The Shoura Council chamber: women members will be segregated by a partition. Picture: Riyadh Bureau 
  

Having spent the last few days writing about the London conference on Yemen (there's now a single-page compilation of my blog posts here), I missed some of the excitement surrounding King Abdullah's appointment of 30 women to the Shoura Council, Saudi Arabia's pretend-parliament.

With this magnanimous gesture, the king has struck another blow for equality of the sexes. The women on the council will have exactly the same decision-making power as the men – i.e. none whatsoever, since all the council can do is proffer advice to the king.

But perhaps I'm being too cynical. This is, after all, Saudi Arabia where any kind of reform is an uphill struggle, even for someone as powerful as the king.

You might imagine that if King Abdullah decided to appoint a few women to the council he could just click his fingers and it would be done – but you would be wrong.

First, a committee had to be set up to consider "the administrative procedures and logistical support needed" for women to perform their Shoura duties "comfortably".

This was a coded way of saying they were trying to work out how to include women in the council while maintaining the kingdom's cherished rules of gender segregation – thus ensuring that no sexual hanky-panky could take place while discussing matters of state.

The reality became clear in November, when it was announced that the council chamber would be altered to create a special female area:

"This area would be separated from male members of the Council by a partition 'to preserve the privacy of women'."

Even that, though, was not enough to allay the fury of some conservatives and yesterday about 50 clerics staged a protest outside the Royal Court. 

John Burgess, on his Crossroads Arabia blog, points out that such demonstrations are supposed to be illegal in Saudi Arabia – but it seems the usual rules don't necessarily apply to clerics. They weren't arrested but apparently got short shrift from the Royal Court. Reuters reports:

A Saudi activist in touch with the clerics confirmed the accuracy of photographs showing them standing in a group as they demanded a meeting with King Abdullah and his top aide Khaled al-Tuwaijri, seeking to offer them "advice".

Tuwaijri, the Royal Court chief of staff, is believed to be King Abdullah's right-hand man and is seen by many Saudis as a driving force behind the country's cautious reforms.

"The clerics were in front of the Royal Court to address the king and Tuwaijri with regard to women in the Shura Council ... they waited for two hours but were denied access," Waleed Abu al-Khair told Reuters by phone.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 16 January 2013.