Beyond the Surface: The Saudi Women Political Question
By Hala Alwagdani, In the beginning of 2013, King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia announced in a royal decree the appointment of 30 Saudi females in the Saudi Consultative Council. This has been only one of the steps in King Abdullah’s reformist style of ruling. In 2005, he introduced municipal elections, the first democratic elections in Saudi history. In 2011, he granted women the right to vote in these elections and proposed that women run for municipal elections in 2015. What provoked all these pro-female reforms all of a sudden?