Kuwait allows women to vote!

Kuwait has just passed a law to allow women to vote! . There seems to be a lot of small changes in the middle east at the moment!

Someone please post a link, i am in a rush and cant find one yet

[orangebird]

This is all I could find... It's a couple of months old....

[Flubflow]

Wonderful. Now their husbands get two votes.
<cynical mode off>

[orangebird]

Originally Posted by Flubflow

Wonderful. Now their husbands get two votes.
<cynical mode off>

That's about all it adds up to.

From Reuters:
"KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait's parliament agreed on Monday to discuss a bill that would grant women the right to vote and stand in elections, after pressure from the pro-Western Gulf Arab state's government.
Analysts said the government, which hopes for success on the controversial issue before a likely trip by the prime minister to Washington next month, tempted lawmakers with a concession on a bill on salary hikes for most public and private employees.

"They are facing strong American pressure. Kuwait's leaders have promised the United States that they back women's rights," said political analyst Jassem al-Saadoun.

After the cabinet agreed on Monday to discuss the pay rises, a majority of parliament members agreed to debate the women's suffrage bill -- a major shift in the long battle to get conservative MPs to grant women full political rights.

It was not clear when they might pass the bill, but parliamentary sources said it could be soon.

Kuwait's all-male parliament said earlier this month women could not vote in June municipal polls after delays to a vote on a limited bill that would have allowed women to participate. But it said similar polls in 2009 could be opened to them.

Some women's groups in Kuwait -- a key U.S. ally in the Gulf -- reacted angrily to the news they could not join this year's local polls and said they doubted a broader suffrage bill would pass."

[BBKing]

Stop press - no one in Uzbekistan to get the vote at all, after strong US pressure wasn't exerted.

Stop Press Again! Millions of eligible voters in the UK can't be @rsed to vote even though their fundamental rights are being undermined by a 'democratic' government elected on a minority vote!!

[BBKing]

Stop Press again - my mate Jim disenfranchised due to Harringay council cocking up and putting him and his sister down as EU citizens. They're Welsh.

[philip.j.fry]

Originally Posted by Flubflow

Wonderful. Now their husbands get two votes.
<cynical mode off>

Okay, so there may be some truth in what you are saying. Let's not forget though that the road to equality and democracy is a long one (we're still travelling it to) and this is a step along that road. Rather than condemn this, let's support it. Even though it might be that it will be abused initially, it creates a situation under which those women that are oppressed can begin tofree themselves. By having a written law which allows women the right to vote, it leaves women with a legal recourse if they are denied that right. A situation which I believe is better than out and out denial of any rights. If we act with a cynical, "damn them if they do, damn them if they don't" attitude, what impetus is there for change?

[Flubflow]

Originally Posted by philip.j.fry

Okay, so there may be some truth in what you are saying. Let's not forget though that the road to equality and democracy is a long one (we're still travelling it to) and this is a step along that road. Rather than condemn this, let's support it. Even though it might be that it will be abused initially, it creates a situation under which those women that are oppressed can begin tofree themselves. By having a written law which allows women the right to vote, it leaves women with a legal recourse if they are denied that right. A situation which I believe is better than out and out denial of any rights. If we act with a cynical, "damn them if they do, damn them if they don't" attitude, what impetus is there for change?

I wholeheartedly agree.

Originally Posted by Flubflow

I wholeheartedly agree.

So, in fact, do I. There's a lot more work to be done in Kuwait.

[punky]

Originally Posted by andyl

From Reuters:
"They are facing strong American pressure. Kuwait's leaders have promised the United States that they back women's rights," said political analyst Jassem al-Saadoun.

[sarcasm]
Hmmm. Damn those evil Americans for promoting equality and giving women rights across the world![/sarcasm]

Yet somehow I am sure that some people will twist this into some evil diabolical scheme, with half-baked conspiracy theories. Because having kuwaiti women vote will benefit America, of course...

Originally Posted by punky

[sarcasm]
Hmmm. Damn those evil Americans for promoting equality and giving women rights across the world![/sarcasm]

Yet somehow I am sure that some people will twist this into some evil diabolical scheme, with half-baked conspiracy theories. Because having kuwaiti women vote will benefit America, of course...

You are very cynical man, Mr. Punky! Don't think you'll find many of us objecting to Kuwaiti women getting the vote. But there are other issues: http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/kwt-summary-eng . There's been progress but still some fairly major obstacles to a democratic society (even one as inept as ours).

Why is that whenever America has at least some good credit we, within minutes, condemn them for not doing it somewhere else

[BBKing]

Yet somehow I am sure that some people will twist this into some evil diabolical scheme, with half-baked conspiracy theories

We're too busy being horrified by what the US-backed Stalinist regime in Uzbekistan is doing to its own people with security forces backed with US money. I'd be very interested in how that counts as spreading democracy and freedom across the world, and why the US thinks the regime only needs to improve rather than need kicking out.

On a slightly related topic:
Peter Preston in the Guardian has a *very* interesting article today which makes the point that spreading democracy and freedom US style has a very nasty package underneath the glitter, that the neo-liberal economic principles that go along with it reduce the power of governments to govern, and thus democracy becomes a way of choosing the best government for the small amount of power that remains to them, while the majority of decisions that actually affect people are taken by people who aren't elected at all.

...the economic order that goes with democracy renders freedom to choose, to change course profoundly, an illusion. Success (or failure) is handing political power to a central bank. Make Alan Greenspan or Mervyn King monarchs of the market and your vote inevitably loses force, the parts it can influence shrunk to opaque pledges about tax and pleas to nurses to wash their hands.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists...484778,00.html