In a conversation with Arab News, Jamaa Al-Qahtani, an interior designer, complained about the social disapproval and difficulties faced by working women.

“I face the same difficulties today as when I started working many years ago,” said Al-Qahtani, 28, of the governorate of Tareeb. She is waiting and hoping that the social attitude toward workingwomen will gradually change.

“People here do not approve of a woman meeting and mixing with male clients,” she said.

The nature of her profession, however, demands that she meet male customers so that she is informed of their likes and dislikes, their social interaction and the number of visitors they normally have so that she can design the interior of their houses in a way that suits their requirements and tastes.

“Because I, a woman, discussed matters with clients, who were mostly men, the people labeled me a secularist, which is as bad as being called a heretic in the conservative southern society,” Al-Qahtani said.

“I was careful to avoid confrontation with the conservative society in Asir to which I originally belonged though I was educated in Jeddah where society is comparatively more open,” she said.

In order to avoid social censure, she began wearing hijab. She appointed a secretary who meets the clients, receives telephone calls and finally reports to her the clients’ tastes and needs. She avoided direct contact with clients in order to establish confidence of people who look with disapproval at women interacting with men, even while working.

“A Saudi businesswoman could not own construction, interior decoration or real estate establishments until about four years ago,” she said, recalling and commending the efforts of Nadiah Bukharji in her capacity as a director of the Saudi Council of Engineers to make matters easier for women engineers.

“In fact a woman does not find any difficulty in procedural matters in running a business. It is society that creates problems,” she said.

Al-Qahtani, who holds an engineering degree specializing in housing and interior design from King Abdulaziz University, lamented that people in the southern region had not developed an awareness about women’s work as in Riyadh, Jeddah or Dammam.

She also complained about the lack of copyright regulations in interior designing.

She said some of her original designs such as a football-shaped design were copied by others without her permission.

She said she did not earn a lot of money from her work. However, she is well known in circles of Saudi businessmen and women, she said.

She was inspired by her illiterate mother who encouraged her to paint and draw pictures in her childhood, she said, adding that the money she saved while she was working in a private company shortly after her graduation served as the initial capital for her present business.