Kuwaitis go to the polls on Thursday to vote in elections for a new parliament. It is the first time that women in the country have been able to both stand and vote at national level.
Despite Kuwait having the oldest parliamentary tradition in the Gulf, dating back to the early 1960s, it is one of the last to allow women to vote in national elections.This has been an embarrassment for many Kuwaitis who have enjoyed perceiving themselves as leading the way in terms of suffrage.
The other states of the southern Gulf are watching the elections in Kuwait carefully. The region is a patchwork of political rights, with populations enjoying a spectrum of freedoms - all of them limited. These countries do have one thing in common though. They are all moving in the same direction - towards greater representation for their people.
