 50 per cent of Kuwaitis were against giving women the right to vote," says Amer Al Zuhair, a film-maker whose documentary on the campaign for female suffrage was banned in Kuwait. "Those attitudes are not going to change overnight." Al Zuhair's film includes telling snippets from heated parliamentary debates - Islamists quoting sharia law to insist a woman's place is in the home not in parliament, others arguing that women are fragile creatures unsuited to the rough business of politics. One enraged MP claimed the British empire only started to wane "when they put a woman in charge". Arguments that women's menstrual cycles render them irrational were regularly put forward, as were claims by women opposed to the vote that they already had all the rights they needed. Interestingly, the debate did not always cleave down religious/secular lines - several Shia politicians supported the legislation, as did one Islamist party.
AS KUWAIT'S FIRST-EVER female minister, Massouma al-Mubarak has first-hand experience of the obstacles Gulf women face when it comes to entering politics. Her swearing-in was marred by Islamist and tribal MPs banging their desks and shouting insults in protest. "They even tried to prevent me taking my oath," she tells The Irish Times, smiling at the memory. "But they had no other choice but to accept me. Women's political participation is real now. It is a fact."
Mubarak wears a headscarf, so was spared the opprobrium heaped on Nouria al-Sbeih, the woman later appointed to head Kuwait's education ministry. Islamists who had managed to insert a clause in the women's suffrage bill requiring they abide by unspecified Islamic rules claimed al-Sbeih had contravened the law by refusing to veil.
"It is an issue of personal freedom," al-Sbeih says. "I don't like something to be imposed on me. This has nothing to do with politics." On other matters, however, al-Sbeih is wary about tussling with religious parties. She has no plans to change the Islamist-sponsored law that segregates Kuwait's education system along gender lines, though she admits she would like to see it removed.
The UN's Arab Human Development Report has questioned how meaningful these moves to empower women in the region actually are. Pointing out that for many Arab rulers the issue of women's political rights has become a type of "democratic facade", the report argues it offers an "easily manipulated symbol for countries that want to escape political criticism of their undemocratic conditions".
"The nature of women's participation in government has generally been symbolic," it concludes. Arab governments enable a few "notable women to occupy leadership positions in the structure of the existing regime without extending empowerment to the broad base of women . . . Real decisions in the Arab world, at all levels, are in the hands of men."
Some women counter that, in conservative Gulf societies, change has to come slowly if it is to prove lasting. "If things go too fast there could be a backlash," says Haifa Al Kaylani. Nevertheless, already there are signs that things may never be the same again in those Gulf countries where women now have the vote. In Kuwait - where women account for 57 per cent of the country's eligible voters - the clout wielded by this newly-minted female electorate has not gone unnoticed. During last year's election it was claimed some unscrupulous MPs were trying to buy votes by offering women Chanel handbags stuffed with cash. Politicians, including conservatives and Islamists, have started to focus on issues that affect women, among them a law that prevents Kuwaiti women from passing on their nationality to children if they marry a foreigner. "They are kissing our hands now because we have the vote and they know how powerful it is," chuckles Wafa, a businesswoman in Kuwait City.
ANALYSTS SAY GULF women's voting power could have huge influence in the long-term when it comes to issues such as corruption, economic development and human rights. Many activists believe this is just the beginning of a wider move for empowerment and change in the region, pointing out the nascent push for women's rights in Saudi Arabia. "It's like a domino effect," says Rola Dashti. "A move forward for women in one Gulf country makes it gain momentum in another."
Massouma al-Mubarak agrees. "Less than a decade ago no woman had the right to vote in the Gulf, now there are more than 10 women holding ministries in the region. This is just the start of our march. There is no going back."