WAM Abu Dhabi, 19 Oct. 2009
Etihad Airways' first female Emirati cadet pilots - Salma Al-Baloushi and Aisha Al-Mansouri - have successfully graduated from flight training alongside nine male colleagues and gained their airline transport pilot license (ATPL).
The cadet pilots, Etihad's second group to graduate, were conferred with their flying wings in a ceremony at the airline's training academy which was attended by family and friends as well as senior management from Etihad Airways and the Horizon International Flight Academy.
Joining Salma and Aisha to receive their wings were Ali Al Farsi, Ahmed Balalaa, Ibrahim Sanqoor, Khalid Al Ali, Mohamed Al Kaabi, Khalid Al Marzouqi, Khalil Amiri, Abdalla Balkhashar and Hasan Abdulla.
James Hogan, Etihad Airways' chief executive, said: "Everyone at Etihad is delighted that Salma and Aisha - our first female cadet pilots - have made history as the first women to graduate from the program.
"Salma and Aisha are a key part of Etihad's expanding female pilot community and we wish them, as well as their male colleagues, the best of luck as they enter the next phase of their careers with Etihad." The cadets started the pilot program course in September 2007 and now have the rank of second officers at Etihad Airways.
As second officers the pilots will undertake a multi-crew co-operation course and an Airbus A320 type conversion course which will enable them to fly as co-pilots on the Etihad Airways Airbus A320 short haul fleet.
The cadet pilots will spend much of the time during the type conversion course in Etihad's A320 full-flight simulator as well as training in the development of non-technical skills applicable to working in a multi-crew environment. After approximately six months they complete their final checks and will qualify as A320 first officers.
In order to gain the frozen ATPL the cadet pilots had to complete 750 hours of classroom tuition and 205 hours of flight training in single and multi-engine aircraft. During this time they all passed the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority's theoretical knowledge and flying exams.
Etihad Airways recently welcomed the 100th cadet pilot to its innovative and expanding flying program. Shareefa Al Bloushi is a member of Etihad's tenth group of cadets. She is also the sixth female Emirati cadet pilot to join the program, and eighth female overall.
In addition to the cadet pilot program, Etihad Airways' Emiratisation initiatives focus on two other streams which include the technical engineering development program and graduate management development program.
Etihad now also has two international cadet pilot courses which run alongside the five Emirati courses at Horizon Academy. The two groups contain 24 cadet pilots from countries around the world including Hungary, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Showing posts with label women in business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women in business. Show all posts
Monday, October 19, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Oman: Women face scorn after taking over family shops
Saleh al Shaibany, Foreign Correspondent
BAHLA, OMAN // As a young woman who owns and runs a grocery store, Salwa al Habsi is something of a rarity in conservative, rural Oman. But as growing numbers of men flock to the cities in pursuit of better jobs, businesswomen like Ms al Habsi may not be so rare for much longer.
The shop she now owns, in the deeply conservative town of Bahla in the Interior Region, about 250km from the capital Muscat, was originally owned by her father but was closed after he died a year ago. Ms al Habsi’s three brothers initially refused to let her run the store, but her mother, supporting her daughter’s bid to run the shop, gave Ms al Habsi her gold, which she sold to raise funds to buy out her siblings’ shares of the business.
“If it is all right for women to run a business in Muscat, why are men raising their eyebrows in the regions?” said Ms al Habsi, 24. “It is certainly not against Islam and I have the full blessing of the government since authorities have granted me a business licence required to buy my father’s shop.”
Many family-owned stores such as Ms al Habsi’s in rural Oman are closed down when their owners die because male descendants are reluctant to run inherited businesses and many prefer to move to Muscat to find better paid jobs.
Ms al Habsi is the only woman in Bahla to run a shop, a profession that is taboo for a woman in the culture of any provincial town in Oman, and she is the target of constant ridicule from relatives and friends.
In rural Oman’s patriarchal culture, it is regarded as breaking with tradition for a woman to run a business. Traditionalists say women like her are driven by money, putting greed ahead of culture and heritage.
“The desire for money put them at risk of being shunned away from the community by going against traditions,” said Malik Saleh, a Bahla-based historian and poet. “That means these women may not find marriage suitors since they are seen as immoral.”
But Ms al Habsi said she took on the business to keep her family heritage alive, rather than seek a fortune, and pointed out that her brothers were not interested in managing the store.
“This business was started by my great-grandfather and I am not going to allow it to be taken over by strangers or simply shut down,” she said of the store, which sells many goods, from food and incense burners to kitchenware. “If my brothers care for traditions, why are they not interested in running the store?”
Some young women in other towns said survival now took precedence over preserving male-dominated traditions. “I dropped out of school. This is the only thing I can do,” said Asila al Jabri, 36, who owns and runs a women’s clothing shop in a much smaller town in Ibri, in the Eastern Region.
“The death of my father gave me the opportunity of earning a living. Had I listened to male chauvinism, that women should not openly compete with men in business, then my family would have starved.”
Mrs al Jabri has four children and a wheelchair-bound husband who is unable to work, making her the sole breadwinner of the family. But that does not spare her from scorn and sarcastic comments.
Statistics from the ministry of commerce show that less than one per cent of just over 54,000 small retail businesses outside of Muscat are now owned and run exclusively by women, up from zero per cent five years ago.
“Credit to them, these young women make a success out of the trades left by their fathers and they are also breaking the tradition by being the breadwinners of the families,” said Nader al Balushi, a Muscat resident who was on a visit to Bahla.
Women’s rights activists have called for more women in rural areas to start up their own businesses. Women wishing to do business in the regions should refuse to be pushed down by men writing their own social rules,” said Mahbooba al Hadhrami, a committee member of the Oman Women Association.
“The few women running their own trades in these towns are pioneers for better things to come.”
BAHLA, OMAN // As a young woman who owns and runs a grocery store, Salwa al Habsi is something of a rarity in conservative, rural Oman. But as growing numbers of men flock to the cities in pursuit of better jobs, businesswomen like Ms al Habsi may not be so rare for much longer.
The shop she now owns, in the deeply conservative town of Bahla in the Interior Region, about 250km from the capital Muscat, was originally owned by her father but was closed after he died a year ago. Ms al Habsi’s three brothers initially refused to let her run the store, but her mother, supporting her daughter’s bid to run the shop, gave Ms al Habsi her gold, which she sold to raise funds to buy out her siblings’ shares of the business.
“If it is all right for women to run a business in Muscat, why are men raising their eyebrows in the regions?” said Ms al Habsi, 24. “It is certainly not against Islam and I have the full blessing of the government since authorities have granted me a business licence required to buy my father’s shop.”
Many family-owned stores such as Ms al Habsi’s in rural Oman are closed down when their owners die because male descendants are reluctant to run inherited businesses and many prefer to move to Muscat to find better paid jobs.
Ms al Habsi is the only woman in Bahla to run a shop, a profession that is taboo for a woman in the culture of any provincial town in Oman, and she is the target of constant ridicule from relatives and friends.
In rural Oman’s patriarchal culture, it is regarded as breaking with tradition for a woman to run a business. Traditionalists say women like her are driven by money, putting greed ahead of culture and heritage.
“The desire for money put them at risk of being shunned away from the community by going against traditions,” said Malik Saleh, a Bahla-based historian and poet. “That means these women may not find marriage suitors since they are seen as immoral.”
But Ms al Habsi said she took on the business to keep her family heritage alive, rather than seek a fortune, and pointed out that her brothers were not interested in managing the store.
“This business was started by my great-grandfather and I am not going to allow it to be taken over by strangers or simply shut down,” she said of the store, which sells many goods, from food and incense burners to kitchenware. “If my brothers care for traditions, why are they not interested in running the store?”
Some young women in other towns said survival now took precedence over preserving male-dominated traditions. “I dropped out of school. This is the only thing I can do,” said Asila al Jabri, 36, who owns and runs a women’s clothing shop in a much smaller town in Ibri, in the Eastern Region.
“The death of my father gave me the opportunity of earning a living. Had I listened to male chauvinism, that women should not openly compete with men in business, then my family would have starved.”
Mrs al Jabri has four children and a wheelchair-bound husband who is unable to work, making her the sole breadwinner of the family. But that does not spare her from scorn and sarcastic comments.
Statistics from the ministry of commerce show that less than one per cent of just over 54,000 small retail businesses outside of Muscat are now owned and run exclusively by women, up from zero per cent five years ago.
“Credit to them, these young women make a success out of the trades left by their fathers and they are also breaking the tradition by being the breadwinners of the families,” said Nader al Balushi, a Muscat resident who was on a visit to Bahla.
Women’s rights activists have called for more women in rural areas to start up their own businesses. Women wishing to do business in the regions should refuse to be pushed down by men writing their own social rules,” said Mahbooba al Hadhrami, a committee member of the Oman Women Association.
“The few women running their own trades in these towns are pioneers for better things to come.”
Monday, June 29, 2009
New law gives greater role to businesswomen
Galal Fakkar | Arab News
JEDDAH: The new law for the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CSCCI) gives greater powers to businesswomen, Fahd Al-Sultan, secretary-general of the council, said yesterday.
“The new law, which replaces the existing 50-year-old law, will be passed within a few days,” he said.
Speaking to Arab News after attending a seminar on “Developing a new concept and culture of chamber elections” at the JCCI, Al-Sultan said the new law was designed to provide the council with necessary flexibility.
“The law has already been studied by the committee of experts at the Council of Ministers and has been passed to the minister of commerce and industry for his endorsement before presenting to the Cabinet for final approval,” he said.
Al-Sultan said the new law gives businesswomen a greater role in the council as well as in the development of the country.
“Even if only women are elected to the CSCCI board, there is nothing in the law to prevent it,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, three businesswomen, Madhawi Al-Hassoun, Lamy Suleiman and Nashwa Taher, yesterday announced their decision to contest the upcoming election to the JCCI board. They said they wanted to deepen the concept of women’s participation in elections to civil organizations in the country.
JEDDAH: The new law for the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CSCCI) gives greater powers to businesswomen, Fahd Al-Sultan, secretary-general of the council, said yesterday.
“The new law, which replaces the existing 50-year-old law, will be passed within a few days,” he said.
Speaking to Arab News after attending a seminar on “Developing a new concept and culture of chamber elections” at the JCCI, Al-Sultan said the new law was designed to provide the council with necessary flexibility.
“The law has already been studied by the committee of experts at the Council of Ministers and has been passed to the minister of commerce and industry for his endorsement before presenting to the Cabinet for final approval,” he said.
Al-Sultan said the new law gives businesswomen a greater role in the council as well as in the development of the country.
“Even if only women are elected to the CSCCI board, there is nothing in the law to prevent it,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, three businesswomen, Madhawi Al-Hassoun, Lamy Suleiman and Nashwa Taher, yesterday announced their decision to contest the upcoming election to the JCCI board. They said they wanted to deepen the concept of women’s participation in elections to civil organizations in the country.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School Host Young Women Leaders From the Middle East
Penn Law and Wharton Executive Education Deliver Third Annual Legal and Business Fellowship Program in Partnership With AMIDEAST and the U.S. Department of State
PHILADELPHIA, June 22, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Wharton School have attracted a group of 22 young women leaders in business and law from over 10 countries in the Middle East for a Legal and Business Fellowship Program. Now in its third year, the Penn Law and Wharton Executive Education program is offered in partnership with the America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, Inc. (AMIDEAST) and funded by the U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).
The young executives and lawyers came to Penn from countries that included Algeria, Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Tunisia, UAE, Yemen, and the West Bank. Admission to the program is highly competitive and based upon each woman's leadership potential, commitment to professional growth in the business and legal sectors of her local economy, and knowledge of English.Since completion of the program, the women have dispersed across the U.S. for a four-month internship at a Fortune 500 company or top-tier law firm.
"It was a pleasure to welcome the third cohort from the Legal and Business Fellowship Program this year," says Wharton Executive Education Senior Director Sandhya Karpe. "The program participants are eagerly awaited each year by staff and faculty at Penn because of the richness they bring to the community. Over the years, we have learned as much from these fine young women as they have learned from us - about their countries and cultures, but more importantly about resilience. We wish them happiness and success as they return to their countries to follow their dreams and as passionate ambassadors of peace and change."
The program is co-directed by Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor Professor of Management and director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources; Janet Greco, co-president, Transition One Associates; and Michael Knoll, Theodore K. Warner Professor of Law & Professor of Real Estate, and co-director of the Center for Tax Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Knoll notes that the faculty makes changes to the program each year to keep it fresh. One such important change was the addition of societal wealth creation projects, designed and facilitated by Jim Thompson, associate director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and director of Wharton's Societal Wealth Program.
"This year we asked the women to produce business plans for a business that would be profitable for investors and cater to an important societal need in their home countries," Knoll says. "Working in groups of four or five, the women came up with a range of interesting proposals, including a glass-blowing factory, an English language school, and a recycling business. They drew heavily on what they had learned in their four weeks here. After their presentations, the women left Penn with a sense of accomplishment, confidence in their abilities, and a real can-do attitude."
Impressed by the women she has taught in the program, Lisa Warshaw, director of the Wharton Communication Program, says that the group is one of her favorites to teach. "These young women bring a wide diversity of experience and backgrounds that enhance the learning experience," Warshaw says. "We've always found them to be engaged and intellectually curious; we learn a great deal from our discussions with these remarkable women."
Raghda Shaheen, a program participant from the UAE, feels that the program represents an opportunity to break the stereotypes between Arabs and Americans. "The program allowed us to bridge the cultural gaps between the different environments," Shaheen says. What she will remember most about the program, in addition to the knowledge gained, was its transformative effect.
"On my last day at Wharton, after saying farewell to the amazing faculty and staff at the graduation ceremony, I walked back to the hotel with a heavy heart," Shaheen says. "I was carrying my Wharton certificate, four heavy binders for each week of class, a couple of amazing books, a treasure of friendships, and a life-time experience. I looked back at the statue of Benjamin Franklin smiling at me, and at that moment, I knew my life would never be the same."
PHILADELPHIA, June 22, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Wharton School have attracted a group of 22 young women leaders in business and law from over 10 countries in the Middle East for a Legal and Business Fellowship Program. Now in its third year, the Penn Law and Wharton Executive Education program is offered in partnership with the America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, Inc. (AMIDEAST) and funded by the U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).
The young executives and lawyers came to Penn from countries that included Algeria, Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Tunisia, UAE, Yemen, and the West Bank. Admission to the program is highly competitive and based upon each woman's leadership potential, commitment to professional growth in the business and legal sectors of her local economy, and knowledge of English.Since completion of the program, the women have dispersed across the U.S. for a four-month internship at a Fortune 500 company or top-tier law firm.
"It was a pleasure to welcome the third cohort from the Legal and Business Fellowship Program this year," says Wharton Executive Education Senior Director Sandhya Karpe. "The program participants are eagerly awaited each year by staff and faculty at Penn because of the richness they bring to the community. Over the years, we have learned as much from these fine young women as they have learned from us - about their countries and cultures, but more importantly about resilience. We wish them happiness and success as they return to their countries to follow their dreams and as passionate ambassadors of peace and change."
The program is co-directed by Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor Professor of Management and director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources; Janet Greco, co-president, Transition One Associates; and Michael Knoll, Theodore K. Warner Professor of Law & Professor of Real Estate, and co-director of the Center for Tax Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Knoll notes that the faculty makes changes to the program each year to keep it fresh. One such important change was the addition of societal wealth creation projects, designed and facilitated by Jim Thompson, associate director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and director of Wharton's Societal Wealth Program.
"This year we asked the women to produce business plans for a business that would be profitable for investors and cater to an important societal need in their home countries," Knoll says. "Working in groups of four or five, the women came up with a range of interesting proposals, including a glass-blowing factory, an English language school, and a recycling business. They drew heavily on what they had learned in their four weeks here. After their presentations, the women left Penn with a sense of accomplishment, confidence in their abilities, and a real can-do attitude."
Impressed by the women she has taught in the program, Lisa Warshaw, director of the Wharton Communication Program, says that the group is one of her favorites to teach. "These young women bring a wide diversity of experience and backgrounds that enhance the learning experience," Warshaw says. "We've always found them to be engaged and intellectually curious; we learn a great deal from our discussions with these remarkable women."
Raghda Shaheen, a program participant from the UAE, feels that the program represents an opportunity to break the stereotypes between Arabs and Americans. "The program allowed us to bridge the cultural gaps between the different environments," Shaheen says. What she will remember most about the program, in addition to the knowledge gained, was its transformative effect.
"On my last day at Wharton, after saying farewell to the amazing faculty and staff at the graduation ceremony, I walked back to the hotel with a heavy heart," Shaheen says. "I was carrying my Wharton certificate, four heavy binders for each week of class, a couple of amazing books, a treasure of friendships, and a life-time experience. I looked back at the statue of Benjamin Franklin smiling at me, and at that moment, I knew my life would never be the same."
Raghda Shaheen: Bridging Two Worlds -- America and The Middle East
Published: June 23, 2009 in Knowledge@Wharton
Raghda Shaheen, who works for the Dubai International Finance Centre, recently completed a four-week business and legal fellowship program at Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania law school. The program, funded by the U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) and supported by America-Mideast Educational and Training Services (AMIDEAST), teaches management, business and legal skills to women from the Middle East and North Africa. This year, 22 women from 11 countries attended the program. Shaheen will spend the next three months working at the Chicago Chamber of Commerce before returning to the UAE. She spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about her experiences in Gaza City, Canada, the U.S. and the Middle East.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: Raghda, thanks for joining us.
Shaheen: Thank you for having me.
Knowledge@Wharton: Can you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself? Where you were born, educated and where you have worked so far?
Shaheen: Sure. I am an Arabic girl, born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents. So I am Palestinian. I lived in Kuwait for seven years and then moved to Palestine. I grew up in Gaza City, and moved to Toronto, Canada, in 2001. I received a bachelor's degree in engineering. I worked there for a couple of years and then moved to Dubai in 2008 and that's where I live right now.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are you doing there?
Shaheen: I'm a business and process consultant at Dubai International Financial Centre.
Knowledge@Wharton: Why did you decide to come to the program at Wharton and Penn Law?
Shaheen: I always find exchange programs are fascinating because it's my opportunity to break some stereotypes. I've been in similar programs before and I really enjoyed the experience. So I thought that I would use the opportunity to come again to the States and do more work on breaking stereotypes.
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Knowledge@Wharton: What kinds of stereotypes are you talking about?
