At a recent forum looking at the role of Saudi women in the year
2020, the discussions were candid, the potential was exciting and the
reality often disturbing. The event was organized by the Khadija bint
Khuwailid Center for Businesswomen at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (JCCI), and it was clear that women have an important role to
play in the future of Saudi Arabia.
In her keynote address,
Princess Adelah bint Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz stressed the importance of
women’s empowerment and cautioned that the country will never develop
without using all the talents and abilities of Saudi citizens — both men
and women. She estimated the Kingdom’s current work force to be 11.5
million and anticipated that the figure would rise to 21 million by
2020.
She said the contribution of women is inevitable with 121,000
Saudi girls graduating from secondary schools and 44,000 from universities
annually. Moreover, Saudi women invest SR42 billion in the market and
their bank savings amount to SR100 billion.During the two-day forum,
business and academic leaders from the Arab world, Saudi government
officials and progressive-thinking men and women came up with
recommendations and policies to facilitate women’s participation in the
nation’s economic development. They said education and training are the
keys to opening women’s role in nation building, and they discussed the
obstacles that stand in the way of women’s empowerment.
Abdul Wahid
Al-Homaid, deputy minister of labor, told forum participants that 66
percent of Saudi university students are women, and that makes their
integration into the workforce a must for progress and development. He
said the government is keen to address the factors that hinder the process
of employing women, which include transportation problems, unpleasant
working conditions and the lack of the proper skills to qualify women to
work in much-needed services, such as health care, information technology
or women-specific retail services, such as lingerie and beauty-product
stores.
However, women in the audience criticized the ministry for
making it difficult for them to manage their own businesses without a male
guardian or agent, which often allows men to wrest control of women’s
money.Analyzing Shariah policies that govern women’s employment in the
Kingdom, Mohammed Al-Mushawih, accredited Ministry of Justice consultant
and judge, discussed pre-emptive regulations applied to protect Muslim
values in the work force including segregation laws, the niqab (face veil)
and the ban on women driving. Unfortunately, it is such excessive
precautionary laws and regulations that have stood in the way of women’s
employment and limited their business opportunities.
The need to
codify Shariah law in order to eliminate ambiguities and monitor its
incorrect implementation was emphasized by Adnan Al-Buraikan, a prominent
Saudi lawyer. He stressed the importance of a Shariah code of law that
would help familiarize the people with their legal rights and obligations
in Islam. Participants also discussed mechanisms to revise some of the
rules and regulations that would better serve society in accordance with a
more enlightened interpretation of Shariah.
One of the forum’s
highlights was the boldness of speakers who debated the obstacles related
to tradition and culture, rigid interpretations of Islam, unsupportive
families and husbands as well as Shariah laws and regulations governing
women’s employment. Audience members voiced their concerns to participants
on issues that were taboo in the past; now they openly criticized the
policies and rulings that impede our society and hinder our progress and
development as a nation.
In most Muslim countries the role of women
is limited. This is due to the fact that Muslim women are unaware of their
legal rights in Islam, and many men abuse the women’s limited knowledge of
Islam. Dr. Farida Banany, professor of higher education, Faculty of Law in
Morocco, urged Saudi women to learn their legal rights so as to
differentiate between what is culture or tradition and what is Shariah
law. Women should speak up and demand their God-given rights, and they
should not be intimidated by family pressure or social customs if they
wish to succeed and develop, she said.
The greatest impediments to
Saudi women today are religious extremists who have exerted an intolerant
stranglehold on the social and educational environment for a very long
time. They continue to resist the implementation of reforms and accuse
government reformists of adopting policies that fall beyond the narrow
bounds of their so-called “Muslim” way of life.
Until the
extremists’ manipulation of our youth in schools is curbed, their
inappropriate obstruction of government regulations to integrate women
into the work force is checked, and society realizes that women are equal
contributing members of society, the reform movement in Saudi Arabia will
continue to slog at a very slow pace, compromising the Kingdom’s regional
leadership and its vital influence on the Muslim world while damning our
children to a future of ignorance and poverty.
Souad Al-Hakeem,
professor of philosophy at Lebanon University’s Faculty of Arts and Human
Sciences, gave an inspiring presentation in which she said that women must
not allow incorrect interpretations of Islam to stand in the way of
recognizing Muslim women as international role models who are capable of
global thinking and becoming international partners in progress and
development.
The Khadija bint Khuwailid Center for Businesswomen
should be commended for organizing such a forum and for its members’ hard
work and dedication to addressing the obstacles that stand in the way of
the advancement of women in Saudi society and their initiatives to provide
better services for Saudi women in business and in the work force.The
forum was indeed an excellent exercise to assess the current status of
women and to identify the challenges and opportunities available in order
to achieve the destined goal to present a model for the Arab and Muslim
women and a contributing force to the national economic growth of our
beloved Kingdom.
The recommendations of the forum were both
ambitious and encouraging. However, it remains to be seen whether the
judiciary and ministries will take these recommendations into account and
whether the reform movement will be accelerated so that Saudi men and
women can catch up with the more advanced countries of the world that have
already decided their people belong at the front of the
line.