HAIL: Four women have been elected to senior positions at the Hail Literary Club after a vote held in the presence of Deputy Minister of Culture and Information for Cultural Affairs Nasser Al-Hujailan and representatives from the club and regional Emirate. Former head of the Women's Committee Aisha Al-Shammari was voted in as administrative manager, while Al-Jawhara Al-Lahaidan, Shaima Al-Shammari and Hind Al-Faqih all won other senior posts. The issue of women sitting on the boards of the country's literary clubs has been overshadowed by voting and running rights in the municipal council elections, and the recent move to allow women to stand as candidates at clubs was welcomed. Huda Al-Daghfaq, chairwoman of the Women's Committee at the Riyadh Literary Club, praised the Ministry of Culture and Information for its ruling and said that she and a “group of Saudi women from various parts of the country” had been in the process of presenting a statement of protest at the exclusion of women. “The move to rectify the issue has come as a ray of sunshine for us,” Al-Daghfaq said at the time, reserving particular praise for Minister Abdul Aziz Khoja and his deputy Al-Hujailan. “We will not let them down. It is a noble expression of their confidence in us for which we have been waiting for a long time.” The bar on female candidates had prompted many women to withdraw from literary club general assemblies and led Minister Khoja to state on his Facebook page that women have the “right to be members of the general assembly and the right to participate in the elections for board of directors as voters and candidates”. “A woman can even be elected to the post of chairwoman of the board of directors,” he said, adding that the Ministry of Culture and Information would “not impose its will on anyone” or “intervene in the election process in any way”.
