Kuwait names first woman minister

The Kuwaiti government on Sunday named liberal academic Maasuma al-Mubarak as the Gulf emirate's first woman minister, one month after women were granted full political rights. US-educated Mubarak, a leading women's rights activist and professor of international relations at Kuwait University, was appointed minister of planning and administrative development.
"I feel this is a great honour for Kuwaiti women and appreciation of their struggle and great services to the country," Mubarak told AFP.
The move comes on the heels of a landmark decision last week to appoint two women to Kuwait's 16-member municipal council, a body whose functions are limited to monitoring civic planning, some public services and restaurants, roads and civil construction.
The two women are Sheikha Fatima Nasser al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family and sister of former oil minister Sheikh Saud Nasser al-Sabah, and Fawziya al-Bahar, both engineers.
The state-run KUNA news agency quoted Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah as confirming Mubarak's appointment.
"I am proud of this great confidence the prime minister has entrusted me. I hope I will succeed in my mission," she said. "I will continue to work from any position to promote and defend women's rights."
Kuwaiti women will make their election debut in 2007 legislative elections and will vote and contest in the next municipal polls in 2009, after parliament voted on May 16 to grant them full political rights.
Five women - a journalist, a writer, two women's rights activists and Mubarak - have already said they plan to contest the parliamentary elections, with an estimated 200,000 women expected to register as eligible voters next February.
Mubarak is also a member of the minority Shiite Muslim community which has expressed anger at being left out of the cabinet for the first time in more than four decades.
The only Shiite member of the cabinet, former information minister Mohammad Abolhassan, resigned in January under pressure from Sunni Islamist MPs. In a statement last Wednesday, Shiites warned that their "deliberate" exclusion from political posts in the oil-rich emirate could damage national unity.