Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Women will not be allowed to vote or run for office in Saudi Arabia’s first nationwide municipal elections next spring, the government said this week. When the elections were announced earlier this year, the participation of women wasn’t explicitly addressed, and many assumed that women would at least be able to vote. But officials said that there weren’t enough qualified women to run the female sides of the segregated polling places. Under the country’s strict Islamic law, it would be considered improper for women to cast their votes in the presence of male voting-booth attendants.
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