Recently, a Saudi-American women’s seminar was held at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon as part of a Saudi-American Week sponsored by Friends of Saudi Arabia and Portland State. Participant speakers included Joanne Foreman, a member of the Ladies Professional Golfing Association and a former US National Amateur Golf champion, Jolene Moliitoris, the former Clinton appointed head of the US railway system and a number of Saudi and American ladies who spoke eloquently about women’s issues. The keynote speaker was Dr. Selwa Al-Hazzaa who is the executive chair of Friends of Saudi Arabia, a friendship organization that fosters people-to-people relationships between Saudis and Americans.

This seemingly disparate group of women discussed many issues with great fervor and, by the end of the discussion, the walls of the conference room were almost aglow with the positive energy of the dialogue. The common ground, however, that all the women agreed upon boiled down to one basic issue stated so well by Dr. Selwa Al-Hazzaa. “Ladies,” she said, “whether we like it or not, we are a minority group wherever we are in the world. We have to work harder and perform more efficiently in anything that we do to prove ourselves. And we must do this while managing a family and home and our professional career, if we so choose. But we are succeeding and we will even be more successful in the future. Women of the world, we are all in this together.”

In early 2007, a mother of five children will become third in line for the presidency of the United States. Nancy Pelosi, the next US House of Representatives majority leader under the Democrat Party-controlled US Congress, under US Constitutional law will be the designate, after the president and vice president, to become the president of the United States. Never in the history of the United States has a woman been so close to the US presidency. And Nancy Pelosi was able to rise to this position of power while raising a family of 4 daughters and a son as well as managing a career and a home.

Many political pundits are calling 2007 the political year of the woman in the United States. The 435-member House of Representatives will have 70 women and the 100-member US Senate will have 16 female members. Women will now head one Senate committee out of 18. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California will head the Senate Committee on the Environment. There will also be female leadership on three committees out of 18. Representative Louise Slaughter of New York will head the Rules Committee, Representative Nydia Velazquez of New York will be in charge of Small Business Committee and Representative Juanita Millender-McDonald of California will head the House Administration Committee.

Overall, almost 2,500 women ran for seats in their respective state legislatures, 12 women ran for US Senate seats, 138 female candidates ran for the US House of Representatives. Nine governors will be women. “Cleaning the house,” stated one female political writer, “the domestic image is almost irresistible.” Watch out boys, the women are coming.

Robin Gerber, a historian and author of Leadership: The Eleanor Roosevelt Way, says that raising a family is the kind of leadership that women like Nancy Pelosi, with her 5 children, bring to elective office and men often do not. “She had five children before she came into politics. And that old ‘four cookies, five children’ problem is a similar problem that she’s going to have to solve as speaker of the House,” Gerber says.

Although the numbers are up, women, who actually are a majority of the US population, still are very much a minority among America’s elected political officials. It is as Dr. Al-Hazzaa stated, “We are a minority group.”

When the issue of women in leadership roles was discussed in Portland recently, one of the participants quipped, “It is about time that we women are taking control of our own destiny and, really, the destiny of the world. Men in power have made so many mistakes over time that we women have to get much more involved. Maybe a more nurturing and caring leadership is just what the world needs.”

Leadership for women in world affairs must also take into account the difference of cultures and the fact that change is a two-way street. The Portland group showed a lot of give and take when the culture of Saudi Arabia was overlaid upon the culture of America and the West. The Saudi women made strong points to their American counterparts when they pointed out in Saudi Arabia the strength of the family, the depth of friendships and personal relationships, and the feeling that one is never alone but can always find someone when in need are all important cultural values in the Kingdom.

Additionally, the Saudi women stated that, as mothers, they are happy to raise their children in Saudi Arabia without the overpowering television, advertising and movie images that exalt sex and violence as a way of life. And the Saudi women felt that crime and drug use was at a much lower level in Saudi Arabia than in the West.

The American ladies present applauded much of what the Saudi women had to say and many of the Americans said that they had no idea that they had so much in common with the Saudis. One American participant commented, “We have a lot to learn from you and you need to keep those values that make so much sense for all of us. Whatever you do, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

“Women of the world, unite” was the theme of the Portland Saudi-American women’s dialogue and with the current changes taking place in the United States, this may be just the right time.