LONDON, 27 June 2004 — Some 500 delegates from Europe, America, the Gulf region and the wider Middle East gathered in London for a one-day conference on the role of women in the Gulf.
The meeting, entitled “Challenging Limitations — the Redefinition of Roles for Women in the GCC” looked at political and social changes affecting women in business, politics, and the media across the Gulf region.
“It’s not only about the Gulf region. It’s a two-way street — not just about changing Western perceptions of the Arabian peninsula, but about changing the Arab view of the West,” said the Saudi Ambassador in London, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, as the conference began.
Speakers at the conference, which was organized by the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies, included businesswomen, academics and politicians from the Gulf region.
Some said recent advances in the position of Arab women had gone unnoticed in the West. “In Qatar, we are progressing in many different areas,” said Sheikha Hanadi Al-Thani, one of Qatar’s leading businesswomen.
“For example, 54 percent of Qatari doctors are women, and 33 percent of senior officials in the Ministry of Education.”
She said female representation in the workplace had risen steadily, but warned that the challenge of enabling women to enter new areas, particularly in the private sector, still remained.
Another speaker, Sheikha Lubna Al-Qasimi, said progress was being made in expanding opportunities for women. In the UAE, she said, there were female engineers, doctors, surgeons, architects, marketing executives and media workers. In the field of technology, women outnumbered men in senior roles, she added.
“For many women, it is a very healthy field in which they can balance their home and their business lives. Technology and the internet enable many of them to work from home,” she said.
Princess Luluwa Al-Faisal from Saudi Arabia said the contribution of women was often low-key and unnoticed. “This is a success story of growing economic and political roles for women, where they have managed to balance their new roles with political traditions,” she said.
Women were pioneers especially in establishing their positions in the civic and voluntary sectors. “Now, it is up to individuals to seize the opportunities, and to families to be aware of the possibilities that exist for their girls,” she said.
European MP Emma Bonino said women had to battle continually to maintain the political progress they had won. “To be a woman in politics, you have to be three times as well informed, five times as skilled, and seven times harder working in order to be listened to,” she said.
“Nobody will give you your rights as a present. Your rights mean somebody else as to give up power. It will always be an uphill struggle,” she warned.
Dr. Maha Azzam, a writer and academic based at London’s Royal Institute for International Affairs, said reform had a long way to go. “I find women in Saudi Arabia who feel they have come a very long way — but the general feeling among them is that they have got there because of the support they receive from their families and their husbands,” she said.
Much more needs to be done, she said. “Opportunities are limited. Positive discrimination in favor of women may be necessary in the job market, and it needs to go hand in hand with political development,” she said.
“Education for women was the first step toward universal suffrage, and universal suffrage will be the first step toward full political participation. The challenge is to do with the nature of politics, not the nature of tradition,” she added.
Dr. Hayat Sindi, the first Saudi woman to be awarded a doctorate in biotechnology at Cambridge University, said she had found prejudice against her as a woman and as a Muslim in Britain. “Biotechnology in Cambridge was dominated by men, and they expected me to fail because I was a woman and a Muslim,” she said. “My Islamic upbringing encouraged me to learn, to question, to observe, and to deduce — so how was it that religion was supposed to stop me making progress?
“It is vitally important to believe in yourself, and to be proud of your identity as an Arab, and a Saudi, and a Muslim — and as a woman,” she said.
But Dr. Fawziah Al-Bakr, of King Saud University, said that the success of Saudi women in education brought problems of its own. Statistics suggested that women outnumber and outperform men across the board in education, making up more than 60 percent of university graduates.
Despite that, “senior executive posts in the female sector are still occupied by men,” she said.
“By 2002, only six percent of women were in the labor market at all. There is a huge number of unemployed, educated women in Saudi Arabia. Economically and socially, it is a waste,” she said.
What jobs there are for women are concentrated in teaching, administration, and nursing and medicine, she added.
