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Jazeera Airways Wants to Help Kuwaiti Women Vote

There is an airline in the Middle East taking advantage of its home-base?s steps toward democracy by offering special flights back home for female citizens to participate in the electoral process of their country for the very first time. The country is Kuwait, and the airline is Jazeera Airways (not to be confused with Qatar-based television news channel al-Jazeera). Recent reforms in the small island kingdom, at one time occupied by Saddam Hussein?s Iraq, have finally enabled women to vote. And Jazeera Airways is there to bring the women home to be able to do so.

Jazeera Airways Chairman and CEO Marwan Boodai has said that ?our initiative is to ensure that all Kuwaiti women who are eligible to vote exercise their democratic right in line with the new legislation. We want to ensure that as many women as possible have the available access to return to Kuwait to vote in these historic elections as part of Jazeera Airways`s national social responsibility program.?

Of course, it must be remembered that according to Islamic and Arab tribal traditions a female cannot leave home or their country without the permission of the senior-most male member of her family. Whether this Jazeera Airways program is a genuine effort to bring women home just to vote, or a slick ploy to entrap women with families, has not been questioned. However, given that Kuwait ? where foreign workers actually outnumber those who hold citizenship ? is making steps (slowly but surely) towards pluralism it may just be the case that the offer is made out of goodwill and is genuine.