When two women were elected to the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors in December 2005, the move was hailed as a revolution in conservative Saudi Arabia. But while it marked the first time that women were involved in elections, it also underlined how far they still had to travel before achieving the broader right to vote.

Saudi Arabia is behind the rest of the region, where women can participate in elections and hold higher office. But Arab states as a whole are also behind the rest of the world when it comes to women in politics: the proportion of women in Arab parliaments is only 10 per cent – the lowest in the world.