Shaheen: On both sides. I'm talking about the stereotypes of both Americans and Arabs [regarding] business behaviors, the people, the culture ...
Knowledge@Wharton: So what's an example on your side?
Shaheen: I find a lot of stereotypes about Arab women that I would like to break and about Arabs in general here in the States, because [most people] receive their [impressions] from the media. We all know that the media can be biased at certain times and does not reflect the correct image of the culture. So I came here to experience the American culture by myself through my [own] eyes, not through someone else's eyes. And I try to transfer that to the Americans myself.
Knowledge@Wharton: So what would you think is a typical American image of an Arab woman and how is that image right or wrong?
Shaheen: They still have the image that Arab women may not be educated, that they're suppressed, that they can't work, they don't speak, they are not cosmopolitan. So I try with my fellows here to break that stereotype. We tell them that Arabs in general, not just women, usually speak two languages at a minimum. We speak English as a second language in my country. There are other places in the Middle East, such as Lebanon and Syria, that speak French as a second language. The exposure to the West is very high in the Middle East, probably because of the political situation and the geographical location of that area. So we already know about other countries and civilizations out there in the world.
Knowledge@Wharton: Is it unusual for Arab women who are educated and have work experience like you to come to the States and take courses here and bring that [knowledge] back to their home countries?
Shaheen: I would say it depends. It depends on the family and it depends on the occasion. My aunt 30 years ago left to receive her education in medicine in Germany. But that doesn't mean that it's okay for most of the families. It depends on the family level of education and the country, the culture and the tradition. The Arab world is 14 countries and it's diverse. I think this is the beauty of it, that it's diverse. You would find all the cultures there.
Knowledge@Wharton: In Gaza City, would you consider yourself one of the more educated, more experienced women in terms of business background and career?
Shaheen: I wouldn't say the most educated because ... the education level in Gaza is very high. But I would say I'm one of the luckiest to have this exposure to opportunities out there in the world, because of the unfortunate political situation. Some of the people in Gaza are lucky to be alive.... So yes, I am blessed with opportunities. But the education [level] is very high in Gaza. I can talk about my personal experience. I was a senior in high school when the [uprising] started and the war. The political situation deteriorated in Gaza in 2001. That did not stop me from reaching my school, which was 45 minutes away. So I believe people living there definitely have a strong soul and are intent on [providing] education for their kids.
Knowledge@Wharton: Is this your first trip to the United States?
Shaheen: No.
Knowledge@Wharton: When were you here before?
Shaheen: I've been here a couple of times before. I have a sister here who lives in Boston and is chief of radiology at Harvard Medical School. And I've visited Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey during my previous job through Siemens Canada. So I received some training courses here.
Knowledge@Wharton: You are now taking both business and law courses? Is that correct?
Shaheen: Yes. We have taken a couple of law classes.
Knowledge@Wharton: What is the one thing that you've learned in your business courses that you feel has been especially valuable?
Shaheen: That's an excellent question. I am an engineer by education. I haven't had a strong exposure to finance and accounting. My job is consulting. I always face balance sheets and "no, we can't" answers from the finance department. But now I understand what they're going through because I've attended an excellent accounting class. It was a fantastic experience. It was taught in an unusual way. I think it's a new [approach] even at Wharton and they were testing it on us. I'm telling you it's fantastic. So my favorite class so far has been the accounting class.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are there certain key subject areas or topic areas that professional business women in the Middle East feel they might need more exposure to on an international basis than they now have?
Shaheen: I don't think it is Arab women only.... We [took] a course [aimed at] women [in general] in the workplace -- the issues we face as women in our workplace and how we behave when we face challenges. I found this course very interesting. It would be excellent if we could promote it for women in general, not just for women in the Middle East.
Knowledge@Wharton: How can you relate that course to your personal experience in the workplace as a woman?
Shaheen: It was [about] being proud to be a woman and not surrendering or giving up because you're a woman. You don't need to work harder than your colleagues just to prove a point ... to prove that you're capable and qualified. I think that's a fantastic observation.
Knowledge@Wharton: But I've heard from some Arab women that, in fact, they do need to work harder. They need to work two or three times harder.
Shaheen: Again, I don't think it's just an Arab woman's challenge. It's women around the globe.... I worked in Canada, as I said, and I worked in the Middle East. In both cases regarding the executive managers I've seen who are females, yes, that observation was true about them. They were trying to prove that they were qualified, capable and stronger than their peers so they had to work harder.
Knowledge@Wharton: In your business experience in the Middle East, have you ever personally felt discriminated against because you're a woman?
Shaheen: Not at all, actually. I did face that fear, to be honest with you, because of the stereotype. I lived in Toronto for seven years so I wasn't sure how the work environment would be in the Middle East. But I can quote for you the hospitality COO in my company, who is German. She said to me: "Raghda, as a German woman I face less racism and sexism in the Middle East than I ever faced anywhere else." So it's a very supportive environment. We have many executive women. I'm living, as I mentioned, in Dubai right now. There is a foundation for leadership for women supported by the ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid. To be honest, I'm very happy to be there to receive some of the support. I myself have been on an exchange program that supports me as a woman.
Knowledge@Wharton: You mentioned that you've had a lot of contact with other women in the program here. Do you feel that part of the value of this program is to help you set up a network of women you will keep in touch with when you leave? And do you have that kind of opportunity in Dubai to set up these networks? Is that something that can happen there easily?
Shaheen: I've been always interested in such networks with women. Since getting my undergraduate degree in Canada, I have been part of a Women in Engineering program because I've always been a minority. Here, yes, I think that's the main purpose of the program. But the network should not only be for women.... We should expand it because the world is not only women out there. We should extend our hand to help men also.... We should focus on the development of relationships between females and males in the workplace so that both can work together and prosper together.
Knowledge@Wharton: I have never been to Dubai. But I get the sense that you're one of a rare breed of women in that area. You are very educated, very articulate. You've had work experiences in Canada, in the U.S. You're going to be working in Chicago when you leave. But in Dubai you are definitely a minority in terms of the women there, correct?
Shaheen: It's not true, but thank you for the compliment. There are a lot of cosmopolitan girls there and ladies. Actually, I'm the fourth one in this program from my company and the number is increasing. As I mentioned earlier, I was in an exchange program similar to this but it was both males and females with American businessmen and women. The observation was the same. Again, you would be surprised that we have females who are like those you mentioned -- cosmopolitan, speaking good English, having exposure to the world. I think the world is getting smaller. Dubai is where everything is happening nowadays.
Knowledge@Wharton: Right, it is very cosmopolitan itself.
Shaheen: It is a very cosmopolitan city. Again, as I mentioned, exposure to [different] cultures is very high in the Middle East. It's close to Europe. It's close to China, India, the Far East. I think the geographical location really helps.
Knowledge@Wharton: But is it generational? How old are you?
Shaheen: I'm 25.
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you feel that women in your generation are having a very different experience than women who are 45 or 50?
Shaheen: I [believe that's true] everywhere in the world. Even here, the current generation is different than their parents. Yes, we're developing with the media, and with the technology. We watch "American Idol." We watch your TV shows. We watch "Oprah," "Dr. Phil"...
Knowledge@Wharton: Is that a good thing?
Shaheen: I don't know about that. [We watch] "Sex in the City." So I guess it's just that the exposure is getting higher and higher.... [Also], it's because the media to a certain degree exposes you to the American streets, environments and buildings. So when we went to New York, most of us felt that we had there before. We saw the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. You feel that you've been on the streets of New York even if you've never been there because you always see it on TV. So that's what increasing the exposure; it's the technology. Believe it or not, the political problems are playing a good part here because we have to learn about what's happening out there in the world. Most of the political situation in the Middle East is highly related to the U.S. So that's why we're highly exposed and are learning a lot about you.
Knowledge@Wharton: What about Gaza City, where you went to high school? Is that as sophisticated and developed as Dubai in terms of opportunities for women?
Shaheen: Opportunities for women in Gaza I would say are as bad as the opportunities for men. It's not because of [gender].... Unfortunately, the political situation is really bad down there. As I mentioned earlier, they don't have the opportunity to [be] exposed [to other places] or to travel as much. But before the political situation deteriorated in 2001 was when I first started my exchange program. When I was 16, I was in a Norwegian exchange program, so we had the Norwegian students come into Gaza and we traveled to Oslo. So when the political situation was stable, yes, Gaza was doing well. I don't think it's fair to compare it to Dubai because Dubai is, relatively speaking, stable. It's safe. There is no war there. The political situation is stable. Whereas for Gaza it is not, but hopefully it will be one day.
Knowledge@Wharton: You've probably come from a very supportive family as well. Is that correct? Your parents have been supportive so you don't face any disapproval about what you're doing or where you're going or anything like that?
Shaheen: Of course. All the way.
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you live alone in Dubai?
Shaheen: No, I live with them. Actually, they moved to come and live with me. They were supporting me all the way. When I was in Canada, my mom and my dad would take turns to come and visit me. They were living in Gaza so sometimes they would be back and forth between Gaza and Toronto. And then when I made the decision to move to Dubai, we thought that it was time for us to be together. So that's why we moved all of us to Dubai.
Knowledge@Wharton: Is it fairly common for young professionals to live with their parents?
Shaheen: Yes. I guess the Arabic culture is like most of the Eastern cultures. They are very much family oriented. It's not very common for girls to move out of their family houses, even guys, until they get married. That's just how the culture is.
Knowledge@Wharton: So what are your plans now for the next few years? You're going to Chicago?
Shaheen: For three months.
Knowledge@Wharton: What will you be doing there?
Shaheen: I heard that I'll be working in green initiatives, which I'm very excited about because that's what my graduation project here at Wharton is about. And I'll be working on the submission for the Olympics 2016.
Knowledge@Wharton: That's terrific.
Shaheen: How exciting is that? I'm very excited because I think I'll be having higher exposure to this green technology, which is booming as well in the Middle East, especially in Dubai. And afterwards, I always had the plan that I wanted to go for my MBA. That's why I was very excited about this opportunity [at] Wharton, which was always my dream school.... Now it's time for me to start working on my GMAT.
Knowledge@Wharton: So you plan to apply to graduate school?
Shaheen: Correct.
Knowledge@Wharton: Will that be after you complete your work in Chicago?
Shaheen: Yes. I'm planning to enjoy the experience to the maximum and not study while I'm there.
Knowledge@Wharton: What would you like to do after business school?
Shaheen: In the long term, I would like to work in the government and get some experience in the public administration sector.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where?
Shaheen: In Dubai.... Then afterwards I would like to teach and become a professor.
Knowledge@Wharton: An engineering professor? A business professor?
Shaheen: I haven't worked much with [engineering]. I would like to teach in a business school. I would like to teach an MBA class.
Knowledge@Wharton: So, who knows? We could see you back here sometime.... I have one final question. There's a story in The Wall Street Journal today talking about the steep declines in countries around the world, specifically Mexico, Germany and Japan, and how they are getting the brunt of this financial collapse. Are you feeling the impact of the financial crisis at all in Dubai?
Shaheen: I cannot deny that this financial crisis has hit the whole world hard. Dubai is a very global city, a cosmopolitan city. And it's very highly related to the [rest of] the world economy. So, yes, it does affect investments in Dubai. However, the government is being very [supportive]. About a month ago, the government of Abu Dhabi issued bonds for 30 billion Dirham, which is almost $10 billion, to support the economy in the UAE. And since then, the situation – I've been here a month so far and I'm always in touch with my colleagues to understand the situation and I read the news -- is starting to recover. So some companies are starting to hire again. Some [employees] are receiving their bonuses and their [annual] appraisals. So, yes, I think we've been affected. But also I think we're having a stronger recovery there because the government has the funds to support it.
Knowledge@Wharton: Thank you for joining us and good luck in Chicago.
Shaheen: Thank you. It was my pleasure.
Raghda Shaheen, who works for the Dubai International Finance Centre, recently completed a four-week business and legal fellowship program at Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania law school. The program, funded by the U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) and supported by America-Mideast Educational and Training Services (AMIDEAST), teaches management, business and legal skills to women from the Middle East and North Africa. This year, 22 women from 11 countries attended the program. Shaheen will spend the next three months working at the Chicago Chamber of Commerce before returning to the UAE. She spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about her experiences in Gaza City, Canada, the U.S. and the Middle East.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: Raghda, thanks for joining us.
Shaheen: Thank you for having me.
Knowledge@Wharton: Can you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself? Where you were born, educated and where you have worked so far?
Shaheen: Sure. I am an Arabic girl, born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents. So I am Palestinian. I lived in Kuwait for seven years and then moved to Palestine. I grew up in Gaza City, and moved to Toronto, Canada, in 2001. I received a bachelor's degree in engineering. I worked there for a couple of years and then moved to Dubai in 2008 and that's where I live right now.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are you doing there?
Shaheen: I'm a business and process consultant at Dubai International Financial Centre.
Knowledge@Wharton: Why did you decide to come to the program at Wharton and Penn Law?
Shaheen: I always find exchange programs are fascinating because it's my opportunity to break some stereotypes. I've been in similar programs before and I really enjoyed the experience. So I thought that I would use the opportunity to come again to the States and do more work on breaking stereotypes.
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Knowledge@Wharton: What kinds of stereotypes are you talking about?
Shaheen: On both sides. I'm talking about the stereotypes of both Americans and Arabs [regarding] business behaviors, the people, the culture ...
Knowledge@Wharton: So what's an example on your side?
Shaheen: I find a lot of stereotypes about Arab women that I would like to break and about Arabs in general here in the States, because [most people] receive their [impressions] from the media. We all know that the media can be biased at certain times and does not reflect the correct image of the culture. So I came here to experience the American culture by myself through my [own] eyes, not through someone else's eyes. And I try to transfer that to the Americans myself.
Knowledge@Wharton: So what would you think is a typical American image of an Arab woman and how is that image right or wrong?
Shaheen: They still have the image that Arab women may not be educated, that they're suppressed, that they can't work, they don't speak, they are not cosmopolitan. So I try with my fellows here to break that stereotype. We tell them that Arabs in general, not just women, usually speak two languages at a minimum. We speak English as a second language in my country. There are other places in the Middle East, such as Lebanon and Syria, that speak French as a second language. The exposure to the West is very high in the Middle East, probably because of the political situation and the geographical location of that area. So we already know about other countries and civilizations out there in the world.
Knowledge@Wharton: Is it unusual for Arab women who are educated and have work experience like you to come to the States and take courses here and bring that [knowledge] back to their home countries?
Shaheen: I would say it depends. It depends on the family and it depends on the occasion. My aunt 30 years ago left to receive her education in medicine in Germany. But that doesn't mean that it's okay for most of the families. It depends on the family level of education and the country, the culture and the tradition. The Arab world is 14 countries and it's diverse. I think this is the beauty of it, that it's diverse. You would find all the cultures there.
Knowledge@Wharton: In Gaza City, would you consider yourself one of the more educated, more experienced women in terms of business background and career?
Shaheen: I wouldn't say the most educated because ... the education level in Gaza is very high. But I would say I'm one of the luckiest to have this exposure to opportunities out there in the world, because of the unfortunate political situation. Some of the people in Gaza are lucky to be alive.... So yes, I am blessed with opportunities. But the education [level] is very high in Gaza. I can talk about my personal experience. I was a senior in high school when the [uprising] started and the war. The political situation deteriorated in Gaza in 2001. That did not stop me from reaching my school, which was 45 minutes away. So I believe people living there definitely have a strong soul and are intent on [providing] education for their kids.
Knowledge@Wharton: Is this your first trip to the United States?
Shaheen: No.
Knowledge@Wharton: When were you here before?
Shaheen: I've been here a couple of times before. I have a sister here who lives in Boston and is chief of radiology at Harvard Medical School. And I've visited Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey during my previous job through Siemens Canada. So I received some training courses here.
Knowledge@Wharton: You are now taking both business and law courses? Is that correct?
Shaheen: Yes. We have taken a couple of law classes.
Knowledge@Wharton: What is the one thing that you've learned in your business courses that you feel has been especially valuable?
Shaheen: That's an excellent question. I am an engineer by education. I haven't had a strong exposure to finance and accounting. My job is consulting. I always face balance sheets and "no, we can't" answers from the finance department. But now I understand what they're going through because I've attended an excellent accounting class. It was a fantastic experience. It was taught in an unusual way. I think it's a new [approach] even at Wharton and they were testing it on us. I'm telling you it's fantastic. So my favorite class so far has been the accounting class.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are there certain key subject areas or topic areas that professional business women in the Middle East feel they might need more exposure to on an international basis than they now have?
Shaheen: I don't think it is Arab women only.... We [took] a course [aimed at] women [in general] in the workplace -- the issues we face as women in our workplace and how we behave when we face challenges. I found this course very interesting. It would be excellent if we could promote it for women in general, not just for women in the Middle East.
Knowledge@Wharton: How can you relate that course to your personal experience in the workplace as a woman?
Shaheen: It was [about] being proud to be a woman and not surrendering or giving up because you're a woman. You don't need to work harder than your colleagues just to prove a point ... to prove that you're capable and qualified. I think that's a fantastic observation.
Knowledge@Wharton: But I've heard from some Arab women that, in fact, they do need to work harder. They need to work two or three times harder.
Shaheen: Again, I don't think it's just an Arab woman's challenge. It's women around the globe.... I worked in Canada, as I said, and I worked in the Middle East. In both cases regarding the executive managers I've seen who are females, yes, that observation was true about them. They were trying to prove that they were qualified, capable and stronger than their peers so they had to work harder.
Knowledge@Wharton: In your business experience in the Middle East, have you ever personally felt discriminated against because you're a woman?
Shaheen: Not at all, actually. I did face that fear, to be honest with you, because of the stereotype. I lived in Toronto for seven years so I wasn't sure how the work environment would be in the Middle East. But I can quote for you the hospitality COO in my company, who is German. She said to me: "Raghda, as a German woman I face less racism and sexism in the Middle East than I ever faced anywhere else." So it's a very supportive environment. We have many executive women. I'm living, as I mentioned, in Dubai right now. There is a foundation for leadership for women supported by the ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid. To be honest, I'm very happy to be there to receive some of the support. I myself have been on an exchange program that supports me as a woman.
Knowledge@Wharton: You mentioned that you've had a lot of contact with other women in the program here. Do you feel that part of the value of this program is to help you set up a network of women you will keep in touch with when you leave? And do you have that kind of opportunity in Dubai to set up these networks? Is that something that can happen there easily?
