ON JUNE 29, in its comfortable Watergate suite, the Kuwait Information Office hosted a lunch in honor of its National Assembly's historic May 16 decision to grant women the right to vote and run for office. Granted, the very idea of a government ministry devoted to the regulation and dissemination of information evokes the specter of censorship and repression. But this Information Office is different. It has a track record of publicizing the views of critics of the country who seek greater freedom and more democracy.

Only the day before I heard the new Kuwait minister of Information recount to a small group of journalists in Washington how, upon his recent appointment, he told the prime minister that he saw it as his top objective to accomplish the abolition of the ministry whose reins he had just been handed. And now over lunch his D.C. office was putting on a panel discussion featuring five Kuwaiti women who had traveled to the United States to explain what the winning of political rights meant to them and to Kuwait.

The woman were proud, articulate, professional, and anything but uncritical boosters of their country. Four could have passed for female executives in the United States. One wore a dark traditional cloak and head scarf. They shared a sense that justice long denied had at last been served--and that formidable challenges lay ahead.

That Kuwaiti women were only just granted the vote was, in a sense, the anomaly, because they are among the freest women in the Gulf, enjoying a wide range of rights and prospering in professional life. And this is partly a result of government policy. As panelist Lulwa Al-Mullah, secretary general of the Kuwait Women's Social and Cultural Society emphasized, the Kuwait government was ahead of its time, insisting on education for women since the 1940s. Moreover, Kuwaiti women have been active in forming a wide variety of civic organizations, and they hold high positions in business, medicine, education, and engineering.

In response to Saddam Hussein's brutal 1990 invasion and conquest, Kuwaiti women formed the backbone of the resistance, sacrificing, organizing, and demonstrating. After the American-led coalition liberated Kuwait in February 1991 in recognition of their fortitude, the emir promised to secure women's political rights. But when the emir finally issued an emergency decree in 1999 giving women their political rights, the National Assembly, which under the Kuwaiti constitution must ratify such decrees, democratically rejected it by a vote of 32-30.

Several panelists agreed that winds of change sweeping through the Middle East helped account for the victory in parliament this year. Indeed, during debate at the May 16 session of the National Assembly, liberal member Mohammed Al-Sager observed that of 53 Muslim states in the world, 50 have democracies and elected parliaments, but among these Kuwait is the only one which denies women political rights. "I wonder if these countries," Al Sager sardonically asked his colleagues, "have a different understanding of Islam than Kuwaitis. I wonder further if they are all wrong and we are correct? Do we understand the Sharia better than them?"