Women voted and ran for office for the first time today in Kuwait. Awesome.

Polls opened at 8 a.m. (6 a.m. British time) for the vote to fill a single seat in the 16-member Municipal Council. The rest of the members were elected or appointed last year.

"Today is the biggest feast we have been waiting for more than 40 years," Khaledah al-Khadher, one of the two female candidates, told Reuters 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 Khadher, wearing a conservative black Islamic-style dress.

For more information on women's rights in Kuwait, check out WEDO's West Asia section of global monitoring report, Beijing Betrayed. (And I'm not just recommending it because of my involvement with the publication.) The information in the book was contributed by regional, subregional, and local women's groups--shockingly, the information they provided often contrasted sharply with the official reports of their governments.