This year in the 2012 Olympics women are competing from every country that is participating in the Olympics including, for the first time ever, Saudi Arabia, Brunei and Qatar. To be clear, Qatar and Brunei weren’t as resistant as our dear friends in the Middle East–Saudi Arabia who made women’s inclusion next to impossible. They finally gave in when the International Olympic committee threatened to ban their participation in the games.

Almonitor has a brief history of when most countries in the Middle East and North Africa began to allow women to compete from Iran to Bahrain. The last of the region’s hold outs included:

…Kuwait (which sent its first female athlete in 2004), Oman (2008), UAE (2008), and ...