DUBAI — For the first time in Saudi Arabia’s history, women have been appointed to the Shura Council, the traditionally all-male body which drafts laws, debates major issues and provides advice to the king.
It may seem a modest step.
There are still no female ministers in the cabinet and women will remain segregated within the council, with their own seating area and a separate door.
The unelected council has only an advisory role: It proposes laws but the king wields sole legislative power.
Yet the chosen women, and some others, are calling the appointments a major advance.
“This enormous, rapid and noteworthy progress means Saudi society and its governing body are finally ready to acknowledge and respect women’s voices and their rights,” said Dr. Khawla Al-Kuraya, a professor of pathology, and director at the King Fahad National Center for Children’s Cancer and Research.
Dr. Kuraya is one of the 30 women — drawn from the elite ranks of Saudi society and including two royal princesses — named by King Abdullah last week to join the 150-member council, which meets in the capital, Riyadh.
The king’s decree, which stipulated that from now on women should make up 20 percent of the council, came amid contradictory signals on women’s rights in the kingdom.
Women are still forbidden to drive and, since November, new electronic texting procedures have been introduced to tighten the compulsory monitoring by their male guardians of women traveling outside the kingdom.
Still, women’s advocates, including some men, are hopeful that the opening of the Shura Council could lead to other advances.
“This is a major move to introduce more reforms when it comes to gender equality throughout our daily lives,” said Khalid Al Khudair, founder of Glowork.net, a recruitment Web site for women in Saudi Arabia.
“Their presence as advisers to the king will move new laws in the right direction, with labor laws suited to allow women to work in new sectors and industries.”
“This could mean we will see women driving very soon,” Mr. Khudair added.
The change on the council follows several economic measures aimed at increasing female participation in the work force.
Since August last year, the Labor Ministry has progressively opened up jobs for women in the retail industry, notably by ordering the replacement of male assistants in stores selling lingerie, abayas and jewelry.
Mounira Jamjoom, a research specialist at the Booz consulting firm in Riyadh, said: “The decision to integrate women in the political process is timely, and by providing policy stability, the government can unleash the region’s considerable human promise — its increasingly educated and aspiring women.”
As recently as 2011 women were excluded from voting in municipal elections — the highest, if occasional, forum for democracy in a kingdom that has no elected national institutions. But the king has promised that they will be allowed to vote and run for office in the next municipals, planned for 2015.
“Saudi Arabia is the most conservative Gulf country when it comes to women’s rights, so the appointment of women to the Shura Council, while in the short term its impact is symbolic, in the long term its impact is significant,” said Najla Al Awadhi, a former member of the United Arab Emirates Parliament and one of the first female members of the legislature there.
“This step by the Saudi king begins to chip away at the institutional and psychological barriers in Saudi society that have historically been unaccepting of a woman’s role in public life where national issues are debated and shaped,” she added. “So the presence of Saudi women there is critical.”
Appointing women to the Shura Council also will create role models for younger women in a society where women have been expected to stay out of the limelight. “We are going to be partners in building our country and that is a phenomenal change from just 10 years ago,” said Muna AbuSulayman, a Saudi development consultant who was formerly a popular television talk show host and secretary general of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Kingdom Holding. “It is a great step in realizing that female rights are really human rights.”
Women will be able to join any of the committees of the council including economic, family and foreign affairs.
“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t believe that specific female-related issues are going to be the main focus of the women of the Shura,” said Dr. Kuraya. “Rather, as members we have the right to raise and address the diverse array of issues that concern Saudi society as a whole.”