Shaheen: I've been always interested in such networks with women. Since getting my undergraduate degree in Canada, I have been part of a Women in Engineering program because I've always been a minority. Here, yes, I think that's the main purpose of the program. But the network should not only be for women.... We should expand it because the world is not only women out there. We should extend our hand to help men also.... We should focus on the development of relationships between females and males in the workplace so that both can work together and prosper together.
Knowledge@Wharton: I have never been to Dubai. But I get the sense that you're one of a rare breed of women in that area. You are very educated, very articulate. You've had work experiences in Canada, in the U.S. You're going to be working in Chicago when you leave. But in Dubai you are definitely a minority in terms of the women there, correct?
Shaheen: It's not true, but thank you for the compliment. There are a lot of cosmopolitan girls there and ladies. Actually, I'm the fourth one in this program from my company and the number is increasing. As I mentioned earlier, I was in an exchange program similar to this but it was both males and females with American businessmen and women. The observation was the same. Again, you would be surprised that we have females who are like those you mentioned -- cosmopolitan, speaking good English, having exposure to the world. I think the world is getting smaller. Dubai is where everything is happening nowadays.
Knowledge@Wharton: Right, it is very cosmopolitan itself.
Shaheen: It is a very cosmopolitan city. Again, as I mentioned, exposure to [different] cultures is very high in the Middle East. It's close to Europe. It's close to China, India, the Far East. I think the geographical location really helps.
Knowledge@Wharton: But is it generational? How old are you?
Shaheen: I'm 25.
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you feel that women in your generation are having a very different experience than women who are 45 or 50?
Shaheen: I [believe that's true] everywhere in the world. Even here, the current generation is different than their parents. Yes, we're developing with the media, and with the technology. We watch "American Idol." We watch your TV shows. We watch "Oprah," "Dr. Phil"...
Knowledge@Wharton: Is that a good thing?
Shaheen: I don't know about that. [We watch] "Sex in the City." So I guess it's just that the exposure is getting higher and higher.... [Also], it's because the media to a certain degree exposes you to the American streets, environments and buildings. So when we went to New York, most of us felt that we had there before. We saw the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. You feel that you've been on the streets of New York even if you've never been there because you always see it on TV. So that's what increasing the exposure; it's the technology. Believe it or not, the political problems are playing a good part here because we have to learn about what's happening out there in the world. Most of the political situation in the Middle East is highly related to the U.S. So that's why we're highly exposed and are learning a lot about you.
Knowledge@Wharton: What about Gaza City, where you went to high school? Is that as sophisticated and developed as Dubai in terms of opportunities for women?
Shaheen: Opportunities for women in Gaza I would say are as bad as the opportunities for men. It's not because of [gender].... Unfortunately, the political situation is really bad down there. As I mentioned earlier, they don't have the opportunity to [be] exposed [to other places] or to travel as much. But before the political situation deteriorated in 2001 was when I first started my exchange program. When I was 16, I was in a Norwegian exchange program, so we had the Norwegian students come into Gaza and we traveled to Oslo. So when the political situation was stable, yes, Gaza was doing well. I don't think it's fair to compare it to Dubai because Dubai is, relatively speaking, stable. It's safe. There is no war there. The political situation is stable. Whereas for Gaza it is not, but hopefully it will be one day.
Knowledge@Wharton: You've probably come from a very supportive family as well. Is that correct? Your parents have been supportive so you don't face any disapproval about what you're doing or where you're going or anything like that?
Shaheen: Of course. All the way.
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you live alone in Dubai?
Shaheen: No, I live with them. Actually, they moved to come and live with me. They were supporting me all the way. When I was in Canada, my mom and my dad would take turns to come and visit me. They were living in Gaza so sometimes they would be back and forth between Gaza and Toronto. And then when I made the decision to move to Dubai, we thought that it was time for us to be together. So that's why we moved all of us to Dubai.
Knowledge@Wharton: Is it fairly common for young professionals to live with their parents?
Shaheen: Yes. I guess the Arabic culture is like most of the Eastern cultures. They are very much family oriented. It's not very common for girls to move out of their family houses, even guys, until they get married. That's just how the culture is.
Knowledge@Wharton: So what are your plans now for the next few years? You're going to Chicago?
Shaheen: For three months.
Knowledge@Wharton: What will you be doing there?
Shaheen: I heard that I'll be working in green initiatives, which I'm very excited about because that's what my graduation project here at Wharton is about. And I'll be working on the submission for the Olympics 2016.
Knowledge@Wharton: That's terrific.
Shaheen: How exciting is that? I'm very excited because I think I'll be having higher exposure to this green technology, which is booming as well in the Middle East, especially in Dubai. And afterwards, I always had the plan that I wanted to go for my MBA. That's why I was very excited about this opportunity [at] Wharton, which was always my dream school.... Now it's time for me to start working on my GMAT.
Knowledge@Wharton: So you plan to apply to graduate school?
Shaheen: Correct.
Knowledge@Wharton: Will that be after you complete your work in Chicago?
Shaheen: Yes. I'm planning to enjoy the experience to the maximum and not study while I'm there.
Knowledge@Wharton: What would you like to do after business school?
Shaheen: In the long term, I would like to work in the government and get some experience in the public administration sector.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where?
Shaheen: In Dubai.... Then afterwards I would like to teach and become a professor.
Knowledge@Wharton: An engineering professor? A business professor?
Shaheen: I haven't worked much with [engineering]. I would like to teach in a business school. I would like to teach an MBA class.
Knowledge@Wharton: So, who knows? We could see you back here sometime.... I have one final question. There's a story in The Wall Street Journal today talking about the steep declines in countries around the world, specifically Mexico, Germany and Japan, and how they are getting the brunt of this financial collapse. Are you feeling the impact of the financial crisis at all in Dubai?
Shaheen: I cannot deny that this financial crisis has hit the whole world hard. Dubai is a very global city, a cosmopolitan city. And it's very highly related to the [rest of] the world economy. So, yes, it does affect investments in Dubai. However, the government is being very [supportive]. About a month ago, the government of Abu Dhabi issued bonds for 30 billion Dirham, which is almost $10 billion, to support the economy in the UAE. And since then, the situation – I've been here a month so far and I'm always in touch with my colleagues to understand the situation and I read the news -- is starting to recover. So some companies are starting to hire again. Some [employees] are receiving their bonuses and their [annual] appraisals. So, yes, I think we've been affected. But also I think we're having a stronger recovery there because the government has the funds to support it.
Knowledge@Wharton: Thank you for joining us and good luck in Chicago.
Shaheen: Thank you. It was my pleasure.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Qatar: Businesswomen forum to host leadership meet
The Qatar Businesswomen Forum (QBWF) will host the ‘semi-annual leadership meeting’ of MENA Businesswomen’s Network (MENA BWN) in Doha from June 16 to 18.
The network is a partnership of local businesswomen’s organisations across the Middle East and North Africa, Vital Voices Global Partnership and the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) of the US Department of State.
The goal of the partnership is to build a regional network of businesswomen to expand the number of women in business, to increase the value of their businesses, to advance the role of women in society, and to promote a regional culture of women’s entrepreneurship.
Aisha Alfardan, QBWF vice -chairperson, said, “We are pleased to host the leadership meeting in Qatar. It will be an excellent opportunity for the new members to learn more about the network, and meet in person with businesswomen from other countries to share the expertise and exchange information.”
The network is a partnership of local businesswomen’s organisations across the Middle East and North Africa, Vital Voices Global Partnership and the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) of the US Department of State.
The goal of the partnership is to build a regional network of businesswomen to expand the number of women in business, to increase the value of their businesses, to advance the role of women in society, and to promote a regional culture of women’s entrepreneurship.
Aisha Alfardan, QBWF vice -chairperson, said, “We are pleased to host the leadership meeting in Qatar. It will be an excellent opportunity for the new members to learn more about the network, and meet in person with businesswomen from other countries to share the expertise and exchange information.”
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia Suffers Lack of Working Women as Oil Fluctuates
By William Green
June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Deep in the Arabian desert, hundreds of guests celebrate the birth of a city.
The Saudi government has flown them in on chartered planes to the northern city of Hail, then driven them for about half an hour in buses with police escorts to a giant marquee in the sand with a red carpet out front.
Inside, curtains with gold tassels adorn walls decorated with artists’ renditions of Prince Abdulaziz bin Mousaed Economic City, which the government says will be home to 300,000 people when it’s built.
After prayers from the Koran, the ceremony begins with a speech by Amr Al-Dabbagh, head of the ministry that has planned the city, who wears a formal cloak with gold trim. The audience -- all male, except for one woman -- sips tea and plucks chocolates off silver trays.
A film about the city offers a vision of the future: skyscrapers, science labs, kids with laptops in classrooms. As the speeches end, a Muzak version of “Nights in White Satin,” the song by the British group the Moody Blues, wafts from the loudspeakers.
Oil is no longer enough for Saudi Arabia, which is the largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Population Surge
The country’s population has more than tripled to 25 million people from 7.3 million in 1975 -- and 57 percent of all Saudis are under the age of 25. As the population grows, the kingdom’s riches must be spread among more people: In 2008, per- capita gross domestic product was less than $19,000, versus $47,000 in the U.S. and $103,000 in Qatar.
To create jobs for its growing citizenry, the government wants to build cities and diversify into new industries. “The impetus to change has grown as the population has grown,” says Howard Handy, chief economist at Samba Financial Group, a Riyadh-based bank. “They’re very focused on how to find work for all these young people.”
The proposed economic city -- 720 kilometers (450 miles) north of the capital of Riyadh -- is one of four new metropolises that Saudi Arabia is planning in the hope of creating more than a million new jobs by 2020. “Their dream is to become a major industrial power beyond oil,” says Jean- Francois Seznec, who teaches at the center for contemporary Arab studies at Georgetown University in Washington. The Saudis are mainly looking at energy-hungry industries such as plastics, petrochemicals, aluminum and steel.
Oil, Terrorists
The success -- or failure -- of Saudi Arabia’s plans could affect the stability of the whole region, which supplies the world with much of its oil and has also been a breeding ground for terrorists. “It’s a very big, populous country in a risky neighborhood,” Handy says. “It’s the holder of a tremendous amount of oil resources that are of great importance to the global economy. So everybody has an interest in its political future and the development of its economy.”
Recognizing this strategic significance, U.S. President Barack Obama plans to visit King Abdullah in Riyadh tomorrow to discuss such issues as peace in the Middle East, terrorism and the price of oil. Obama has said he intends to tell the king that “huge spikes” in energy prices would hurt the interests of both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
Sitting on nearly a quarter of the world’s known oil reserves, the kingdom can afford lavish dreams. As crude oil surged to a peak of $147 a barrel in July 2008, the state-owned oil and gas company, Saudi Aramco, generated as much as $1 billion a day in revenue.
Foreign Holdings
The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency -- the nation’s central bank -- built up its holdings of foreign assets such as bonds and currencies to $546 billion in October 2008 from $98 billion in 2003. Saudi Arabia’s total 2008 GDP of $482 billion dwarfed that of every other Middle Eastern nation.
For all of its wealth, Saudi Arabia has felt the effects of the global economic crisis as oil tumbled to $34 a barrel in December before rising to $68 yesterday. The four-city project is a scaled-back version of the original plan for six new urban centers. With banks and investors avoiding risk, more than $60 billion of projects have been canceled or delayed, Handy says.
The decline in oil prices and a 71 percent plunge in the nation’s Tadawul All Share Index since its February 2006 peak have shaken confidence. Handy expects GDP to shrink by 1.8 percent this year after growing 4.2 percent in 2008.
Restrictions on Women
Until recently, most Saudis haven’t needed to hold jobs. The government provides free education and health care and levies no personal income tax. An immigrant population of 6.5 million people performs almost all of the kingdom’s menial tasks. In 2007, just 4 million Saudis worked, according to the Ministry of Economy and Planning.
Only a fraction of the labor force is female, in part because of constraints placed on women by the government’s strict interpretation of Islam. They’re not allowed to mix in public with men who aren’t related to them, for instance, and are prohibited from driving cars.
With the population growing and inflation averaging 9.9 percent last year, there’s an economic need for more women to hold jobs. “Unless you’re very wealthy in Saudi Arabia, you cannot maintain a comfortable standard of living without two incomes,” says John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB, a Riyadh-based bank. “That is compelling women to work.”
Opening Up Insurance
Under its octogenarian ruler, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the country has been trying to modernize its economy. It wants to attract foreign investment -- including $500 billion for the new cities -- and has opened up industries such as insurance that were previously off-limits to foreign firms.
In its 2009 Ease of Doing Business report, the World Bank ranks Saudi Arabia 16th out of 181 countries, up from 67th in 2004. The kingdom attracted $24.3 billion in foreign direct investment in 2007, according to the latest available figures from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, compared with just $183 million in 2000.
Seznec says two big challenges remain: improving the quality of education and advancing the status of women in the workplace. “These are the two lines in the sand where the battle is taking place between the reformists and the religious forces in the kingdom,” he says.
King Abdullah favors change, talking in a 2007 speech of the need to create a “culture of labor,” for example. He also appointed a female deputy minister for girls’ education in February, the highest government rank a Saudi woman has attained.
First Co-Ed School
And he has authorized Saudi Aramco to create the country’s first co-ed school, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which will open in September.
Saudi Arabia isn’t the only country in the region moving to empower women. In May, neighboring Kuwait elected four women to its parliament.
The Saudi king and his ministers are “very logical and reasonable but are moving very slowly,” says Sherifa Zuhur, a Middle East expert at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.
“The majority of Saudi people are extremely conservative and not inclined to make any significant change.”
Saudi Arabia needs to prepare its youth for the workplace lest they become restive and more prone to terrorism, SABB’s Sfakianakis says. “These young people need to be empowered,” he says. “They can become untamed and uncontrolled if you fail to provide the right education, skills and jobs.”
Striking Oil
Since 1938, when American drillers in the eastern desert struck oil in a well called Dammam No. 7, Saudi Arabia’s economy has been entwined with those of its allies in the West.
For decades, the kingdom provided plentiful supplies at low prices: Throughout the 1960s, oil fetched less than $3 a barrel. Then in 1973, Saudi Arabia led an Arab embargo on oil sales to the U.S. and other supporters of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Within months, oil hit $12 a barrel, sending economic shock waves around the world.
The embargo was the start of an oil-fueled boom for Saudi Arabia. As the price soared to $39.50 by 1980, the year that war broke out between Iraq and Iran, newly wealthy Saudis became archetypes of excess, notorious in the West for squandering fortunes on everything from jewels to trophy properties.
In the 1980s, global growth slowed and oil sank to less than $10 a barrel in 1986. Then, in 2003, a new oil boom gathered pace: Prices climbed sevenfold by 2008, with rising consumption in China and India stoking concerns that oil reserves would not keep pace with demand.
Record State Budget
Saudi Arabia is still living on the spoils of that second boom. In December, King Abdullah announced a record $126.7 billion state budget for 2009. The money will pay for 1,500 new schools, 86 hospitals and the world’s largest women-only university.
Saudi Arabia has hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves while its debt amounts to only 15 percent of GDP.
“It’s really well positioned to face the global slowdown,” says Abdelhak Senhadji, the IMF’s mission chief for Saudi Arabia.
Still, the country remains vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of oil, which accounted for half of GDP and 90 percent of government revenue in 2007.
“The major economic challenge is to develop engines of growth that don’t have anything to do with oil and that work through the cycle, whether the price of oil is down or up,” says Brad Bourland, chief economist at Jadwa Investment, a Riyadh- based investment bank.
New Cities
To drive growth, new metropolises such as King Abdullah Economic City, beside the Red Sea, need help from foreign investors.
The city, designed to house 2 million people and employ 1 million, will cost $100 billion to build, says Fahd Al- Rasheed, CEO of Emaar, the Economic City, a Saudi-listed company formed in 2006 to oversee the development.
In addition to a “financial island” with office towers as high as 120 stories, the city would also include what the developers call Plastics Valley. Saudi Arabia can produce plastics cheaply because of its vast supply of petroleum, Al- Rasheed says.
In the desert heat, foreign laborers from countries such as India and Bangladesh toil in constructing the skeleton of King Abdullah city, burying sewage pipes, leveling roads and building the first blocks of offices and apartments.
Thousands of newly planted palm trees flank the road to the city’s main gate, which is decorated with an image of the king. There are no signs yet of the port or the towers.
Private Investors Sought
Al-Rasheed, 31, says the total cost of building the four cities will be about $157 billion. The government expects most of that to come from private investors ranging from plastics producers to mall developers to operators of private schools, which the government hopes to lure in part with tax breaks.
Early investors include the Kuwaiti company Al Mal Investment Co., appointed to develop Prince Abdulaziz bin Mousaed Economic City, and Abu Dhabi-based Rotana Hotel Management Corp., which plans to operate a luxury hotel there.
The government will provide land and fund a few projects such as the city’s train station.
Many other potential investors, strapped by the financial crisis, may not come. “The appetite for such things is really reduced,” Sfakianakis says. “It’s not an opportune time.” With hindsight, the Saudis’ original project now seems too ambitious, he says, evoking the grandiose developments conceived during the boom in Gulf neighbor Dubai.
“There was a little bit of Dubai-ness to it,” he says. “Let’s not build one; let’s build six.”
Demand for Homes
Al-Rasheed disagrees. He says rapid population growth will create demand for millions of new homes.
And the financial crisis has helped the cities because construction costs have tumbled along with the prices of property in the region, he says.
Some foreign companies are hoping to profit from building contracts in the cities. Cisco Systems Inc. is designing the technological infrastructure -- everything from broadband Internet connections to video surveillance systems to traffic control -- for all four of them.
Cisco will invest $250 million in Saudi Arabia during the next five years, says Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s chief globalization officer. Al-Dabbagh, the minister in charge of the cities, has asked Cisco to provide the world’s fastest broadband Internet connections.
“It’s one of these countries where we see a transformation going on,” Elfrink says.
Scottish Widows, KKR
Other investors are moving into the kingdom, too. Edinburgh-based Scottish Widows Investment Partnership Ltd. last year opened an asset management outpost in Riyadh.
“There are very real opportunities here that don’t exist in other parts of the Gulf,” says Peter Dorward, CEO of the company’s Saudi unit. “The Saudi economy is bigger than all of the other Gulf Cooperation Council economies put together.”
Scottish Widows hopes to manage assets for insurers that have been granted licenses to operate there, Dorward says. He’s also looking to create a fund to invest in property as population growth accentuates a shortage of homes, hotels and offices in cities such as Riyadh and Jeddah.
