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Editor's Note:
The Saudi-American
Forum would like to thank Ms. Barnett for permission to share
her article with our readers. This article originally
appeared in The
Washington Post, Outlook section on January 25,
2004.
A Mind-Bending Venture into
Saudi Gender Politics
 By
Judith Barnett
As I arrived at the
Jiddah Economic Forum a week ago, busily chatting with several
American businessmen , I mistakenly approached the door labeled
"Men Entrance." "Women, women," said the
guard in a panic, as though I were making a bold political
statement. I hadn't dealt with separate entrances in many years,
and the last time, ironically, wasn't during my decades of
travel to the Middle East but in Washington, where some
well-known social clubs continued the practice until the late
'80s.
Confronted with it
again, I began to think that perhaps the advice that I had heard
for years was correct: Saudi business is for men only.
Yet the remarkable
Saudi businesswomen attending the annual conference on the
kingdom's economic and social issues were about to prove that
wrong.
| The U.S. delegation of
four women and 16 men had decided to sit together in the vast
part of the auditorium reserved for the 1,200 men in attendance.
As foreigners, we were not questioned. So after venturing into
the far smaller women's area to have coffee with some Saudis, I
rejoined the men beyond the partition that was to define so much
of the proceedings. During a question-and-answer period, a
moderator looking for a question from "the ladies'
section" noted that he could not see that side of the
audience, which was "in darkness over there." It was
indeed dark. The stage was bathed in light, and the women were a
sea of 300 black abayas. A female delegate responded, "We
are not in darkness, you just don't see us." Increasingly,
these women who are still perceived as being in the shadows are
not. |
..the role of Saudi
women is changing
far more quickly
than most in the
West realize.. |
As a Commerce
Department official doing trade advocacy work during the Clinton
administration, and now as a private consultant and lawyer, I
had concluded that I could best help my clients by working in
Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Qatar, Morocco and ABS -- Anywhere But
Saudi. My business grew but Saudi Arabia represented as much as
80 percent of the market for several of my clients, and I
realized that I was limited. So after 10 years of traveling
nearly monthly in the Middle East, I decided to venture into the
no-woman's-land of Saudi Arabia to attend the forum. I hardly
knew what to expect. What I found was that the role of Saudi
women is changing far more quickly than most in the West
realize.
| The conference opened,
as one might in Davos, Geneva or Washington, with the chief
executive officer of a powerful financial conglomerate
discussing the need for real change to reform a national
economy. Later, the dean of a British business school spoke of
reforming and sustaining the Saudi economy, and a panel of
experts spoke about women as the driving force to economic
survival and long-term commercial success.
But something was very
different. These speeches were given by women: Lubna Olayan, the
Saudi CEO of the multibillion-dollar Olayan Financing Company,
gave the
keynote speech, the first by a woman in the
conference's five-year history. Laura Tyson, dean of the London
School of Economics and chair of President Clinton's Council of
Economic Advisers, spoke on how Saudi Arabia might build and
sustain economic wealth.
|
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and
session chairman Prince Faisal ibn Salman, chairman of the Saudi Research and
Marketing Group, take part in a question-answer session following
Clinton's speech at the Jeddah Economic
Forum. (Photo by Khalid Mahmoud,
Arab
News)
|
As the Arab News,
published in Jiddah, put it in a banner headline the next day,
"Women Steal Limelight at JEF."
| Some Saudi businessmen
sat listening attentively to the women while others sat with
armed folded, whispering to their colleagues, and looking as
though they were not sure how to react to the change.
By contrast, during
coffee breaks in the women's section, it was clear that many
women think change is coming far too slowly. They spoke of their
frustration at being denied the right to study in several major
fields: law, engineering, architecture and others. One woman
complained that she could not take a job or open her own company
without the explicit approval and participation of her closest
male relative.
|
Saudi women at work. (Photo by
the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Washington, D.C.)
|
Men said, "Things
will change in time." Women asked, "When?" At
dinner the first night, a former government minister said that
the women in his family are not concerned that they are
prohibited from driving, as they all have drivers and prefer the
status quo. "When a group of women in the 1990s insisted on
driving, they set the cause of women back a decade," he
said. "Those women must realize that many things may
change, but the change will only come in time." A veiled
young woman quietly replied, "I was one of those women.
That was thirteen years ago. How long do you expect us to
wait?"
