At least 15 women have been elected onto Saudi Arabia’s local councils for the first time, official results showed yesterday, marking a breakthrough in the conservative kingdom that still bans women from driving.

Turnout was 47.4 percent in the third local elections to be held in the kingdom, with some 2,100 councillors elected to 280 councils, the High Electoral Commission announced yesterday evening.

Yesterday, Saudis cast their ballots in municipal elections in which women were allowed to vote and stand as candidates for the first time in the country’s history.

Of the 6,917 candidates who contested the elections, 979 were women.

The female winners stood in several areas of the Gulf country, including the capital Riyadh, the commercial city of Jeddah, the holy region of Makkah, the northern province of al-Jawf and the province of al-Ihsa in the east, the official press agency SPA reported.

Rasha Hefzy, a businesswoman who won in Jeddah, voiced her joy. “My family was the first driving force behind my candidacy,” Hefzy told the Dubai-based broadcaster Al Arabiya.

“Civil society institutions also supported me during campaigning.”

It is not yet clear when the final official results will be announced.

Earlier reports said the election commission will announce them yesterday.

However, some media reports suggested that the final results would be released only after the commission decides on appeals against preliminary official results, a process that could take up to three weeks.

Two-thirds of the seats in the kingdom’s 284 municipal councils were up for grabs in Saturday’s elections.

The other third of councillors will be appointed by the government. The councils have a four-year mandate. Saudi Arabia has no elected parliament.

Women’s participation in the polls was decreed in 2011 by then-king Abdullah.

The monarch, who died in January, also ordered that 20 percent of members of the kingdom’s consultative Shura Council be women.

Saudi Arabia is dominated by the puritanical Wahhabi school of Islam.

Despite growing female representation on Saudi government bodies, activists complain that women in the country still require a male guardian to transact official business.

- dpa