“Real estate has to be an opportunity when you’ve got that sort of demand,” he says.
The housing market should continue to grow in Riyadh as the population of 4.6 million increases by 3 percent a year, says a fourth-quarter review of the city’s property market by the Chicago real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
Another foreign company eying investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia is Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. In May, the leveraged buyout firm named Ford Fraker, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, as a senior adviser.
No Alcohol, No Cinemas
Western executives who venture to Saudi Arabia enter a world bearing little relation to their own. The Saudi government bans alcohol, outlaws cinemas and forbids the public practice of any religion other than Islam.
The government blocks Web sites featuring pornography, gambling or anything else deemed to “violate the tenets of the Islamic religion or societal norms.” Adultery and homosexuality are crimes punishable by death.
Reporters Without Borders ranks the kingdom 161st out of 173 countries in terms of freedom of the press.
Even something as mundane as shopping is tightly regulated.
At the entrance to Riyadh’s Al Faisaliah Mall, a sign warns that Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are for “families only.” On those days, women eat with their husbands and children in the main area of the food court; at other times, when unmarried men might see them, women must sit in a “family section,” cordoned off by a wall.
Women Segregated
As in all public settings, every woman in the mall -- regardless of nationality -- must wear a black, floor-length cloak called an abaya. Saudi women must cover their hair with a hijab, or head scarf, and many cover their faces too.
Security guards keep control, repeatedly stopping and questioning single men. The kingdom also has a religious police force -- the Commission for the Protection of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice -- which patrols the streets to ensure that women cover their hair and don’t meet with men who aren’t related to them.
Such rules make it difficult for Saudi Arabia to attract foreign talent.
“I’ve lived in 11 countries, and this is off the charts,” says a Western banker in Riyadh who asked not to be named. “It’s a dreadfully dreary place.”
After two weeks there, his wife left to live overseas, while he stayed to finish an assignment that fascinates him. He says government ministers and rich Saudi businessmen live by their own rules in their opulent homes, routinely serving guests the finest wines.
‘I Have a Nightmare’
“It’s a badge of distinction to have an open bar,” he says. “It immediately declares he’s above the system.”
For him, the idea of being caught with so much as a bottle of Scotch is terrifying: “I have a nightmare that some day I’ll be driving home and I’ll get stopped by the police and thrown in jail.”
“Saudi Arabia has an advanced social fabric with many expatriates who enjoy the standard and quality of living here,” responds Fahd Hamidaddin, general director of corporate communications at the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority. “It’s different from other countries and is proud to be so. However, these differences have not been an obstacle to record growth in foreign direct investment flows or the rich trading history we have with Western economies.”
Homemade Wine, Machine Guns
Westerners who land well-paying jobs typically live in gated compounds reserved for foreigners. There, expats drink homemade wine and alcohol smuggled in from countries such as Bahrain, while Western women are free to wear shorts.
At Eid Villas in Riyadh, the amenities include tennis courts, bowling alleys and five swimming pools. With kids biking and rollerblading in the streets, it could easily be an American suburb -- if not for the gun-toting soldiers in bulletproof vests at the front gate or the armored vehicle with a machine gun mounted on its roof.
The soldiers are a legacy of a spate of terrorist attacks from 2002 to 2005, including one in 2003 in which suicide bombers killed more than 20 foreigners at three expatriate compounds.
In October, the government said it had indicted 991 suspected militants it considers responsible for 30 attacks. “There’s been a tremendous change in terms of security,” says economist Sfakianakis, who moved in 2004 to one of the compounds that was bombed the previous year.
Al-Qaeda
“They basically broke the back of al-Qaeda,” says Sir William Patey, Britain’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “I’m sure there are still people in the country who are radicalized and extreme, but the security forces are keeping pressure on them. It’s a much more difficult operating environment for terrorists than three or four years ago.”
Even so, the taint of terrorism persists for the country that gave the world Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We are battling misconceptions,” says Ahmed Abdulkarim, CEO of Cadre Economic Cities Co., a nonprofit that educates and trains Saudi workers for the new cities. “People do not know Saudi Arabia. If they do, they’ll be talking about terrorism and bombing and Osama bin Laden.”
Saudi Arabia isn’t a hotbed of terrorism, Abdulkarim says. “There are people who have done lots of misdeeds, and they have smeared the entire nation,” he says.
Abdulkarim, who worked in Europe for Procter & Gamble, says Saudi Arabia’s image is a recurring obstacle in talks with potential foreign investors.
Resumes from Dubai, London
Lately, hiring has become easier as resumes flow in from humbled cities such as Dubai and London, he says. In the past, foreigners expected hardship money to live in Saudi Arabia. “Now these people are coming with a pay cut,” he says.
Finding good workers domestically is just as difficult, says Mohammed Hafiz, CEO of Al-Sawani Group, a clothing retailer with about 1,500 salesmen. “You face the issue of education and commitment,” he says. “There’s very high turnover.”
Hafiz is sitting one evening at an outdoor restaurant in Jeddah with about a dozen other Saudi businessmen, discussing the biggest issues confronting them. “We always had money,” says Reda Islam, CEO of Future Waves, a Jeddah-based technology consulting firm. “Nobody needed to work. We were spoiled.”
Cadre’s Abdulkarim, whose mandate is to train 200,000 Saudis over 15 years to work at globally competitive levels, says state schools are out of touch with the needs of the marketplace because they emphasize memorization over problem solving.
Islamic Studies Focus
Georgetown’s Seznec says the curriculum focuses so heavily on Islamic studies that it neglects subjects such as math and science, which leaves students with inadequate practical skills.
At advanced levels, Saudi Arabia ranks 86th out of 131 countries in the quality of its math and science education, according to Harvard University’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness.
While women account for 57 percent of higher-education graduates, they make up only 15 percent of the workforce. Those that work tend to be limited to a few fields: 86 percent are in education, 6 percent are in health care and 4 percent are in public administration.
Of 5.8 million people working in the private sector, only 51,000 are Saudi women.
Women face tough restrictions in the workplace in addition to having to wear a hijab. “If there is a department which employs a woman who works in a job that does not suit her nature or leads to mixing with men, then this is wrong and should be avoided,” the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency wrote to banks last year.
‘A Man’s Country’
Working women also say they’re underutilized. “It’s still a man’s country,” says Amal Al Olayan, 34, who studied health sciences at a women’s college in Jeddah. Al Olayan began her career in 1997 as an unpaid employee at a hospital laboratory and now works in human resources for a mall developer.
“I did not do what I really wanted to do, but at least I did something for myself and my kid,” she says.
Al Olayan, who is divorced, says she’d move to England, where she spent much of her childhood, if it didn’t mean leaving her 12-year-old son, who lives with her ex-husband. Under Saudi law, the boy cannot see her without his father’s permission.
Until 2005, a Saudi woman couldn’t start a business without a male manager to handle responsibilities such as signing company checks. Since then, a handful of women have become well- known entrepreneurs, including Nahed Taher, who founded Gulf One Investment Bank in 2006 with $100 million in capital.
Supported by Colleagues
Taher, 40, spent part of her youth in Texas before earning a Ph.D. in economics at Lancaster University in the U.K. In 2002, Taher became a senior economist at National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, where she says she was the first woman in a building with 4,000 employees.
“I’ve honestly been supported all the way through -- by colleagues, by the government, by royals and by investors,” says Taher, who dresses in Western clothes and leaves her head uncovered at work.
Still, the authorities send mixed signals about women’s freedom. The Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority invited female speakers such as Ireland’s former president, Mary Robinson, to a conference in Riyadh in January. But they were required to wear black abayas.
Saudi female audience members at first were segregated by a dividing wall from male attendees and foreign women. By the third day of the conference, though, several Saudi women had moved into the men’s section and were left undisturbed.
Less Insular
Saudis say that by their standards, things are moving rapidly. “We sit in the eye of the storm of change,” says Ammar Alkhudairy, CEO of Riyadh-based private equity firm Amwal AlKhaleej. “Ten years ago, we were much more insular.”
The government no longer decrees which companies can go public, he says. Today, it’s far easier for an entrepreneur to register a business, take it public and even sell stakes to overseas investors.
For the country to meet its economic ambitions, change will have to come faster, Georgetown’s Seznec says. “There’s not enough progress in modernizing education, and they’re not allowing women to develop fast enough in the workplace,” he says. “They’re aware of this, but it’s very, very slow.”
In the long run, the king and modernizing ministers are likely to prevail over the religious conservatives who have dominated areas such as education and the judicial system. “I’m convinced the reformists are winning the battle,” Seznec says. “They’re marginalizing the conservatives.”
Financial Crisis
The financial crisis poses a more immediate threat. Hurt by low prices and a drop in output, the portion of Saudi Arabia’s GDP that comes from selling oil will fall 10.5 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
At home, people who’ve lost money on stocks and real estate are cutting back on spending and investment. Even the powerful merchant families that dominate the private sector have suffered.
“I have friends who have literally lost hundreds of millions of dollars,” says Loay Nazer, chairman of the Nazer Group, a company in Jeddah with interests ranging from public relations to health care.
Alkhudairy agrees. “Everybody has seen a ghost,” he says. “Nobody is investing; nobody is buying.”
Once this crisis passes, the government expects that its efforts to modernize will drive a boom in foreign investment. “Saudi Arabia is a country that is aggressively changing its economic landscape,” says Hamidaddin of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority.
Grass and Flowers
Saudi Arabia is even trying to change its topography. In King Abdullah Economic City on the shores of the Red Sea, laborers are dredging canals in the sand and planting patches of lush grass and flowers.
Guides from Emaar show visitors architects’ models of villas as large as 12,000 square meters (129,167 square feet). Prospective buyers can also tour a show apartment with a trompe l’oeil mural that depicts the view residents could have of a fountain beside the sea.
Though change seems slow to outsiders, Saudis such as Nazer are confident that the modernized society the country is striving for will become a concrete reality. “The mood here is very cautious, not nervous,” he says. “You can’t be nervous when you’re sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world.”
June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Deep in the Arabian desert, hundreds of guests celebrate the birth of a city.
The Saudi government has flown them in on chartered planes to the northern city of Hail, then driven them for about half an hour in buses with police escorts to a giant marquee in the sand with a red carpet out front.
Inside, curtains with gold tassels adorn walls decorated with artists’ renditions of Prince Abdulaziz bin Mousaed Economic City, which the government says will be home to 300,000 people when it’s built.
After prayers from the Koran, the ceremony begins with a speech by Amr Al-Dabbagh, head of the ministry that has planned the city, who wears a formal cloak with gold trim. The audience -- all male, except for one woman -- sips tea and plucks chocolates off silver trays.
A film about the city offers a vision of the future: skyscrapers, science labs, kids with laptops in classrooms. As the speeches end, a Muzak version of “Nights in White Satin,” the song by the British group the Moody Blues, wafts from the loudspeakers.
Oil is no longer enough for Saudi Arabia, which is the largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Population Surge
The country’s population has more than tripled to 25 million people from 7.3 million in 1975 -- and 57 percent of all Saudis are under the age of 25. As the population grows, the kingdom’s riches must be spread among more people: In 2008, per- capita gross domestic product was less than $19,000, versus $47,000 in the U.S. and $103,000 in Qatar.
To create jobs for its growing citizenry, the government wants to build cities and diversify into new industries. “The impetus to change has grown as the population has grown,” says Howard Handy, chief economist at Samba Financial Group, a Riyadh-based bank. “They’re very focused on how to find work for all these young people.”
The proposed economic city -- 720 kilometers (450 miles) north of the capital of Riyadh -- is one of four new metropolises that Saudi Arabia is planning in the hope of creating more than a million new jobs by 2020. “Their dream is to become a major industrial power beyond oil,” says Jean- Francois Seznec, who teaches at the center for contemporary Arab studies at Georgetown University in Washington. The Saudis are mainly looking at energy-hungry industries such as plastics, petrochemicals, aluminum and steel.
Oil, Terrorists
The success -- or failure -- of Saudi Arabia’s plans could affect the stability of the whole region, which supplies the world with much of its oil and has also been a breeding ground for terrorists. “It’s a very big, populous country in a risky neighborhood,” Handy says. “It’s the holder of a tremendous amount of oil resources that are of great importance to the global economy. So everybody has an interest in its political future and the development of its economy.”
Recognizing this strategic significance, U.S. President Barack Obama plans to visit King Abdullah in Riyadh tomorrow to discuss such issues as peace in the Middle East, terrorism and the price of oil. Obama has said he intends to tell the king that “huge spikes” in energy prices would hurt the interests of both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
Sitting on nearly a quarter of the world’s known oil reserves, the kingdom can afford lavish dreams. As crude oil surged to a peak of $147 a barrel in July 2008, the state-owned oil and gas company, Saudi Aramco, generated as much as $1 billion a day in revenue.
Foreign Holdings
The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency -- the nation’s central bank -- built up its holdings of foreign assets such as bonds and currencies to $546 billion in October 2008 from $98 billion in 2003. Saudi Arabia’s total 2008 GDP of $482 billion dwarfed that of every other Middle Eastern nation.
For all of its wealth, Saudi Arabia has felt the effects of the global economic crisis as oil tumbled to $34 a barrel in December before rising to $68 yesterday. The four-city project is a scaled-back version of the original plan for six new urban centers. With banks and investors avoiding risk, more than $60 billion of projects have been canceled or delayed, Handy says.
The decline in oil prices and a 71 percent plunge in the nation’s Tadawul All Share Index since its February 2006 peak have shaken confidence. Handy expects GDP to shrink by 1.8 percent this year after growing 4.2 percent in 2008.
Restrictions on Women
Until recently, most Saudis haven’t needed to hold jobs. The government provides free education and health care and levies no personal income tax. An immigrant population of 6.5 million people performs almost all of the kingdom’s menial tasks. In 2007, just 4 million Saudis worked, according to the Ministry of Economy and Planning.
Only a fraction of the labor force is female, in part because of constraints placed on women by the government’s strict interpretation of Islam. They’re not allowed to mix in public with men who aren’t related to them, for instance, and are prohibited from driving cars.
With the population growing and inflation averaging 9.9 percent last year, there’s an economic need for more women to hold jobs. “Unless you’re very wealthy in Saudi Arabia, you cannot maintain a comfortable standard of living without two incomes,” says John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB, a Riyadh-based bank. “That is compelling women to work.”
Opening Up Insurance
Under its octogenarian ruler, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the country has been trying to modernize its economy. It wants to attract foreign investment -- including $500 billion for the new cities -- and has opened up industries such as insurance that were previously off-limits to foreign firms.
In its 2009 Ease of Doing Business report, the World Bank ranks Saudi Arabia 16th out of 181 countries, up from 67th in 2004. The kingdom attracted $24.3 billion in foreign direct investment in 2007, according to the latest available figures from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, compared with just $183 million in 2000.
Seznec says two big challenges remain: improving the quality of education and advancing the status of women in the workplace. “These are the two lines in the sand where the battle is taking place between the reformists and the religious forces in the kingdom,” he says.
King Abdullah favors change, talking in a 2007 speech of the need to create a “culture of labor,” for example. He also appointed a female deputy minister for girls’ education in February, the highest government rank a Saudi woman has attained.
First Co-Ed School
And he has authorized Saudi Aramco to create the country’s first co-ed school, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which will open in September.
Saudi Arabia isn’t the only country in the region moving to empower women. In May, neighboring Kuwait elected four women to its parliament.
The Saudi king and his ministers are “very logical and reasonable but are moving very slowly,” says Sherifa Zuhur, a Middle East expert at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.
“The majority of Saudi people are extremely conservative and not inclined to make any significant change.”
Saudi Arabia needs to prepare its youth for the workplace lest they become restive and more prone to terrorism, SABB’s Sfakianakis says. “These young people need to be empowered,” he says. “They can become untamed and uncontrolled if you fail to provide the right education, skills and jobs.”
Striking Oil
Since 1938, when American drillers in the eastern desert struck oil in a well called Dammam No. 7, Saudi Arabia’s economy has been entwined with those of its allies in the West.
For decades, the kingdom provided plentiful supplies at low prices: Throughout the 1960s, oil fetched less than $3 a barrel. Then in 1973, Saudi Arabia led an Arab embargo on oil sales to the U.S. and other supporters of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Within months, oil hit $12 a barrel, sending economic shock waves around the world.
The embargo was the start of an oil-fueled boom for Saudi Arabia. As the price soared to $39.50 by 1980, the year that war broke out between Iraq and Iran, newly wealthy Saudis became archetypes of excess, notorious in the West for squandering fortunes on everything from jewels to trophy properties.
In the 1980s, global growth slowed and oil sank to less than $10 a barrel in 1986. Then, in 2003, a new oil boom gathered pace: Prices climbed sevenfold by 2008, with rising consumption in China and India stoking concerns that oil reserves would not keep pace with demand.
Record State Budget
Saudi Arabia is still living on the spoils of that second boom. In December, King Abdullah announced a record $126.7 billion state budget for 2009. The money will pay for 1,500 new schools, 86 hospitals and the world’s largest women-only university.
Saudi Arabia has hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves while its debt amounts to only 15 percent of GDP.
“It’s really well positioned to face the global slowdown,” says Abdelhak Senhadji, the IMF’s mission chief for Saudi Arabia.
Still, the country remains vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of oil, which accounted for half of GDP and 90 percent of government revenue in 2007.
“The major economic challenge is to develop engines of growth that don’t have anything to do with oil and that work through the cycle, whether the price of oil is down or up,” says Brad Bourland, chief economist at Jadwa Investment, a Riyadh- based investment bank.
New Cities
To drive growth, new metropolises such as King Abdullah Economic City, beside the Red Sea, need help from foreign investors.
The city, designed to house 2 million people and employ 1 million, will cost $100 billion to build, says Fahd Al- Rasheed, CEO of Emaar, the Economic City, a Saudi-listed company formed in 2006 to oversee the development.
In addition to a “financial island” with office towers as high as 120 stories, the city would also include what the developers call Plastics Valley. Saudi Arabia can produce plastics cheaply because of its vast supply of petroleum, Al- Rasheed says.
In the desert heat, foreign laborers from countries such as India and Bangladesh toil in constructing the skeleton of King Abdullah city, burying sewage pipes, leveling roads and building the first blocks of offices and apartments.
Thousands of newly planted palm trees flank the road to the city’s main gate, which is decorated with an image of the king. There are no signs yet of the port or the towers.