Change was the dominant
topic not only at the meetings and dinners, but also during
informal conversations in the family section of the hotel coffee
shop (which allows groups of mixed or male and female
customers). Saudis, as well as foreigners with long experience
in the country, agreed that Saudi Arabia is changing but pointed
to different reasons. Some said that economics underlies the
change; the Saudi economy is in flux and is no longer based
entirely on oil. Roughly 60 percent of the population is under
20 years old, and the official unemployment rate stands at 10
percent, which does not include women and is likely an
underestimate even of male unemployment. Others argued that the
terrorist attacks in Riyadh last year had shaken the Saudi sense
of security and stability. But most agreed that the role of
women could not remain static.
| After the sessions one
afternoon, some of us Americans went to the souk. Our Saudi
hostess had sent us abayas in advance of the trip, and I
awkwardly put on the long black robe and veil. At first, I
jokingly thought of the abaya's advantages: No more South Beach
diets, and I would no longer be enslaved to Western designers.
But after a couple of hours, I felt invisible. I had spent a
lifetime in the "quiet revolution" of the U.S. women's
movement, working so that my daughter could attend the law
school of her choice and then break the glass ceiling if she
chose to. Those were far from the issues here. Although I deeply
respect the culture and traditions of Saudi culture, I felt, in
my abaya, that I was a satellite observing someone else's world. |
Saudi women wearing abayas. (Photo by
Tor Eigeland/Saudi Aramco World/PADIA)
|
Amid the discussions of
economic reform, some of the forum's speakers, particularly the
women, openly addressed women's changing role in Saudi society.
Olayan, the Saudi corporate leader, courageously urged her
fellow participants, men and women, to "abandon the
progress-without-change philosophy," by which she meant
talk of change without any pressure to act. She called for a
business economy that is based on talent and merit, not
connections and family. "If we want Saudi Arabia to
progress, we have no choice but to embrace change," she
said, stressing that "those changes can be embraced in a
way that preserves our core Islamic values."
In an all-female panel
discussion, Thurayya Arrayed, planning adviser to Saudi oil
giant Aramco, said that to speed economic growth, "we need
proper training and employment of women."
|
In response to a
question about women driving, Selwa Al-Hazza, head of
ophthalmology at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, said
she felt that society was not ready to see a woman behind the
wheel. Arrayed disagreed and, to a round of applause, advised,
"[Even] if you don't want your daughter to drive, don't
stop others."
To my surprise, most
Saudi government officials, business people and other attendees
were available and open to all participants, women and men
alike, though Westerners got special treatment. Of course it was
far easier for the few Western women on the men's side to catch
speakers as they left the podium, which happened to be on the
men's side. One quandary, though, had to do with commenting
during the formal sessions. Questions alternated between the
men's section and the women's. Because I was a woman in the
men's area, moderators seemed uncertain how to accept my
questions. It was not until the final panel, with a dwindling
audience, that one brave gentleman pointed to me and said,
"O.K, your question now." |
Dr. Selwa al- Hazzaa (Photo by
Arab News)
|
At the airport as we
were leaving, our delegation learned from a Wall Street
Journal reporter that the conference had become a source of
national controversy. The Saudi grand mufti had "condemned
the obscene scenes of female wantonness at the Jiddah Economic
Forum." He declared that "Jiddah is not just history
now, but legend." In objecting to the mixing of men and
women, and to the appearance of some women "without the
wearing of the hijab ordered by God," the mufti was quoted
by the media as saying, "I warn against the dire
consequences that such practices will have." Whether this
was a warning of possible retribution or a desperate clinging to
the past is unclear. Yet, I have no doubt that Saudi women are
now at the table, perhaps not as full participants, but never
again to be ignored. For three days in Jiddah, they showed that
the hand that rocks the cradle may well be the hand that rules
the world.
 Judith
Barnett began The Barnett Group, LLC in 2003 to provide
trade consulting services to private sector companies and
government agencies, specializing in the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA). Prior
to starting her own company, Ms. Barnett was a Managing
Consultant for the PA Consulting Group (PA), joining PA after an
acquisition of her original firm, Georgetown Global Investments
Corporation in 2000. Ms.
Barnett continues to provide a one-stop shop for U.S. companies
interested in creating or expanding trade and investment in the
MENA. Before
consulting, Ms. Barnett served in the Clinton Administration
from October 1993 to December 1998 as the Deputy Assistant
Secretary (DAS) for Africa and the Near East, U.S. Department of
Commerce. Her other experience includes practice as a corporate lawyer
and litigator, a law professor, a public affairs specialist, and
a writer.
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