It looks like the Kuwaiti government has made good on its promises. When women got the vote, they promised that they would appoint women to the government. Bingo.

KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwait named its first woman cabinet minister on Sunday, less than a month after giving women the vote, a key plank in its democratic reforms.

Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah announced rights activist Massouma al-Mubarak’s appointment as planning minister and minister of state for administrative development affairs, the state news agency KUNA reported.

“Naming a Kuwaiti woman as a minister … is a special step we had longed to achieve,” Sheikh Sabah said.

Kuwait, keeping a promise to carry out democratic reforms, made another breakthrough earlier this month when it appointed two women to its municipal council, the first women to take seats there.

In May, despite fierce resistance by Islamist and conservative MPs, parliament gave Kuwaiti women the right to vote and run in elections.

The legislation was passed too late for women to vote in municipal polls on June 2, so they will be unable to exercise their new right until 2007 parliamentary elections.

The suffrage bill was seen as a breakthrough in Kuwait, whose ally the United States has been pressing countries in the region to carry out democratic reforms.

Mubarak, a 57-year-old columnist and political science professor at Kuwait University, told Reuters she was honored to be the first woman minister in the Gulf Arab state’s history.

The bill that was passed said that women would have to adhere to Islamic tradition, something that I said back then would either be overturned, unenforceable, or ignored. It would have put unneeded restrictions on the ability of the women to vote just like everyone else, and if elected, the same. The third option seems to apply in this case, as the government itself doesn’t even seem to take that amendment seriously. I think they’ve caught on to the trend.