Private Investors Sought
Al-Rasheed, 31, says the total cost of building the four cities will be about $157 billion. The government expects most of that to come from private investors ranging from plastics producers to mall developers to operators of private schools, which the government hopes to lure in part with tax breaks.
Early investors include the Kuwaiti company Al Mal Investment Co., appointed to develop Prince Abdulaziz bin Mousaed Economic City, and Abu Dhabi-based Rotana Hotel Management Corp., which plans to operate a luxury hotel there.
The government will provide land and fund a few projects such as the city’s train station.
Many other potential investors, strapped by the financial crisis, may not come. “The appetite for such things is really reduced,” Sfakianakis says. “It’s not an opportune time.” With hindsight, the Saudis’ original project now seems too ambitious, he says, evoking the grandiose developments conceived during the boom in Gulf neighbor Dubai.
“There was a little bit of Dubai-ness to it,” he says. “Let’s not build one; let’s build six.”
Demand for Homes
Al-Rasheed disagrees. He says rapid population growth will create demand for millions of new homes.
And the financial crisis has helped the cities because construction costs have tumbled along with the prices of property in the region, he says.
Some foreign companies are hoping to profit from building contracts in the cities. Cisco Systems Inc. is designing the technological infrastructure -- everything from broadband Internet connections to video surveillance systems to traffic control -- for all four of them.
Cisco will invest $250 million in Saudi Arabia during the next five years, says Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s chief globalization officer. Al-Dabbagh, the minister in charge of the cities, has asked Cisco to provide the world’s fastest broadband Internet connections.
“It’s one of these countries where we see a transformation going on,” Elfrink says.
Scottish Widows, KKR
Other investors are moving into the kingdom, too. Edinburgh-based Scottish Widows Investment Partnership Ltd. last year opened an asset management outpost in Riyadh.
“There are very real opportunities here that don’t exist in other parts of the Gulf,” says Peter Dorward, CEO of the company’s Saudi unit. “The Saudi economy is bigger than all of the other Gulf Cooperation Council economies put together.”
Scottish Widows hopes to manage assets for insurers that have been granted licenses to operate there, Dorward says. He’s also looking to create a fund to invest in property as population growth accentuates a shortage of homes, hotels and offices in cities such as Riyadh and Jeddah.
“Real estate has to be an opportunity when you’ve got that sort of demand,” he says.
The housing market should continue to grow in Riyadh as the population of 4.6 million increases by 3 percent a year, says a fourth-quarter review of the city’s property market by the Chicago real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
Another foreign company eying investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia is Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. In May, the leveraged buyout firm named Ford Fraker, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, as a senior adviser.
No Alcohol, No Cinemas
Western executives who venture to Saudi Arabia enter a world bearing little relation to their own. The Saudi government bans alcohol, outlaws cinemas and forbids the public practice of any religion other than Islam.
The government blocks Web sites featuring pornography, gambling or anything else deemed to “violate the tenets of the Islamic religion or societal norms.” Adultery and homosexuality are crimes punishable by death.
Reporters Without Borders ranks the kingdom 161st out of 173 countries in terms of freedom of the press.
Even something as mundane as shopping is tightly regulated.
At the entrance to Riyadh’s Al Faisaliah Mall, a sign warns that Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are for “families only.” On those days, women eat with their husbands and children in the main area of the food court; at other times, when unmarried men might see them, women must sit in a “family section,” cordoned off by a wall.
Women Segregated
As in all public settings, every woman in the mall -- regardless of nationality -- must wear a black, floor-length cloak called an abaya. Saudi women must cover their hair with a hijab, or head scarf, and many cover their faces too.
Security guards keep control, repeatedly stopping and questioning single men. The kingdom also has a religious police force -- the Commission for the Protection of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice -- which patrols the streets to ensure that women cover their hair and don’t meet with men who aren’t related to them.
Such rules make it difficult for Saudi Arabia to attract foreign talent.
“I’ve lived in 11 countries, and this is off the charts,” says a Western banker in Riyadh who asked not to be named. “It’s a dreadfully dreary place.”
After two weeks there, his wife left to live overseas, while he stayed to finish an assignment that fascinates him. He says government ministers and rich Saudi businessmen live by their own rules in their opulent homes, routinely serving guests the finest wines.
‘I Have a Nightmare’
“It’s a badge of distinction to have an open bar,” he says. “It immediately declares he’s above the system.”
For him, the idea of being caught with so much as a bottle of Scotch is terrifying: “I have a nightmare that some day I’ll be driving home and I’ll get stopped by the police and thrown in jail.”
“Saudi Arabia has an advanced social fabric with many expatriates who enjoy the standard and quality of living here,” responds Fahd Hamidaddin, general director of corporate communications at the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority. “It’s different from other countries and is proud to be so. However, these differences have not been an obstacle to record growth in foreign direct investment flows or the rich trading history we have with Western economies.”
Homemade Wine, Machine Guns
Westerners who land well-paying jobs typically live in gated compounds reserved for foreigners. There, expats drink homemade wine and alcohol smuggled in from countries such as Bahrain, while Western women are free to wear shorts.
At Eid Villas in Riyadh, the amenities include tennis courts, bowling alleys and five swimming pools. With kids biking and rollerblading in the streets, it could easily be an American suburb -- if not for the gun-toting soldiers in bulletproof vests at the front gate or the armored vehicle with a machine gun mounted on its roof.
The soldiers are a legacy of a spate of terrorist attacks from 2002 to 2005, including one in 2003 in which suicide bombers killed more than 20 foreigners at three expatriate compounds.
In October, the government said it had indicted 991 suspected militants it considers responsible for 30 attacks. “There’s been a tremendous change in terms of security,” says economist Sfakianakis, who moved in 2004 to one of the compounds that was bombed the previous year.
Al-Qaeda
“They basically broke the back of al-Qaeda,” says Sir William Patey, Britain’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “I’m sure there are still people in the country who are radicalized and extreme, but the security forces are keeping pressure on them. It’s a much more difficult operating environment for terrorists than three or four years ago.”
Even so, the taint of terrorism persists for the country that gave the world Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We are battling misconceptions,” says Ahmed Abdulkarim, CEO of Cadre Economic Cities Co., a nonprofit that educates and trains Saudi workers for the new cities. “People do not know Saudi Arabia. If they do, they’ll be talking about terrorism and bombing and Osama bin Laden.”
Saudi Arabia isn’t a hotbed of terrorism, Abdulkarim says. “There are people who have done lots of misdeeds, and they have smeared the entire nation,” he says.
Abdulkarim, who worked in Europe for Procter & Gamble, says Saudi Arabia’s image is a recurring obstacle in talks with potential foreign investors.
Resumes from Dubai, London
Lately, hiring has become easier as resumes flow in from humbled cities such as Dubai and London, he says. In the past, foreigners expected hardship money to live in Saudi Arabia. “Now these people are coming with a pay cut,” he says.
Finding good workers domestically is just as difficult, says Mohammed Hafiz, CEO of Al-Sawani Group, a clothing retailer with about 1,500 salesmen. “You face the issue of education and commitment,” he says. “There’s very high turnover.”
Hafiz is sitting one evening at an outdoor restaurant in Jeddah with about a dozen other Saudi businessmen, discussing the biggest issues confronting them. “We always had money,” says Reda Islam, CEO of Future Waves, a Jeddah-based technology consulting firm. “Nobody needed to work. We were spoiled.”
Cadre’s Abdulkarim, whose mandate is to train 200,000 Saudis over 15 years to work at globally competitive levels, says state schools are out of touch with the needs of the marketplace because they emphasize memorization over problem solving.
Islamic Studies Focus
Georgetown’s Seznec says the curriculum focuses so heavily on Islamic studies that it neglects subjects such as math and science, which leaves students with inadequate practical skills.
At advanced levels, Saudi Arabia ranks 86th out of 131 countries in the quality of its math and science education, according to Harvard University’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness.
While women account for 57 percent of higher-education graduates, they make up only 15 percent of the workforce. Those that work tend to be limited to a few fields: 86 percent are in education, 6 percent are in health care and 4 percent are in public administration.
Of 5.8 million people working in the private sector, only 51,000 are Saudi women.
Women face tough restrictions in the workplace in addition to having to wear a hijab. “If there is a department which employs a woman who works in a job that does not suit her nature or leads to mixing with men, then this is wrong and should be avoided,” the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency wrote to banks last year.
‘A Man’s Country’
Working women also say they’re underutilized. “It’s still a man’s country,” says Amal Al Olayan, 34, who studied health sciences at a women’s college in Jeddah. Al Olayan began her career in 1997 as an unpaid employee at a hospital laboratory and now works in human resources for a mall developer.
“I did not do what I really wanted to do, but at least I did something for myself and my kid,” she says.
Al Olayan, who is divorced, says she’d move to England, where she spent much of her childhood, if it didn’t mean leaving her 12-year-old son, who lives with her ex-husband. Under Saudi law, the boy cannot see her without his father’s permission.
Until 2005, a Saudi woman couldn’t start a business without a male manager to handle responsibilities such as signing company checks. Since then, a handful of women have become well- known entrepreneurs, including Nahed Taher, who founded Gulf One Investment Bank in 2006 with $100 million in capital.
Supported by Colleagues
Taher, 40, spent part of her youth in Texas before earning a Ph.D. in economics at Lancaster University in the U.K. In 2002, Taher became a senior economist at National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, where she says she was the first woman in a building with 4,000 employees.
“I’ve honestly been supported all the way through -- by colleagues, by the government, by royals and by investors,” says Taher, who dresses in Western clothes and leaves her head uncovered at work.
Still, the authorities send mixed signals about women’s freedom. The Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority invited female speakers such as Ireland’s former president, Mary Robinson, to a conference in Riyadh in January. But they were required to wear black abayas.
Saudi female audience members at first were segregated by a dividing wall from male attendees and foreign women. By the third day of the conference, though, several Saudi women had moved into the men’s section and were left undisturbed.
Less Insular
Saudis say that by their standards, things are moving rapidly. “We sit in the eye of the storm of change,” says Ammar Alkhudairy, CEO of Riyadh-based private equity firm Amwal AlKhaleej. “Ten years ago, we were much more insular.”
The government no longer decrees which companies can go public, he says. Today, it’s far easier for an entrepreneur to register a business, take it public and even sell stakes to overseas investors.
For the country to meet its economic ambitions, change will have to come faster, Georgetown’s Seznec says. “There’s not enough progress in modernizing education, and they’re not allowing women to develop fast enough in the workplace,” he says. “They’re aware of this, but it’s very, very slow.”
In the long run, the king and modernizing ministers are likely to prevail over the religious conservatives who have dominated areas such as education and the judicial system. “I’m convinced the reformists are winning the battle,” Seznec says. “They’re marginalizing the conservatives.”
Financial Crisis
The financial crisis poses a more immediate threat. Hurt by low prices and a drop in output, the portion of Saudi Arabia’s GDP that comes from selling oil will fall 10.5 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
At home, people who’ve lost money on stocks and real estate are cutting back on spending and investment. Even the powerful merchant families that dominate the private sector have suffered.
“I have friends who have literally lost hundreds of millions of dollars,” says Loay Nazer, chairman of the Nazer Group, a company in Jeddah with interests ranging from public relations to health care.
Alkhudairy agrees. “Everybody has seen a ghost,” he says. “Nobody is investing; nobody is buying.”
Once this crisis passes, the government expects that its efforts to modernize will drive a boom in foreign investment. “Saudi Arabia is a country that is aggressively changing its economic landscape,” says Hamidaddin of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority.
Grass and Flowers
Saudi Arabia is even trying to change its topography. In King Abdullah Economic City on the shores of the Red Sea, laborers are dredging canals in the sand and planting patches of lush grass and flowers.
Guides from Emaar show visitors architects’ models of villas as large as 12,000 square meters (129,167 square feet). Prospective buyers can also tour a show apartment with a trompe l’oeil mural that depicts the view residents could have of a fountain beside the sea.
Though change seems slow to outsiders, Saudis such as Nazer are confident that the modernized society the country is striving for will become a concrete reality. “The mood here is very cautious, not nervous,” he says. “You can’t be nervous when you’re sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world.”
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Saudi Arabia: Workshops offer over 500 women top business tips
Walaa Hawari | Arab News
RIYADH: More than 500 Saudi businesswomen and investors are attending four training workshops here today and tomorrow.
Consultants in international trade and international law will conduct them at the 4th Saudi Businesswomen Forum entitled “Active Direction in the Business Environment to Face Economic Changes.”
The workshops have been organized by the women’s branch of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry and will include outlining procedures for cooperation with international companies as promising investing opportunities for Saudi women. “The forum aims at enhancing the qualifications of the Saudi businesswomen and investors in the face of the rapid changes the Saudi economy is undergoing through activating the powerful economic elements in the Kingdom and achieving development and economic ambitions on the long run,” said Huda Al-Juraisi, director of the organizing committee of the forum. Legal trainers will introduce international trade law, issues pertaining to contracts, content of trade contracts and means to solve disputes in international trade contracts.
According to Al-Juraisi, the forum is considered one of the biggest women’s economic, educational and cultural gatherings in the Kingdom.
“This year’s generous gesture by the businesswomen of sponsoring 150 students to attend the workshops and benefit from the presentations and experiences of the businesswomen free of charge, reflects the understanding of social responsibility which is part of the forum’s mission to support those interested in entering the business and investment world,” said Al-Juraisi.
Areej Bint Homoud Al-Ibraheem, owner of Nawart Najd PR Company — one of the sponsors — praised the Chamber’s efforts to involve businesswomen in economic progress.
Yet as a response to whether the forum is an opportunity for the businesswomen to put forward their demands, Al-Ibraheem says this forum is more of an educational experience.
“The forum is an occasion to present new visions and educate businesswomen about the recent economic status and inform them of the proper ways and means to face them,” explained Al-Ibraheem indicating that there are other events and conferences concerned with coming up with proposals and recommendations and forwarding them to officials.
Amal Zahed, owner of Secas Trading, said the forum offered a chance to sound the voice of Saudi businesswomen. “Such meetings reflect on the demands and needs of businesswomen, and the observation is passed on to the decision-makers to review,” says Zahed. “We should try and make ourselves heard through forums and meetings.”
RIYADH: More than 500 Saudi businesswomen and investors are attending four training workshops here today and tomorrow.
Consultants in international trade and international law will conduct them at the 4th Saudi Businesswomen Forum entitled “Active Direction in the Business Environment to Face Economic Changes.”
The workshops have been organized by the women’s branch of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry and will include outlining procedures for cooperation with international companies as promising investing opportunities for Saudi women. “The forum aims at enhancing the qualifications of the Saudi businesswomen and investors in the face of the rapid changes the Saudi economy is undergoing through activating the powerful economic elements in the Kingdom and achieving development and economic ambitions on the long run,” said Huda Al-Juraisi, director of the organizing committee of the forum. Legal trainers will introduce international trade law, issues pertaining to contracts, content of trade contracts and means to solve disputes in international trade contracts.
According to Al-Juraisi, the forum is considered one of the biggest women’s economic, educational and cultural gatherings in the Kingdom.
“This year’s generous gesture by the businesswomen of sponsoring 150 students to attend the workshops and benefit from the presentations and experiences of the businesswomen free of charge, reflects the understanding of social responsibility which is part of the forum’s mission to support those interested in entering the business and investment world,” said Al-Juraisi.
Areej Bint Homoud Al-Ibraheem, owner of Nawart Najd PR Company — one of the sponsors — praised the Chamber’s efforts to involve businesswomen in economic progress.
Yet as a response to whether the forum is an opportunity for the businesswomen to put forward their demands, Al-Ibraheem says this forum is more of an educational experience.
“The forum is an occasion to present new visions and educate businesswomen about the recent economic status and inform them of the proper ways and means to face them,” explained Al-Ibraheem indicating that there are other events and conferences concerned with coming up with proposals and recommendations and forwarding them to officials.
Amal Zahed, owner of Secas Trading, said the forum offered a chance to sound the voice of Saudi businesswomen. “Such meetings reflect on the demands and needs of businesswomen, and the observation is passed on to the decision-makers to review,” says Zahed. “We should try and make ourselves heard through forums and meetings.”
Friday, May 8, 2009
Algeria: El Moudjahid Forum on Women
La Tribune, 5.7.09
A debate yesterday, organized by the daily El Moudjahid, centered on the presence of women in the public sphere. Mrs. Francoise Halimi, Vice President of the Association of Women Heads of Enterprise, noted that the emancipation of women, and an active public life, has permitted them to ameliorate their families’ standard of living.
A debate yesterday, organized by the daily El Moudjahid, centered on the presence of women in the public sphere. Mrs. Francoise Halimi, Vice President of the Association of Women Heads of Enterprise, noted that the emancipation of women, and an active public life, has permitted them to ameliorate their families’ standard of living.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Saudi Arabia: Businesswomen want male agent out
Hassna’a Mokhtar | Arab News
JEDDAH: The Ministry of Commerce and Industry confirmed yesterday that some of the ministry’s regional departments were violating a ministerial decree issued in April 2004. The decree states that Saudi women can set up businesses without needing a male agent. Nonetheless, businesswomen have reported that the decree was only implemented in a few locations in the country. The male legal agent is required to conduct affairs with various government organizations. He is granted full powers in company matters and acts with a power of attorney.
“The requirement for a legal agent is an obstacle for many businesswomen,” said Alia Banaja, chairwoman of the Jeddah-based IT company 2 The Point. “I closed down my local operations last week after demanding the removal of this requirement.” According to the decree, a Saudi woman can own and manage her business if her work employs and caters only to women. When, on the other hand, the business is aimed at both men and women, she can own the establishment but has to hire a Saudi man to manage the business.
In March, Banaja started a campaign with a group of businesswomen from the Eastern and Central regions calling for the implementation of the 2004 ministerial decision everywhere in the Kingdom (www.saudibwc.com). The next step was to close down their businesses if their demands for the removal of this requirement were not met. And finally, if closing businesses did not produce positive results from the authorities, they would appeal directly to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. They wanted to have the requirement for a male Saudi general manager canceled, even in the case of a woman’s owning a business that deals with both sexes.
Banaja and other businesswomen spoke to Hassan Aqeel, undersecretary at the Ministry of Commerce and Trade at the end of April. He restated the requirement for a male Saudi manager. “A businesswoman doesn’t need a male legal agent when she manages the work herself in an all-women establishment,” said Aqeel on April 26 to Al-Madina newspaper. “If her business employs or deals with men, then she has to hire a male to manage the affairs of these men.”
