JEDDAH, 18 January 2004 — Lubna Al-Olayan, chief executive officer of the Olayan Financing Company, made history yesterday with a powerful speech at the Jeddah Economic Forum as women stole the limelight. It was the first time ever that a woman was asked to give the opening keynote address at any major conference in the Kingdom. The symbolism was lost on no one in the hall.
“We need to have a society based on merit, not gender or connections,” she told an auditorium packed with more than 1,500 delegates from around the world in her opening speech.
She set the unofficial agenda with a challenging and perceptive analysis of her vision for growth in Saudi Arabia. She firmly established the presence of women as a rich source of seriously underused talent in the Kingdom and called on the Saudi business community to acknowledge and utilize their skills.
With cool surgical precision, Lubna Al-Olayan sliced strips off the hide of conventional Saudi business thinking, saying that there is a tendency to modernize but not to change.
“Abandon the progress without change philosophy,” she said, calling for a business culture and economy that runs on talent and merit, not connections and family. “If we want Saudi Arabia to progress, we have no choice but to embrace change.” She called for a greater focus on the human resources the Kingdom already has and to view the burgeoning population weighted heavily toward youth — 60 percent of the population is under 25 — as a source of future excellence. “Women must become more involved in the process in order to contribute,” she said.
She warned against protectionism in jobs, hinting that the easy ride the Kingdom enjoyed from the oil boom is long over. “It should not,” she emphasized, “be too difficult to clear out unproductive employees,” and she called on the private sector to interact with the government and structure an educational system that focuses on more productive and practically oriented academic skills with direct application to the economy.
Her speech met with rapturous sustained applause and an acknowledgement from Nahed Taher, chief financial analyst at the National Commercial Bank. “As a Saudi female I think,” she said, “we have today made history.”
Professor Laura Tyson, dean of the London Business School and a former economics adviser to former President Bill Clinton, followed on with the theme “Building Foundations for Sustainable Wealth in Saudi Arabia.”
Her speech took up many of the themes of Lubna Al-Olayan’s, highlighting what she perceived as the “mismatch” between the current training programs and the realities of the Saudi economy. Professor Tyson urged the Kingdom to diversify away from a dependence on volatile oil revenues and to get the private sector more actively involved in training and developing human resources.
“Women make up 50 percent of graduates in Saudi Arabia,” she said, “but represent only five percent of the labor force. That is a very low return on an investment. Female inclusion will boost the average household income and release a huge amount of entrepreneurial talent.”
The mood of the day was perfectly caught by Khalid Zainal Alireza, executive director, Xenel Industries, who was moderating a later session. He commented on the lack of lighting in the women’s section of the hall. “You’re in darkness over there,” he said. Came the brilliantly quick riposte from one female delegate, “We are not in darkness; you just don’t see us.” After yesterday’s events, hopefully that will all change.
