May 17, 2004

Kuwait may give women the vote

Kuwait's cabinet approved a draft law yesterday giving women the right to vote and run for parliament in a step towards more widespread emancipation in the Arab world.

Kuwait's women have been striving for the vote for 50 years and have had to watch in frustration as the parliament was elected without their participation in July.

The government, led by the emir's brother, insists that is committed to pushing through economic and political reforms but Islamist and conservative MPs continue to wield immense influence.

Arguments against granting women the vote in Arab states include the theory that menstruation could cloud their political judgment. Qatar, Bahrain and Oman allow women to vote among Gulf states and women in Egypt have had the vote since the 1950s.

Saudi Arabia, often considered the most conservative of Arab states, may enfranchise women in its October municipal elections.

Unreal!
Do these male chauvinist pigs actually discuss womens' menstruation seriously and openly in whatever resembles their for-appearances-sake-only parliaments?
(I wonder how many Western men thought this, but never said anything, when we got the vote in Britain and America?)
PMS is the worst, but I don't remember it affecting my vote!
(OK, maybe I threw a houseshoe at the TV when Jimmy Carter won in 1976!)
What some women do do, sadly, is vote for the candidate that's the "best looking," but when those sheiks all wear those burnooses, have goatees and the same color eyes and hair, who can tell?
Anyway, gender stereotypes aside, it's more than obvious that the Bush Doctrine, of changing the Middle East by turning Iraq into a democracy, is working and that Iraq's neighbors, here Kuwait and even the medieval Saudi Arabia, are trying to join the 21st Century and getting rid of their antiquated ideas and culture.