Contacted for further comments, Aqeel confirmed the newspaper report.
Nashwa Taher, board member at Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Arab News that the Khadija bint Khuwailid Center for businesswomen had printed a small leaflet to educate women on how to limit the authority given to a male manager. “The leaflet has guidelines businesswomen must use when hiring a manager for the business. It clearly defines what authority he is given,” said Taher.
She added that the center was now studying the reasons why a manager had to be hired. “We require more openness for businesswomen. Therefore, we want to update and change old procedures,” said Taher.
Lawyer Tariq Al-Ibrahim, who advised the Khadija bint Khuwailid Center on the legal aspects of the leaflet, said it was the women’s responsibility in the end to limit the male manager’s power. “All it needs is a contract between the businesswoman and the manager specifying the duties and the extent of his control and responsibilities,” he said, adding: “The owner also needs to oversee all the papers and legal contracts that pass through the manager’s hands in order to exercise total control and avoid any future problems.”
JEDDAH: The Ministry of Commerce and Industry confirmed yesterday that some of the ministry’s regional departments were violating a ministerial decree issued in April 2004. The decree states that Saudi women can set up businesses without needing a male agent. Nonetheless, businesswomen have reported that the decree was only implemented in a few locations in the country. The male legal agent is required to conduct affairs with various government organizations. He is granted full powers in company matters and acts with a power of attorney.
“The requirement for a legal agent is an obstacle for many businesswomen,” said Alia Banaja, chairwoman of the Jeddah-based IT company 2 The Point. “I closed down my local operations last week after demanding the removal of this requirement.” According to the decree, a Saudi woman can own and manage her business if her work employs and caters only to women. When, on the other hand, the business is aimed at both men and women, she can own the establishment but has to hire a Saudi man to manage the business.
In March, Banaja started a campaign with a group of businesswomen from the Eastern and Central regions calling for the implementation of the 2004 ministerial decision everywhere in the Kingdom (www.saudibwc.com). The next step was to close down their businesses if their demands for the removal of this requirement were not met. And finally, if closing businesses did not produce positive results from the authorities, they would appeal directly to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. They wanted to have the requirement for a male Saudi general manager canceled, even in the case of a woman’s owning a business that deals with both sexes.
Banaja and other businesswomen spoke to Hassan Aqeel, undersecretary at the Ministry of Commerce and Trade at the end of April. He restated the requirement for a male Saudi manager. “A businesswoman doesn’t need a male legal agent when she manages the work herself in an all-women establishment,” said Aqeel on April 26 to Al-Madina newspaper. “If her business employs or deals with men, then she has to hire a male to manage the affairs of these men.”
Contacted for further comments, Aqeel confirmed the newspaper report.
Nashwa Taher, board member at Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Arab News that the Khadija bint Khuwailid Center for businesswomen had printed a small leaflet to educate women on how to limit the authority given to a male manager. “The leaflet has guidelines businesswomen must use when hiring a manager for the business. It clearly defines what authority he is given,” said Taher.
She added that the center was now studying the reasons why a manager had to be hired. “We require more openness for businesswomen. Therefore, we want to update and change old procedures,” said Taher.
Lawyer Tariq Al-Ibrahim, who advised the Khadija bint Khuwailid Center on the legal aspects of the leaflet, said it was the women’s responsibility in the end to limit the male manager’s power. “All it needs is a contract between the businesswoman and the manager specifying the duties and the extent of his control and responsibilities,” he said, adding: “The owner also needs to oversee all the papers and legal contracts that pass through the manager’s hands in order to exercise total control and avoid any future problems.”
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Jordan: Conference opens to support women’s entrepreneurship in the Arab region
Jordan Times
By Omar Obeidat
AMMAN - Over 130 female entrepreneurs from Jordan and 15 other Arab and foreign countries have come together to identify strategies and approaches to boost their businesses’ potential.
Launched in Amman on Monday, the Women’s Entrepreneurship Development (WED) Conference also seeks to increase women’s participation in the labour force and discuss the challenges hindering women’s empowerment.
During the three-day event, female entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to meet with investors interested in funding women’s projects, as well as organisations that support the development of women-owned businesses in the region.
WED, the first of its kind in the Arab region, is organised by the Business Development Centre (BDC) and the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation (ITC-ILO).
BDC President and Chief Executive Officer Nayef Stetieh said the conference brings experts and entrepreneurs dedicated to female entrepreneurship from around the world to develop the support services available to women.
“Despite social challenges, female entrepreneurs in Jordan and the region can be a real source for economic growth,” he added.
Minister of Planning and International Cooperation (MoPIC) Suhair Al-Ali said in her inauguration speech that Arab women still face several challenges that stand between them and their aspirations.
“There are stereotypes that women do not have the capacity and capability to compete with men in the business field,” she noted, adding that women can be key contributors to economic development in the Arab region.
Women also have difficulties in finding financial resources, which force many female investors and businesswomen to establish only small- and medium-sized projects that can be funded with small loans, Al-Ali said.
She pointed to a study conducted by the World Bank in 2008 which indicated that 85 per cent of women-owned companies in the region are in the industrial sector while the other 15 per cent are in the services sector.
Basma Khlouf, from the northern Mazar Municipality, said that women in the area encounter difficulties in funding their projects due to strict financing rules.
Her main goal in participating in the event, she said, was to find small projects to support women in her “poor area” so they could contribute in improving their families’ living standards.
On the other hand, Iman Majali said that she was able to get a loan 10 years ago to open a private education centre for people with disabilities.
“I started with two employees and now the centre has 23 staff members,” said Majali, who came to the conference to find ways to improve her business’ administration.
The conference targets international development agencies, banks, microfinance institutions and investors interested in funding female-owned projects, in addition to creating partnerships and networking among female entrepreneurs.
“The conference aims to stimulate knowledge and experience sharing among main actors in promoting women’s entrepreneurship development in the region,” ITC-ILO representative Kholoud Khaldi said.
WED is supported by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development , MoPIC, Jordan Enterprise, The National Fund for Enterprise Support, Durham University, the USAID-funded Tatweer Project and Business and Professional Women-Amman.
By Omar Obeidat
AMMAN - Over 130 female entrepreneurs from Jordan and 15 other Arab and foreign countries have come together to identify strategies and approaches to boost their businesses’ potential.
Launched in Amman on Monday, the Women’s Entrepreneurship Development (WED) Conference also seeks to increase women’s participation in the labour force and discuss the challenges hindering women’s empowerment.
During the three-day event, female entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to meet with investors interested in funding women’s projects, as well as organisations that support the development of women-owned businesses in the region.
WED, the first of its kind in the Arab region, is organised by the Business Development Centre (BDC) and the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation (ITC-ILO).
BDC President and Chief Executive Officer Nayef Stetieh said the conference brings experts and entrepreneurs dedicated to female entrepreneurship from around the world to develop the support services available to women.
“Despite social challenges, female entrepreneurs in Jordan and the region can be a real source for economic growth,” he added.
Minister of Planning and International Cooperation (MoPIC) Suhair Al-Ali said in her inauguration speech that Arab women still face several challenges that stand between them and their aspirations.
“There are stereotypes that women do not have the capacity and capability to compete with men in the business field,” she noted, adding that women can be key contributors to economic development in the Arab region.
Women also have difficulties in finding financial resources, which force many female investors and businesswomen to establish only small- and medium-sized projects that can be funded with small loans, Al-Ali said.
She pointed to a study conducted by the World Bank in 2008 which indicated that 85 per cent of women-owned companies in the region are in the industrial sector while the other 15 per cent are in the services sector.
Basma Khlouf, from the northern Mazar Municipality, said that women in the area encounter difficulties in funding their projects due to strict financing rules.
Her main goal in participating in the event, she said, was to find small projects to support women in her “poor area” so they could contribute in improving their families’ living standards.
On the other hand, Iman Majali said that she was able to get a loan 10 years ago to open a private education centre for people with disabilities.
“I started with two employees and now the centre has 23 staff members,” said Majali, who came to the conference to find ways to improve her business’ administration.
The conference targets international development agencies, banks, microfinance institutions and investors interested in funding female-owned projects, in addition to creating partnerships and networking among female entrepreneurs.
“The conference aims to stimulate knowledge and experience sharing among main actors in promoting women’s entrepreneurship development in the region,” ITC-ILO representative Kholoud Khaldi said.
WED is supported by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development , MoPIC, Jordan Enterprise, The National Fund for Enterprise Support, Durham University, the USAID-funded Tatweer Project and Business and Professional Women-Amman.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Occupied Territories: Palestinian filmmakers beat the odds to hit silver screen
CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) --
When the 10th London Palestine Film Festival opens this week, Londoners will have greater access to films made in the Palestinian territories than many people living in the region.
Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir's first feature film, "Salt of This Sea," premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2008.
Today, there is only one movie theater operating in the West Bank. Gaza has none.
The "Al Kasaba" theater in Ramallah is the only formal film venue for a population of nearly 2.5 million in the West Bank. Due to travel restrictions it is virtually inaccessible to the one and one half million Palestinians residing in Gaza.
It is estimated that about 80 percent of Palestinian children have never been to a movie theater, according to a report in The Christian Science Monitor.
With this lack of distribution, and hardly any formal funding available, producing a film within the Palestinian territories is a tremendous challenge.
Against the odds, the region's filmmakers completed three feature films and an estimated eight shorts in 2008 -- more than ever before. Local directors are determined to tell their stories and have adapted to cope with the region's difficult circumstances.
Lack of cinematic infrastructure
One of the greatest obstacles filmmakers face is a lack of equipment and crews. According to industry experts, directors in the Palestinian territories have little hope of competing with international news media over the limited resources.
"Crews who can work for international news organizations at very high salaries don't want to work for independent film makers," says director and coordinator of the Shashat's Women's Film Festival, Alia Arasoughly. Are you interested in seeing more films made by Palestinian directors? Tell us below in the SoundOff box below
"They don't want to rent their equipment out for a 10-hour shooting day, when they can rent it out for just two hours and triple the price to an international crew."
As a consequence of this, filmmakers are looking to local residents for production assistance.
Annemarie Jacir's first feature film,"Salt of This Sea," which premiered last year at Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of an American woman who travels to Israel to visit the land where her grandfather lived before Palestinians were ejected in 1948.
The film was shot with a crew consisting largely of novices assembled by the director, including a former ambulance driver, a jeweler and a radio DJ.
"There were always discussions with my producers, who preferred bringing more experienced professional people from Europe in, and I insisted that I'd rather have locals even if they're less experienced," Jacir told CNN.
"We're trying to build something in [the Palestinian territories], and when things got tough, because they believed in what we were doing, they stayed."
During the shoot Jacir's team also received unexpected support from members of the local community, who brought them food and drinks in between takes.
"We even had the entire Palestinian police force blocking traffic; going out of their way to help us," remembers Jacir.
Restricted Mobility
A further complication faced by Jacir and her colleagues is the limitation on movement and access in the Palestinian territories.
Since Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israeli authorities have imposed varying degrees of restriction on the movement of people in and out of the territories, according to human rights group, Amnesty International.
In 2007, the year in which Jacir shot the majority of her film, Amnesty reported 84 manned checkpoints and 465 unmanned blockades within the West Bank alone.
As a result of these security measures, which the Israelis say are necessary to secure their country from Palestinian attacks, the production of "Salt of This Sea," a movie with over 80 shooting locations was logistically very complex.
In order to shoot the road movie lawfully, Jacir and her crew had to apply for permission to leave Ramallah.
"Every single crew member was rejected. So, just purely getting through the checkpoints and the logistics of keeping a film crew together was an obstacle."
Obtaining shooting permission was equally problematic. Permits for various locations including Jaffa were refused repeatedly -- a hindrance which did not deter Jacir.
"In some cases we just filmed anyway. We put the actors in a real situation and we just did it guerrilla-style. That's how most Palestinian filmmakers are managing to do their work," she told CNN.
A bright future?
While drawbacks such as a lack of funding, a lack of resources, and restrictions of movement would dissuade directors in many other countries, members of the growing film community in the Palestinian territories are forging bonds over the difficulties.
While Arasoughly and Jacir agree that it would be going too far to speak of a "national cinema" at this stage, they look to the future with great optimism.
The novice crew members Jacir recruited to work on "Salt of This Sea" have continued to find work in filmmaking -- a fact Jacir believes indicates an industry is gradually starting to emerge.
"I think there's a wave coming -- a lot of new filmmakers, a lot of people making documentaries and more experimental films, working together," Jacir told CNN.
Arasoughly, whose Shashat festival will enter its fifth year this fall, is equally hopeful.
"The fact that we, under the harshest of conditions in the Arab world, have been able to hold an annual women's film festival, and that hundreds of students come to our screenings means that people want their worlds to be expanded," she said.
"They want wider horizons, and I think for me, this is what makes it possible to go on in the context that we live in."
LONDON, England (CNN) --
When the 10th London Palestine Film Festival opens this week, Londoners will have greater access to films made in the Palestinian territories than many people living in the region.
Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir's first feature film, "Salt of This Sea," premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2008.
Today, there is only one movie theater operating in the West Bank. Gaza has none.
The "Al Kasaba" theater in Ramallah is the only formal film venue for a population of nearly 2.5 million in the West Bank. Due to travel restrictions it is virtually inaccessible to the one and one half million Palestinians residing in Gaza.
It is estimated that about 80 percent of Palestinian children have never been to a movie theater, according to a report in The Christian Science Monitor.
With this lack of distribution, and hardly any formal funding available, producing a film within the Palestinian territories is a tremendous challenge.
Against the odds, the region's filmmakers completed three feature films and an estimated eight shorts in 2008 -- more than ever before. Local directors are determined to tell their stories and have adapted to cope with the region's difficult circumstances.
Lack of cinematic infrastructure
One of the greatest obstacles filmmakers face is a lack of equipment and crews. According to industry experts, directors in the Palestinian territories have little hope of competing with international news media over the limited resources.
"Crews who can work for international news organizations at very high salaries don't want to work for independent film makers," says director and coordinator of the Shashat's Women's Film Festival, Alia Arasoughly. Are you interested in seeing more films made by Palestinian directors? Tell us below in the SoundOff box below
"They don't want to rent their equipment out for a 10-hour shooting day, when they can rent it out for just two hours and triple the price to an international crew."
As a consequence of this, filmmakers are looking to local residents for production assistance.
Annemarie Jacir's first feature film,"Salt of This Sea," which premiered last year at Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of an American woman who travels to Israel to visit the land where her grandfather lived before Palestinians were ejected in 1948.
The film was shot with a crew consisting largely of novices assembled by the director, including a former ambulance driver, a jeweler and a radio DJ.
"There were always discussions with my producers, who preferred bringing more experienced professional people from Europe in, and I insisted that I'd rather have locals even if they're less experienced," Jacir told CNN.
"We're trying to build something in [the Palestinian territories], and when things got tough, because they believed in what we were doing, they stayed."
During the shoot Jacir's team also received unexpected support from members of the local community, who brought them food and drinks in between takes.
"We even had the entire Palestinian police force blocking traffic; going out of their way to help us," remembers Jacir.
Restricted Mobility
A further complication faced by Jacir and her colleagues is the limitation on movement and access in the Palestinian territories.
Since Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israeli authorities have imposed varying degrees of restriction on the movement of people in and out of the territories, according to human rights group, Amnesty International.
In 2007, the year in which Jacir shot the majority of her film, Amnesty reported 84 manned checkpoints and 465 unmanned blockades within the West Bank alone.
As a result of these security measures, which the Israelis say are necessary to secure their country from Palestinian attacks, the production of "Salt of This Sea," a movie with over 80 shooting locations was logistically very complex.
In order to shoot the road movie lawfully, Jacir and her crew had to apply for permission to leave Ramallah.
"Every single crew member was rejected. So, just purely getting through the checkpoints and the logistics of keeping a film crew together was an obstacle."
Obtaining shooting permission was equally problematic. Permits for various locations including Jaffa were refused repeatedly -- a hindrance which did not deter Jacir.
"In some cases we just filmed anyway. We put the actors in a real situation and we just did it guerrilla-style. That's how most Palestinian filmmakers are managing to do their work," she told CNN.
A bright future?
While drawbacks such as a lack of funding, a lack of resources, and restrictions of movement would dissuade directors in many other countries, members of the growing film community in the Palestinian territories are forging bonds over the difficulties.
While Arasoughly and Jacir agree that it would be going too far to speak of a "national cinema" at this stage, they look to the future with great optimism.
The novice crew members Jacir recruited to work on "Salt of This Sea" have continued to find work in filmmaking -- a fact Jacir believes indicates an industry is gradually starting to emerge.
"I think there's a wave coming -- a lot of new filmmakers, a lot of people making documentaries and more experimental films, working together," Jacir told CNN.
Arasoughly, whose Shashat festival will enter its fifth year this fall, is equally hopeful.
"The fact that we, under the harshest of conditions in the Arab world, have been able to hold an annual women's film festival, and that hundreds of students come to our screenings means that people want their worlds to be expanded," she said.
"They want wider horizons, and I think for me, this is what makes it possible to go on in the context that we live in."
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Saudi Arabia: Saudi women to sell goods in Jeddah mall
Saudi Gazette
By Mohammad Hadhadh
JEDDAH – Twenty-two Saudi women have signed contracts to rent stalls at Al-Murjan Mall in Jeddah after being selected in a public draw at the Jeddah Mayoralty in conjunction with Abullatif Jamil Center for Community Service.
The contracts were signed to put an end to a problem created when municipality staff removed the stalls of some women from the mall almost two months ago. It is important to reorganize stalls since some women used to sell their goods randomly in front of the mall, said Dr. Nasir Al-Jarallah, Director General of Public Interest Markets and head of the Stalls Organizing Committee in Al-Murjan Mall.
However, Ali Al-Qahtani, Director of Bab Rizq Jameel Program in Jeddah, explained that the stalls project is aimed at finding job opportunities for women and at supporting small businesses.
He said that the problem started when a number of women erected stalls randomly in front of Al-Murjan Mall without licenses. We contacted the municipality which chose appropriate places for the stalls. The mall owner volunteered space for the stalls inside the mall, while the Bab Rizq Jameel Program agreed to pay the rental fees which have been reduced from SR3,600 yearly to SR2,400. Women investing in the stalls will pay back the amount in installments. – Okaz/SG
By Mohammad Hadhadh
JEDDAH – Twenty-two Saudi women have signed contracts to rent stalls at Al-Murjan Mall in Jeddah after being selected in a public draw at the Jeddah Mayoralty in conjunction with Abullatif Jamil Center for Community Service.
