Kuwait's Thaw

When the polls open in Kuwait on Thursday, Kuwaiti women will be able to cast their votes for national candidates for the first time in the country's history. Registered women voters outnumber men by almost a third. It will also be the first time women have run for national office—28 of the 253 candidates for Parliament are women. NEWSWEEK's Zvika Krieger spoke by phone with Nathan Brown, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, about the implications of this election for the role of women in Kuwaiti society, the future of Kuwaiti politics and democratic reform in the region at large. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What is the significance of women being allowed to vote in the upcoming elections?

Nathan Brown: It's been a long-standing debate in Kuwait about women's suffrage. It was to some extent the dividing line between the more liberal, secular parts of society and the more conservative, religious parts. But a lot of the debate over the women's vote was not so much focusing on women casting ballots and their right to have a voice but much more on the election itself. If women had the right to vote, then that implies they have to have some access to campaigners, have public assemblies, have people who canvas door to door who might ask to speak to women. These are the types of issues that Kuwaitis had raised.

Why are women achieving suffrage now? What has changed?

After 1990, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, much of the Kuwaiti ruling family swung behind the idea because it was a little of an international embarrassment. They felt that Kuwait was dependent on international support for security, and it was hard to explain why Kuwait was one of the last holdouts in not allowing women to vote. A lot of countries that were supporting Kuwait, especially the U.S., were asking questions about it. The Kuwait Parliament voted on it several times, there were several court cases, and every single time the effort to bring women the vote lost at the last minute—a few votes short in Parliament, the cases were dismissed on technical grounds, and so on. This time, the supporters finally got the majority vote, the ruling family swung heavily enough behind it, and the opposition of the Islamists, though strong, has probably decreased over recent years. It is not so much an Islamic issue, so it doesn't so much matter to the leadership.

Have the Kuwaitis been influenced by the so-called Arab Spring for Democracy that has been spreading across the region in recent months?