WOMEN candidates in the recent elections to choose members for the Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce and Industry's board of directors failed to win even a single seat. There are 15,000 women members in the chamber, representing about half the entire membership of 31,000. Even with this large number of women voters, women candidates failed to win any seat in the elections. The two women candidates together obtained 95 votes (one of them got 70 votes while the second obtained 25). This is yet further evidence of the continued failure of women to reach leading positions through elections. They often justify their failure by claiming that our society being masculine that is naturally hostile to women and puts all hurdles in front of them to impede them from achieving any success. If we believe, we should ask the women a simple question: why were they badly beaten for the second time in a row in the elections? Where have the 15,000 women votes gone? Why did women not use this huge number of votes to support the two women candidates? Do women not trust each other? Are they jealous of each other so they deliberately abstained from voting for the two women candidates? This seems to be very clearly the case based on the repeated failures of women in the elections for other chambers in the Kingdom. Even in the elections for literary clubs, women have been continuously failing. Women in our country are currently living through a prime time for their development. They have been given all out support by the leaders and the government. All doors of employment are open for them. What they could not attain through elections they could get by appointment. Assistant Minister of Labor for Development Fahd Al-Tikhaifi announced recently that about 400,000 women would soon be employed. He did not mention anything about the employment of poor men. It is, therefore, surprising that society trusts women and places them in high positions while they themselves do not have confidence in their own gender.