The contracts were signed to put an end to a problem created when municipality staff removed the stalls of some women from the mall almost two months ago. It is important to reorganize stalls since some women used to sell their goods randomly in front of the mall, said Dr. Nasir Al-Jarallah, Director General of Public Interest Markets and head of the Stalls Organizing Committee in Al-Murjan Mall.
However, Ali Al-Qahtani, Director of Bab Rizq Jameel Program in Jeddah, explained that the stalls project is aimed at finding job opportunities for women and at supporting small businesses.
He said that the problem started when a number of women erected stalls randomly in front of Al-Murjan Mall without licenses. We contacted the municipality which chose appropriate places for the stalls. The mall owner volunteered space for the stalls inside the mall, while the Bab Rizq Jameel Program agreed to pay the rental fees which have been reduced from SR3,600 yearly to SR2,400. Women investing in the stalls will pay back the amount in installments. – Okaz/SG
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Oman: Omani Women En Route to Economic Independence
MEPI
In Oman, small businesses are considered a critical factor for economic growth and recovery. Assisting women in attaining professional entrepreneurial skills to maximize small business potential is a driving force for many countries economic growth. Supported by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) local grants program, Dar Al Atta, a leading charitable organization in Oman, started a program to encourage small and medium business ownership for economically disadvantaged women from different regions in Oman. To improve and enhance the economic climate for women’s entrepreneurship, Dar Al Atta conducted training for 65 women from low income families throughout the country in January and February 2009. Participants learned how to launch a business, achieve professional success and climb the entrepreneurship ladder.
Further training sessions taught participants how to develop a business idea, organize a business program, estimate start-up funding, and develop a business plan, as well as information and communication technology and E-Commerce skills. The women also acquired leadership and management skills that will support them in their outreach to funding agencies in Oman and in their successful small business operations. Six key-note speakers from the Omani Ministry of Social Development and Ministry of Manpower and a successful women entrepreneur communicated their experience and provided insights on utilizing tools for business progress. As part of the MEPI-sponsored project, a web portal is also being developed to provide business development resources, information on local incubators and government supported-programs, and a network of local entrepreneurs. The portal will serve as a medium for women business owners to share collective wisdom.
Through MEPI grantee Dar Al Atta’s efforts, Omani women will be energized to invest in themselves, boost their living standards, and realize their goals to be economically independent. Next project steps will include: offering further training for women in other regions, finalizing a small and medium business instructional toolkit, and launching the entrepreneurship web portal so that more women will be able to achieve professional success.
This MEPI local grant project was covered recently in Oman’s local press, including the Times of Oman and Al Osra.
In Oman, small businesses are considered a critical factor for economic growth and recovery. Assisting women in attaining professional entrepreneurial skills to maximize small business potential is a driving force for many countries economic growth. Supported by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) local grants program, Dar Al Atta, a leading charitable organization in Oman, started a program to encourage small and medium business ownership for economically disadvantaged women from different regions in Oman. To improve and enhance the economic climate for women’s entrepreneurship, Dar Al Atta conducted training for 65 women from low income families throughout the country in January and February 2009. Participants learned how to launch a business, achieve professional success and climb the entrepreneurship ladder.
Further training sessions taught participants how to develop a business idea, organize a business program, estimate start-up funding, and develop a business plan, as well as information and communication technology and E-Commerce skills. The women also acquired leadership and management skills that will support them in their outreach to funding agencies in Oman and in their successful small business operations. Six key-note speakers from the Omani Ministry of Social Development and Ministry of Manpower and a successful women entrepreneur communicated their experience and provided insights on utilizing tools for business progress. As part of the MEPI-sponsored project, a web portal is also being developed to provide business development resources, information on local incubators and government supported-programs, and a network of local entrepreneurs. The portal will serve as a medium for women business owners to share collective wisdom.
Through MEPI grantee Dar Al Atta’s efforts, Omani women will be energized to invest in themselves, boost their living standards, and realize their goals to be economically independent. Next project steps will include: offering further training for women in other regions, finalizing a small and medium business instructional toolkit, and launching the entrepreneurship web portal so that more women will be able to achieve professional success.
This MEPI local grant project was covered recently in Oman’s local press, including the Times of Oman and Al Osra.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Saudi Arabia: Business loans for women approved
Saudi Gazette
By Saud Al-Barakati
JEDDAH – Successfully trained women at the Women’s Higher Technical Institute, affiliated with the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC), will be able to receive a loan of up to SR200,000 each to start their own small businesses.
An agreement to that effect was signed Wednesday between the TVTC and the Credit and Savings Bank, said Niqar Abdulrahman, dean of the technical institute in Jeddah.
The agreement came after the conclusion of training sessions on small business administration, accounting, and workshops at the institute in Jeddah.
The training sessions and workshops have empowered women to go into the job market and set up businesses with the confidence and knowledge to successfully carry out feasibility studies, marketing campaigns, and customer relations, said Abdulrahman.
The TVTC strives to produce businesswomen through its Center of Women Entrepreneurs that provides targeted training programs and supports sound business proposals in order to receive financing, she said. Once the project starts, the center follows it up through its different stages until it becomes fully operational, she added.
The program is open for Saudi women between 18 and 45 with high school diplomas. The second training session will be announced soon.
There are over 40 women’s technical institutes in the Kingdom teaching students a variety of skills including make-up, fashion, electronics, arts and crafts, web design, jewelry design, and others. - Okaz/SG
By Saud Al-Barakati
JEDDAH – Successfully trained women at the Women’s Higher Technical Institute, affiliated with the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC), will be able to receive a loan of up to SR200,000 each to start their own small businesses.
An agreement to that effect was signed Wednesday between the TVTC and the Credit and Savings Bank, said Niqar Abdulrahman, dean of the technical institute in Jeddah.
The agreement came after the conclusion of training sessions on small business administration, accounting, and workshops at the institute in Jeddah.
The training sessions and workshops have empowered women to go into the job market and set up businesses with the confidence and knowledge to successfully carry out feasibility studies, marketing campaigns, and customer relations, said Abdulrahman.
The TVTC strives to produce businesswomen through its Center of Women Entrepreneurs that provides targeted training programs and supports sound business proposals in order to receive financing, she said. Once the project starts, the center follows it up through its different stages until it becomes fully operational, she added.
The program is open for Saudi women between 18 and 45 with high school diplomas. The second training session will be announced soon.
There are over 40 women’s technical institutes in the Kingdom teaching students a variety of skills including make-up, fashion, electronics, arts and crafts, web design, jewelry design, and others. - Okaz/SG
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Saudi Arabia: JCCI club to back voluntary work
Galal Fakkar -- Arab News
JEDDAH: The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) has set up a special club for volunteers, particularly businesswomen, to support activities promoting the city council and civic services in Jeddah.
“This club will contribute to the development of Jeddah by providing the municipal council with ideas and proposals to find solutions to the city’s problems with concerned sectors,” said JCCI Secretary-General Mustafa Sabri.
Sabri recalled the directives of Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal to initiate development programs in Makkah, Jeddah and Taif — key cities of the province — over the next five years.
Ulfat Qabbani, chairman of the Jeddah Council for Social Responsibility at the JCCI, said the club would encourage businessmen and businesswomen to voluntarily serve the community. “This club will give a real boost to Jeddah’s municipal council and will further enhance voluntary activities,” she added.
Tariq Fadaaq, director of the council, said the club would establish direct and more effective means of communication between members of the public and officials, and would help find solutions to a number of problems facing the city.
“The municipal council has so far received 140 complaints on various civic issues of which 80 percent have been resoved,” Fadaaq added.
The director confirmed that the council would deal with each complaint in 48 hours and said it had made remarkable achievements in the city’s development.
He added that the council had signed an agreement with King Abdulaziz University to initiate projects to solve certain issues facing the city.
Fadaaq said under the agreement, 50 students distributed questionnaires asking the public what they felt was required from the municipal council and how to promote the role of the youth in society.
Muhammad Abu Dawoud, a council member, said the new club would convey the opinions of businesswomen to the council to enrich civic work in the city.
JEDDAH: The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) has set up a special club for volunteers, particularly businesswomen, to support activities promoting the city council and civic services in Jeddah.
“This club will contribute to the development of Jeddah by providing the municipal council with ideas and proposals to find solutions to the city’s problems with concerned sectors,” said JCCI Secretary-General Mustafa Sabri.
Sabri recalled the directives of Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal to initiate development programs in Makkah, Jeddah and Taif — key cities of the province — over the next five years.
Ulfat Qabbani, chairman of the Jeddah Council for Social Responsibility at the JCCI, said the club would encourage businessmen and businesswomen to voluntarily serve the community. “This club will give a real boost to Jeddah’s municipal council and will further enhance voluntary activities,” she added.
Tariq Fadaaq, director of the council, said the club would establish direct and more effective means of communication between members of the public and officials, and would help find solutions to a number of problems facing the city.
“The municipal council has so far received 140 complaints on various civic issues of which 80 percent have been resoved,” Fadaaq added.
The director confirmed that the council would deal with each complaint in 48 hours and said it had made remarkable achievements in the city’s development.
He added that the council had signed an agreement with King Abdulaziz University to initiate projects to solve certain issues facing the city.
Fadaaq said under the agreement, 50 students distributed questionnaires asking the public what they felt was required from the municipal council and how to promote the role of the youth in society.
Muhammad Abu Dawoud, a council member, said the new club would convey the opinions of businesswomen to the council to enrich civic work in the city.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Saudi Arabia: Women find opportunities at job fair but skills matter
Fatima Sidiya, Arab News
JEDDAH: The four-day Saudi Labor Market Exhibition organized by the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry in cooperation with the Ministry of Labor, the Human Resources Fund and M.I.C.E. Arabia Group kicked off at Jeddah International Exhibition and Convention Center on Sunday. The job fair offered a chance to Saudi applicants to promote themselves and network with potential employers.
Over 100 companies are participating in this event and the visitors are expected to be as high as 10,000.
A number of training institutions and centers provided the opportunity for job seekers to get training courses to improve their skills and qualifications.
The CEO of the Council for Human Resources Development at the JCCI, Muhammad Al-Harbi, said this exhibition would be different from any other national effort for employment since it would provide information for people looking for jobs besides introducing them to local companies.
Elie Rizk, the CEO of M.I.C.E Arabia Group, said his company was focusing on giving any Saudi the chance to choose from various available career options.
“Saudis are talented and what they need is the right orientation,” he said.
According to Rizk, at this time they should be introduced to the market needs and thus encouraged to pursue studies in fields that would guarantee them jobs.
The exhibition has a handicap access to help disabled people make use of this opportunity. It also included a number of booths that cater exclusively to people with special needs.
Various types of jobs were presented at the exhibition. The most sought-after jobs were in administration. Women had many chances for employment in well-known companies. Jobs for women included office work, marketing, banking, sales, medicine, architecture, engineering and media among many others.
Amani Abu Al-Naja, a recruitment specialist at the Human Resources Development Fund, said many women sought accountant jobs but had English and computer skills as obstacles.
Nour Abu Gazala, a human resources coordinator at Al-Baik restaurant chain, said they offered production and managerial jobs for women. Though women are not yet allowed to drive, they are offered sales and marketing jobs at car companies, said Rasha Al-Kaaki from Haji Husein Alireza & Co. Ltd.
Noticeably absent were the persons manning the booth of the Labor Office. People were seen pulling out application forms from under the Labor Office table because there was nobody there. One Saudi job seeker at the scene expressed his frustration and accused the Labor Office of being irresponsible at a time private sector companies were doing their best.
JEDDAH: The four-day Saudi Labor Market Exhibition organized by the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry in cooperation with the Ministry of Labor, the Human Resources Fund and M.I.C.E. Arabia Group kicked off at Jeddah International Exhibition and Convention Center on Sunday. The job fair offered a chance to Saudi applicants to promote themselves and network with potential employers.
Over 100 companies are participating in this event and the visitors are expected to be as high as 10,000.
A number of training institutions and centers provided the opportunity for job seekers to get training courses to improve their skills and qualifications.
The CEO of the Council for Human Resources Development at the JCCI, Muhammad Al-Harbi, said this exhibition would be different from any other national effort for employment since it would provide information for people looking for jobs besides introducing them to local companies.
Elie Rizk, the CEO of M.I.C.E Arabia Group, said his company was focusing on giving any Saudi the chance to choose from various available career options.
“Saudis are talented and what they need is the right orientation,” he said.
According to Rizk, at this time they should be introduced to the market needs and thus encouraged to pursue studies in fields that would guarantee them jobs.
The exhibition has a handicap access to help disabled people make use of this opportunity. It also included a number of booths that cater exclusively to people with special needs.
Various types of jobs were presented at the exhibition. The most sought-after jobs were in administration. Women had many chances for employment in well-known companies. Jobs for women included office work, marketing, banking, sales, medicine, architecture, engineering and media among many others.
Amani Abu Al-Naja, a recruitment specialist at the Human Resources Development Fund, said many women sought accountant jobs but had English and computer skills as obstacles.
Nour Abu Gazala, a human resources coordinator at Al-Baik restaurant chain, said they offered production and managerial jobs for women. Though women are not yet allowed to drive, they are offered sales and marketing jobs at car companies, said Rasha Al-Kaaki from Haji Husein Alireza & Co. Ltd.
Noticeably absent were the persons manning the booth of the Labor Office. People were seen pulling out application forms from under the Labor Office table because there was nobody there. One Saudi job seeker at the scene expressed his frustration and accused the Labor Office of being irresponsible at a time private sector companies were doing their best.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
UAE: Profile of Sheikha Bint Khalid Al Qasimi
The Face of Power in the UAE is a Woman and Her Name is Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi
In celebration of International Women's Month I want to be selfish and talk about women who redefine what it is to be a woman in charge and in control. These women are murdering stereotypes leading on their own terms for the greater good of society. These women are bold. They have brass ovaries. They are brainy, beautiful and possess a bandwidth of power that demands attention. The first woman I am going to profile is Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, Minister of Foreign Trade for the United Arab Emirates.
I first heard about Sheikha Lubna during the Dubai Ports Crisis in February of 2006.
The issue was over the sale of port management businesses in six major U.S. seaports to a company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There was concern of whether this sale would compromise port security. I remember how American citizens became very vocal raising serious concerns about how and why the United States would do such a thing since Americans were still suffering from the sting and psychological impact of 9/11 and were also very confused and frankly racist about Arab people.
While then President George W. Bush fought hard to keep the sale alive, he did not have the political capital to stop Congress from ultimately delaying the sale.
During the crisis in came IT specialist Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, then Minister of Economy. One of Forbes' 100 most powerful women, she was the first woman to be appointed cabinet Minister for the UAE in 2004, this petite woman with expressive eyes and proudly wearing her signature designer silk scarves, intimidated CNN's Wolf Blitzer during his visit to Dubai to see what he could sniff out about this controversy. Blitzer under estimated her, and he immediately discovered that the Sheikha was nothing to shake -- with quick responses, wit and perfect elocution she was a force to be reckoned with.
Wolf Blitzer: What do you know that you can share with American public that will reassure the US public, 60% plus who oppose.
Sheikha Lubna: This is a business deal. There is an impact on employment that will be positive. This is not the first port that DPW will manage. It is a world class port operator.
Wolf Blitzer: UAE recognized the Taliban. Two 9/11 hijackers came from here. Nuclear materials from AQ Khan's network were shipped through here. Money laundering for terrorists before and after 9/11 has been traced here. How do you reply to these objections?
Sheikha Lubna: We, the UAE, did not share the Taliban's ideology as evidenced by the fact that I, a woman, am the Economics Minister. We later broke relations with them. Two hijackers did come from here. Terrorists are really multi-national. Two don't make the UAE....
At that time, Sheikha Lubna had the toughest job in the cabinet. She was the face of the entire UAE handling a public relations nightmare. But, as we say in America's hood, "She handled her business." She handled it so well that Sheikha Lubna received a number of key recognitions, awards and received a major bump up being named Minister of Foreign Trade in early 2008. Her appointments paved the way for three other women cabinet Ministers as well as a growing host of young highly talented woman Ambassadors with considerable clout and power in their own right. She is the forerunner of the women's empowerment in the UAE; influencing positive change in the entire Muslim and Arab world.
Sheikha Lubna represents the 21st Century woman; not just as an Arab who would be ignorantly deemed by the West as an anomaly. She is cutting through veils of discrimination with serious substance, style and a smile. Recently at a private luncheon in Hartford, Connecticut, she told an intimate room of 40 guests that when she first received the call and offered the job of Minister of Economy, she instinctively replied, "I have to ask my mother first." When she mentions her mother, her face softens. For a split second, she becomes a little girl again, but she snaps right back to Minister in an instant.
While in Hartford, Her Excellency received another first becoming the first woman to become an honorary member of the Syracuse 8 -- "Eight African-American athletes at Syracuse University boycotted the 1970 football season in a collective effort to demand change and promote racial equality within the University football program....." After 36 years of protest, another woman of power Chancellor Nancy Cantor officially apologized for SU's history of racism awarding these men the Chancellor's Medal of Honor.
Sheikha Lubna is a blue blooded Princess -- the Qasimi family heads two Emirates in Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah. She does not do any of dainty stepping however. She is always thinking and busy on her blackberry sending and receiving messages to and from leaders around the globe, she knows in her position she has fully replaced a size 10 man's shoe with a pair of pumps.
During the world's economic turmoil; her job has become even more paramount to the UAE. In Davos in January, she took part in an economic forum and held court in her suite having high level meetings. Literally nearly every week of her life, she has major engagements with world leaders such as Medvedev and Putin of Russia as well as her counterparts such as Lord Digby Jones, the UK Government's Minister of State for Trade. Having studied in the United States during her undergraduate years, she has a special love for the United States. She has been a great Diplomatic bridge between the two nations.
Because she wears a Hijab and is from an Islamic Federation with hereditary male rulers; a lot of us in the West actually search for where her power might be limited, but we are limited. The fact is this woman knows her own power and flies with the flag of the United Arab Emirates as her cape.
-- Huffington Post Blog
In celebration of International Women's Month I want to be selfish and talk about women who redefine what it is to be a woman in charge and in control. These women are murdering stereotypes leading on their own terms for the greater good of society. These women are bold. They have brass ovaries. They are brainy, beautiful and possess a bandwidth of power that demands attention. The first woman I am going to profile is Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, Minister of Foreign Trade for the United Arab Emirates.
