Women made history in Kuwait today by voting and running for office for the first time in a local byelection after they were granted suffrage last year.
The vote was for a single seat in the Municipal Council, a 16-member body. The rest of the members were elected and appointed last year.
"Today is the biggest feast we have been waiting for more than 40 years," Khaleda al-Khadher, one of the two female candidates, said at a polling station in Salwa suburb.
"This is the first time Kuwaiti women can show the men that we are capable, it is important that we do our best and leave the outcome of the polls to God," added Ms Khadher, wearing a conservative black Islamic-style dress.
Some 28,000 voters, including 16,000 women, are eligible to cast ballots for the eight candidates, who include two women.
Last May, parliament passed a government-sponsored bill granting suffrage to women who had fought for their political rights for more than four decades. The United States has urged Middle Eastern states to reform their political systems.
Kuwait is the first Gulf Arab state with an elected law-making parliament, but Qatar became the first country in the conservative region to name a woman cabinet minister in 2003, and most countries in the area have since followed suit.