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Saudi billionaire Lubna Olayan is a prime example of one of the changes occurring in the kingdom. A small and energetic woman, now 67, she is a descendant of a very wealthy family in construction. She earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and economics in Beirut and continued her graduate studies in the United States.
In between, she married American lawyer John Kasper, who was granted a unique permission at the time to move to Saudi Arabia with his wife and their three daughters. Until then, only men who married "foreign" women could receive such permits. Women who married "non-Arabs" were required to either stay abroad or divorce.
Upon her return to Saudi Arabia, Lubna expanded her activities and became the chairperson of the country's largest investment bank, CEO of the Olayan construction company, and a prominent speaker at international conferences. Her current focus is on launching training courses for young women, leading them toward careers in artificial intelligence, computing, and "any profession that can provide a stable and respectable income." She employs a large team of women who are tasked with convincing fathers and husbands to allow women to work.
She first established a "women's city" to minimize interaction with men. Her construction company then opened a first-of-its-kind hotel for women in Jeddah, where employees can attend work training sessions without leaving the hotel complex and return home on organized transport for the weekends.
The number of women employed across the Arab world has increased, particularly in the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. In some cases, women are no longer forced to use a separate entrance to factories.
In Saudi Arabia, women in senior positions are no longer made to sit in separate rooms and participate remotely via microphones. Under Lubna's advocacy, Saud Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman removed such barriers.
However, this does not mean that full gender equality has been achieved. Women still require permission from their father or eldest brother to pursue education, and in some countries, women cannot open a personal bank account in their name. Disturbing testimonies continue to surface of women who do not report rape out of fear while the perpetrator can be declared innocent if he chooses to marry his victim, even for just a few days.
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In Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco, significant progress has been made in the status of women, primarily in the private sector. Parliaments reserve 20 percent of seats for women, with most of them appointed by the government. There are female lawyers, engineers in private companies, doctors in women’s hospitals or clinics, and lecturers at universities. The focus is now on the field of artificial intelligence, which offers good job opportunities and salaries for both men and women, often through foreign companies. However, it turns out that the first choice for these positions still goes to men, as they are, by definition, the primary breadwinners for their families.
Smadar PeriPhoto: Yariv KatzFor a week now, large advertisements by government offices and economic companies in the Arab world have been promoting this issue. Talks about equality are widespread, but women’s wages across all sectors are at least 40 percent lower than their male counterparts. Many women in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia also do not work because there is a lack of childcare options. Husbands continue to avoid sharing the burden.
My sociologist friend from Egypt, who refuses to reveal her full name “due to the poor relations with Israel across the Arab world,” summarizes the situation for women in Muslim countries: “In education, there is good progress. In the workplace, there is no encouragement, no satisfactory pay, and most importantly, men are still significantly prioritized over women, even when the issue of women’s rights was loudly proclaimed on the recent International Women’s Day.”