I first heard about Sheikha Lubna during the Dubai Ports Crisis in February of 2006.
The issue was over the sale of port management businesses in six major U.S. seaports to a company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There was concern of whether this sale would compromise port security. I remember how American citizens became very vocal raising serious concerns about how and why the United States would do such a thing since Americans were still suffering from the sting and psychological impact of 9/11 and were also very confused and frankly racist about Arab people.
While then President George W. Bush fought hard to keep the sale alive, he did not have the political capital to stop Congress from ultimately delaying the sale.
During the crisis in came IT specialist Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, then Minister of Economy. One of Forbes' 100 most powerful women, she was the first woman to be appointed cabinet Minister for the UAE in 2004, this petite woman with expressive eyes and proudly wearing her signature designer silk scarves, intimidated CNN's Wolf Blitzer during his visit to Dubai to see what he could sniff out about this controversy. Blitzer under estimated her, and he immediately discovered that the Sheikha was nothing to shake -- with quick responses, wit and perfect elocution she was a force to be reckoned with.
Wolf Blitzer: What do you know that you can share with American public that will reassure the US public, 60% plus who oppose.
Sheikha Lubna: This is a business deal. There is an impact on employment that will be positive. This is not the first port that DPW will manage. It is a world class port operator.
Wolf Blitzer: UAE recognized the Taliban. Two 9/11 hijackers came from here. Nuclear materials from AQ Khan's network were shipped through here. Money laundering for terrorists before and after 9/11 has been traced here. How do you reply to these objections?
Sheikha Lubna: We, the UAE, did not share the Taliban's ideology as evidenced by the fact that I, a woman, am the Economics Minister. We later broke relations with them. Two hijackers did come from here. Terrorists are really multi-national. Two don't make the UAE....
At that time, Sheikha Lubna had the toughest job in the cabinet. She was the face of the entire UAE handling a public relations nightmare. But, as we say in America's hood, "She handled her business." She handled it so well that Sheikha Lubna received a number of key recognitions, awards and received a major bump up being named Minister of Foreign Trade in early 2008. Her appointments paved the way for three other women cabinet Ministers as well as a growing host of young highly talented woman Ambassadors with considerable clout and power in their own right. She is the forerunner of the women's empowerment in the UAE; influencing positive change in the entire Muslim and Arab world.
Sheikha Lubna represents the 21st Century woman; not just as an Arab who would be ignorantly deemed by the West as an anomaly. She is cutting through veils of discrimination with serious substance, style and a smile. Recently at a private luncheon in Hartford, Connecticut, she told an intimate room of 40 guests that when she first received the call and offered the job of Minister of Economy, she instinctively replied, "I have to ask my mother first." When she mentions her mother, her face softens. For a split second, she becomes a little girl again, but she snaps right back to Minister in an instant.
While in Hartford, Her Excellency received another first becoming the first woman to become an honorary member of the Syracuse 8 -- "Eight African-American athletes at Syracuse University boycotted the 1970 football season in a collective effort to demand change and promote racial equality within the University football program....." After 36 years of protest, another woman of power Chancellor Nancy Cantor officially apologized for SU's history of racism awarding these men the Chancellor's Medal of Honor.
Sheikha Lubna is a blue blooded Princess -- the Qasimi family heads two Emirates in Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah. She does not do any of dainty stepping however. She is always thinking and busy on her blackberry sending and receiving messages to and from leaders around the globe, she knows in her position she has fully replaced a size 10 man's shoe with a pair of pumps.
During the world's economic turmoil; her job has become even more paramount to the UAE. In Davos in January, she took part in an economic forum and held court in her suite having high level meetings. Literally nearly every week of her life, she has major engagements with world leaders such as Medvedev and Putin of Russia as well as her counterparts such as Lord Digby Jones, the UK Government's Minister of State for Trade. Having studied in the United States during her undergraduate years, she has a special love for the United States. She has been a great Diplomatic bridge between the two nations.
Because she wears a Hijab and is from an Islamic Federation with hereditary male rulers; a lot of us in the West actually search for where her power might be limited, but we are limited. The fact is this woman knows her own power and flies with the flag of the United Arab Emirates as her cape.
-- Huffington Post Blog
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Saudi Arabia: Businesswomen clearing all hurdles
By Habib Shaikh, Saudi Gazette
The Ministry of Commerce has opened up all fields for women to do business in. “We received intimation from the ministry that now women can participate and get license in all the fields that are open to men,” Dr. Basmah Mosleh Omair, Chief Executive Officer of the Sayeda Khadijah Bint Khuwailid Center for Businesswomen at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), told Saudi Gazette in an exclusive interview recently.
“Earlier, construction, real estate, and services licenses were not given to women. Now they can get these. And as for gender mixing, we are getting more women into the private sector based on their choice. So, lots of changes have been happening,” Omair said.
Again, with apologies to Shakespeare, there is a tide in the affairs of women in Saudi Arabia, which is being taken at the flood so as to create equal opportunities, status, growth and development, because it is almost widely being recognized than omitted, it can only push back the ongoing reforms in the Kingdom in shallows and myriad difficulties.
The road has not been smooth for Saudi women in business. There have been pitfalls, turbulence, pockets of resistance, but the journey has continued and reached a stage that some cynics thought was not possible. But mission is still not fully accomplished.
Women are said to be having nearly SR45 billion in banks in the Kingdom, more than half of it lying idle. They are urged to invest it, but the main hurdle preventing them from doing so is the system of ‘wakil’ (a male representative or guardian).
There have been ongoing efforts to have it removed, but as Omair said, “it is still an issue.” “However,” she added, “it is removed if it is a female only business. If it is going to be a public company she needs a ‘wakil.’ This is why there is a lot of money in the banks, lying idle. The ‘wakil’ gets too much authority, which businesswomen do not like.” According to Princess Loulwa Al-Faisal, daughter of late King Faisal, who has either led or been a member of several businesswomen’s delegations abroad, said throughout history women were always involved and were very astute, good businesswomen. “Business in our region is almost genetic. That’s the way they survived in the desert,” she explained.
She said that a woman who has a business, who knows what she is doing, doesn’t need someone to represent her.
Princess Mashael Bint Faisal Bin Turki Bin Abdul Aziz, president of the Business Women’s Forum of the Eastern Province, and one who is responsible for the establishment of the Gulf Businesswomen’s Committee (GBC), said, “Women are not supposed to see or talk directly to men. How do we allow this guy to run our business?”
She explained that one of the reasons is that there is no open channel between women and decision-makers.
Said Omair, “We are dealing with the issue in two ways. First, we are asking for the removal of the system completely, even if it is not a female only business, and second, we are teaching women how to give a limited ‘wakala’ (authority), which is not complete authority for the man to run her business. We are doing booklets and awareness programs for that.”
She said that the center has changed from a training body to a lobbying one. Following the first women’s forum of its kind last year, the center sent recommendations to King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, Crown Prince Sultan, and the Shoura Council members and the concerned ministries and authorities.
“We have seen more changes as far as women’s workplace is concerned. Now there is nothing in the labor law that says men and women cannot mix in the work place. All it says is that we should work within the Shariah, which is fine. So now there is more integration of women in the private sector,” she said of the achievements coming out as a result of the recommendations.
“Some of the other recommendations are developing,” she added. Asked what problems women face dealing with high government officials, and middle and lower management, Omair said that the top level “is most helpful, very cooperative,” while the middle management “somewhat, but the lower ones are the ones that sometimes are problematic.” She explained that is mainly because of cultural traditions, resistance to change. “That’s just the way they have always done business, lack of awareness within the ministry, and things like that,” she added.
Dr. Lama Abdulaziz Al-Sulaiman, elected JCCI board member, said she would like to see more obstacles to be broken down for businesswomen to be able to trade and to develop easily. “I know a lot of people will tell me those obstacles are there even for businessmen. Yes. But still the obstacles with ministries for businesswomen are twice as much,” she added.
Hanan Al-Madani, fashion designer, in business for the last ten years, said that a problem, which she has to this day as a woman fashion designer, is that she cannot have her own fashion show with media coverage. So, she goes outside of the Kingdom – to Beirut, Rome, England, some of the Gulf countries. On return, she uses the media coverage she gets there for marketing in the Kingdom.
Omair said that according to a research conducted by the center of top companies in the Western Region that have hired women, they saw great results and achievements.
They had issues with some members of the labor ministry, not the ministry as such, but just certain employees, and other agencies that were not very pro-active. “The companies were hesitant in employing more women that is why we did the research. The regulations were not very clear as to how to employ women. So they were hesitant that other people would interfere,” she said, and added, “But as we did more research, we learnt that there is a law passed by the King that no one can interfere in a woman’s workplace. That is up to the Ministry of Labor. Any other agency in the country that has opposition to women getting into the workforce cannot walk into the office and harass the owner of the company. We have passed on that law to the private sector so that it knows it has this legal right.”
Asked if a study has been done on investment by Saudi businesswomen, she said, “No, but right now we are doing a national study with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank Group, and SAGIA about businesswomen – National Businesswomen’s Survey – what we call the businesswomen’s DNA, because it will give something like the DNA. How does she find her investments, where does she get her money, is it easy to get finance, how does she expand her business, does she go bankrupt. We are benchmarking it with a study that the World Bank did with five other countries – the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, and Morocco. We are benchmarking to see what is the difference in businesswomen in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries and what are the challenges and obstacles. We are also asking searching questions culturally, our legal system here, what obstacles they find.”
Asked whether it could be possible for Arab businesswomen in general and Saudis in particular to form an economic bloc or umbrella, Omair said, “It is always helpful to work together, to network.”
“We see people buying into the vision of King Abdullah,” she said. In the past three years, there have been fast changes in economy, the integration of women into the workplace, support for women’s issues.
“Things are moving pretty quickly in Saudi Arabia. It is a booming economy although there is an economic crisis in the world but we are not affected here. Women are now more aware that they have to get involved early on into these investments and they now have the choice. What we have done is given them opportunities and removed as many obstacles as we could to give them the choice and opportunity to participate in the sector they like,” said Omair.
Madawi Abdullah Al-Hassoun, JCCI board member, who has been in business for more than two decades, said, “Most of us are highly educated. We have proved ourselves in many sectors, internationally. We have gained recognition from the government, the society that we are capable of shouldering responsibilities.”
“What is happening today is excellent. It is up to them (Saudi women) now to make more efforts to further prove themselves and take their right place in the society,” she added.
JEDDAH – The Sayeda Khadijah Bint Khuwailid Center for Businesswomen has come out with an English version of its newsletter.
“Based on high demand, it is our honor to send you our first English translated E-Newsletter. We are also in the process of translating our previous newsletters,” Basmah Omair said introducing the welcome venture.
“We hope that you will find the information provided of our lobbying efforts to be of great value in regards to women’s increase in national participation,” she added.
The first issue thanks and congratulates King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holly Mosques, “for the Cabinet changes and for appointing our First Female Deputy in the Ministry of Education.”
It may be pertinent to quote a part of the interview with Omair, wherein she had talked about some recommendations that were forwarded to King Abdullah. One of which was inclusion of women in all decision-making bodies, such as Shoura Council and the Cabinet.
She said that the center has changed from a training body to a lobbying one. Following the first women’s forum of its kind last year, under the theme ‘The Reality of Women’s Participation in National Development,’ the center sent recommendations to King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan, the ministries and the Shoura Council members. – SG
The Ministry of Commerce has opened up all fields for women to do business in. “We received intimation from the ministry that now women can participate and get license in all the fields that are open to men,” Dr. Basmah Mosleh Omair, Chief Executive Officer of the Sayeda Khadijah Bint Khuwailid Center for Businesswomen at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), told Saudi Gazette in an exclusive interview recently.
“Earlier, construction, real estate, and services licenses were not given to women. Now they can get these. And as for gender mixing, we are getting more women into the private sector based on their choice. So, lots of changes have been happening,” Omair said.
Again, with apologies to Shakespeare, there is a tide in the affairs of women in Saudi Arabia, which is being taken at the flood so as to create equal opportunities, status, growth and development, because it is almost widely being recognized than omitted, it can only push back the ongoing reforms in the Kingdom in shallows and myriad difficulties.
The road has not been smooth for Saudi women in business. There have been pitfalls, turbulence, pockets of resistance, but the journey has continued and reached a stage that some cynics thought was not possible. But mission is still not fully accomplished.
Women are said to be having nearly SR45 billion in banks in the Kingdom, more than half of it lying idle. They are urged to invest it, but the main hurdle preventing them from doing so is the system of ‘wakil’ (a male representative or guardian).
There have been ongoing efforts to have it removed, but as Omair said, “it is still an issue.” “However,” she added, “it is removed if it is a female only business. If it is going to be a public company she needs a ‘wakil.’ This is why there is a lot of money in the banks, lying idle. The ‘wakil’ gets too much authority, which businesswomen do not like.” According to Princess Loulwa Al-Faisal, daughter of late King Faisal, who has either led or been a member of several businesswomen’s delegations abroad, said throughout history women were always involved and were very astute, good businesswomen. “Business in our region is almost genetic. That’s the way they survived in the desert,” she explained.
She said that a woman who has a business, who knows what she is doing, doesn’t need someone to represent her.
Princess Mashael Bint Faisal Bin Turki Bin Abdul Aziz, president of the Business Women’s Forum of the Eastern Province, and one who is responsible for the establishment of the Gulf Businesswomen’s Committee (GBC), said, “Women are not supposed to see or talk directly to men. How do we allow this guy to run our business?”
She explained that one of the reasons is that there is no open channel between women and decision-makers.
Said Omair, “We are dealing with the issue in two ways. First, we are asking for the removal of the system completely, even if it is not a female only business, and second, we are teaching women how to give a limited ‘wakala’ (authority), which is not complete authority for the man to run her business. We are doing booklets and awareness programs for that.”
She said that the center has changed from a training body to a lobbying one. Following the first women’s forum of its kind last year, the center sent recommendations to King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, Crown Prince Sultan, and the Shoura Council members and the concerned ministries and authorities.
“We have seen more changes as far as women’s workplace is concerned. Now there is nothing in the labor law that says men and women cannot mix in the work place. All it says is that we should work within the Shariah, which is fine. So now there is more integration of women in the private sector,” she said of the achievements coming out as a result of the recommendations.
“Some of the other recommendations are developing,” she added. Asked what problems women face dealing with high government officials, and middle and lower management, Omair said that the top level “is most helpful, very cooperative,” while the middle management “somewhat, but the lower ones are the ones that sometimes are problematic.” She explained that is mainly because of cultural traditions, resistance to change. “That’s just the way they have always done business, lack of awareness within the ministry, and things like that,” she added.
Dr. Lama Abdulaziz Al-Sulaiman, elected JCCI board member, said she would like to see more obstacles to be broken down for businesswomen to be able to trade and to develop easily. “I know a lot of people will tell me those obstacles are there even for businessmen. Yes. But still the obstacles with ministries for businesswomen are twice as much,” she added.
Hanan Al-Madani, fashion designer, in business for the last ten years, said that a problem, which she has to this day as a woman fashion designer, is that she cannot have her own fashion show with media coverage. So, she goes outside of the Kingdom – to Beirut, Rome, England, some of the Gulf countries. On return, she uses the media coverage she gets there for marketing in the Kingdom.
Omair said that according to a research conducted by the center of top companies in the Western Region that have hired women, they saw great results and achievements.
They had issues with some members of the labor ministry, not the ministry as such, but just certain employees, and other agencies that were not very pro-active. “The companies were hesitant in employing more women that is why we did the research. The regulations were not very clear as to how to employ women. So they were hesitant that other people would interfere,” she said, and added, “But as we did more research, we learnt that there is a law passed by the King that no one can interfere in a woman’s workplace. That is up to the Ministry of Labor. Any other agency in the country that has opposition to women getting into the workforce cannot walk into the office and harass the owner of the company. We have passed on that law to the private sector so that it knows it has this legal right.”
Asked if a study has been done on investment by Saudi businesswomen, she said, “No, but right now we are doing a national study with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank Group, and SAGIA about businesswomen – National Businesswomen’s Survey – what we call the businesswomen’s DNA, because it will give something like the DNA. How does she find her investments, where does she get her money, is it easy to get finance, how does she expand her business, does she go bankrupt. We are benchmarking it with a study that the World Bank did with five other countries – the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, and Morocco. We are benchmarking to see what is the difference in businesswomen in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries and what are the challenges and obstacles. We are also asking searching questions culturally, our legal system here, what obstacles they find.”
Asked whether it could be possible for Arab businesswomen in general and Saudis in particular to form an economic bloc or umbrella, Omair said, “It is always helpful to work together, to network.”
“We see people buying into the vision of King Abdullah,” she said. In the past three years, there have been fast changes in economy, the integration of women into the workplace, support for women’s issues.
“Things are moving pretty quickly in Saudi Arabia. It is a booming economy although there is an economic crisis in the world but we are not affected here. Women are now more aware that they have to get involved early on into these investments and they now have the choice. What we have done is given them opportunities and removed as many obstacles as we could to give them the choice and opportunity to participate in the sector they like,” said Omair.
Madawi Abdullah Al-Hassoun, JCCI board member, who has been in business for more than two decades, said, “Most of us are highly educated. We have proved ourselves in many sectors, internationally. We have gained recognition from the government, the society that we are capable of shouldering responsibilities.”
“What is happening today is excellent. It is up to them (Saudi women) now to make more efforts to further prove themselves and take their right place in the society,” she added.
JEDDAH – The Sayeda Khadijah Bint Khuwailid Center for Businesswomen has come out with an English version of its newsletter.
“Based on high demand, it is our honor to send you our first English translated E-Newsletter. We are also in the process of translating our previous newsletters,” Basmah Omair said introducing the welcome venture.
“We hope that you will find the information provided of our lobbying efforts to be of great value in regards to women’s increase in national participation,” she added.
The first issue thanks and congratulates King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holly Mosques, “for the Cabinet changes and for appointing our First Female Deputy in the Ministry of Education.”
It may be pertinent to quote a part of the interview with Omair, wherein she had talked about some recommendations that were forwarded to King Abdullah. One of which was inclusion of women in all decision-making bodies, such as Shoura Council and the Cabinet.
She said that the center has changed from a training body to a lobbying one. Following the first women’s forum of its kind last year, under the theme ‘The Reality of Women’s Participation in National Development,’ the center sent recommendations to King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan, the ministries and the Shoura Council members. – SG
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