For Women in Kuwait, a Landmark Election

The next afternoon, Dashti sat in her campaign tent in her fitted black suit, her dark hair in a ponytail. After biting into her first meal of the day, a doughnut, and looking slightly drawn after a string of 14-hour days, she recounted how her journey into activism started.

Dashti recalled that in 1992 she was back in Kuwait after earning her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and working at a scientific research center when she thought, "I'm going to hit the glass ceiling very soon."

"I thought, why should I be in the shadows when I can be in the forefront, and I realized that getting my political rights was the only way to do that."

Soon after, she started voting, albeit vicariously. When elections came, she persuaded two of her brothers to each give her one of their two votes. "They each chose one candidate, and I chose two," she said, adding that the invisibility was painful.

"I used to feel I was just a number, a citizen without a voice or rights. It used to hurt," she said.

The suffrage movement received a shot in the arm in 1999, when Kuwait's ruling prince at the time, Jabir al-Ahmed al-Sabah, issued a decree declaring that women should be allowed to participate in parliamentary elections. But for six years that bill was shot down by a parliament dominated by tribal and conservative Islamic leaders engaged in a power struggle with the government.

In that time, Dashti went to work lobbying members of parliament, meeting with every single one at his office, organizing marches and demonstrations, launching a court case against the government and registering to vote at the police station, even though women were not allowed to.

"They were polite to us," she said. "They offered us tea, but then they would tell us they can't register us and ask us to leave." Why then did she keep going back? She smiled. "We went about seven times," she said. "We wanted to make a statement."

Last year in March, she helped lead the largest demonstration for women's rights in Kuwaiti history when hundreds of women shouted out in parliament before being expelled.

With continued pressure from the emir, parliament finally passed the suffrage bill in May 2005. Dashti immediately decided to run in the next elections, scheduled for mid-2007.

But after a march on parliament earlier this year, when hundreds of young Kuwaitis demanded electoral reform, in which Dashti also took part, the new emir, Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, dissolved parliament and called for early elections June 29.

If Dashti does not win, it might be more for her associations and accent than for her capabilities. Dashti's accent veers to the Lebanese, where her mother is from, and she has relied on support and training by foreign nongovernmental organizations, including American ones such as the National Democratic Institute and the Middle East Partnership Initiative. "We wanted women to have access to this training. We solicited various experiences about how to prepare ourselves. We wanted to equip and position ourselves early so that when we got our rights we would be ready," she said.

The hardest part of the struggle, Dashti said, has been the insults and rumors. Her critics have said she should be jailed and that she and other activists who accept foreign help and training are traitors.

"We were accused of being unpatriotic, of being anti-religion, of being anti-family. They said if women are allowed to run for office, this will promote promiscuity and divorce and homosexuality," she said.

Her detractors, she said, are extremists trying to hoard power and exclude women, while she is promoting democracy and inclusion. "The barometer for democracy is where you stand on women," she says.

In her last rally before election day, men sat in rows on one side and women on the other, filling up the huge campaign tent. After several female speakers seated on a platform talked about the importance of voting for Dashti, recounting how she had supported women over the years, it was Dashti's turn to speak.

She picked up the microphone, got off the dais, and walked up to the rows of supporters. "On June 29, we will make history. This 10th constituency will make history. Kuwait will make history," she told the crowd, her voice breaking.

"Please don't be lazy. Don't say it's too hot. Don't say I want to sleep. Get up and vote. I want your support. I want your votes. All I want is to serve Kuwait and its people," she said as the crowd cheered and clapped.