Women make the most of UAE's limited first polls

Dubai, Dec 15: Photos of female candidates, hair covered and faces beaming, crowd newspapers in the United Arab Emirates days before the first election in the Gulf state, where a woman's place was not so long ago in the home.

Undeterred by defeats in nearby Kuwait and Bahrain, where not a single woman was voted into parliament this year, women are determined to run in the UAE's polls on December 16, 18 and 20.

Though less than 1 per cent of 800,000 Emirati nationals are allowed to vote or run in the election for half the seats in the Gulf state's 40-member Federal National Council (FNC), over 14 per cent of the 439 candidates are female.

''This means women are active. They did not react negatively or withdraw,'' said candidate Aisha Ibrahim Sultan, a newspaper columnist who wears a traditional black veil.

''For me, this is enough; the fact that women are joining in without hesitation or fear is good in itself.'' When Kuwait allowed women to vote and run in general elections for the first time this year, 28 women vied with 221 men for a seat in the 50-member assembly. None were successful.

In Bahrain, a woman won by default last month when no one else contested the seat, but none of the 23 female candidates won at the ballot box. When the conservative Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia held municipal polls last year, women were barred.

Emiratis say the fact that women can run from day one shows they have already gone some way to empowering women in an area where many still think they should focus on raising children.

The UAE has not set a quota to ensure a minimum number of women reach the FNC, half of whose members will continue to be appointed by the rulers of the country's seven emirates.

Election officials say women will be appointed to the FNC, an advisory body, even if they fail to win any seats through the vote.

There are already two female cabinet ministers in the UAE.

''I hope women get in by vote as that would be a clear social and political message and as we have ladies who are as qualified as men,'' said Anwar Gargash, the Minister of State for FNC.

Women do work, but they still face traditional reservations about their public role in a patriarchal society with strong tribal ties.

When the UAE's rulers picked the 6,600 nationals who would be eligible to vote, they chose only some 1,100 women.

''It is better for women to enter without a quota, to prove themselves,'' said Sultan, whose family backs her nomination.

''But if experience shows that our society suffers the same problem as other Arab societies in its view of women, and that women are falling victim to male-dominated tribal or economic blocs, then I would say, yes, we should resort to a quota.''

Reuters