“I am in favour of naming women to the municipal councils according to a specified quota without this being a substitute for their right to vote and run for office in the future,” writer and academic Fawzia Abu Khaled told AFP.

Saudi women were barred from unprecedented nationwide polls held in three rounds earlier this year to fill half the seats of 178 municipal councils across Saudi Arabia. The remaining members will be named by the government.

So far, however, there are no indications that the government plans to name women in local councils, said Abu Khaled.

Officials have so far spoken of granting women the right to vote in the next municipal elections in four years time, without mentioning the right to stand for office, she added.

The Kuwaiti government on Sunday named two women to join its municipal council, making history in the country which only last month agreed to grant women full political rights.

Nahed Bashateh, who heads the Saudi Woman Information Center and is one of two elected women on the nine-strong board of the journalists union, said that while appointment was not perfect, it was a suitable option for some societies.

“Of course I favour naming women to the municipal councils” in Saudi Arabia, she said. “Even if only one woman is named, it will turn the current debate from one about “whether’ women should participate (in public life) to one about “how and in what numbers’ they should participate,” Bashateh said.