QARN, Oman, 13 October 2003 — Young Omani Salma Saeed smiled sweetly as she wrapped a silver dagger and ornamental bracelets for German tourists eager for traditional handicrafts from this Gulf state.
Inside their modest village shop, her sister weaves a carpet — a testament to the growing role of women in Oman’s traditionally male-dominated handicraft trade.
“A few years ago making silverware was a man’s job,” Saeed said. “It was also a man’s job to sell them, obviously it is different now.”
Five years ago, a village shop served exclusively by young women and frequented by European tourists was regarded as taboo in this country.
But as more men abandon traditional businesses and flock to the city looking for steady jobs, women have come out of the shadows of the retail business.
Village residents say elderly traders retire gracefully and let their daughters take over because their male descendants have no interest in the business.
“Credit to them, these young women make a success out of the trades left by their fathers and they are also breaking the tradition by being the breadwinners of the families,” Saif Al-Rasbi, a resident in the northeast village of Qarn said.
Tourism is playing a major role in keeping alive business in souks, the traditional markets. Picturesque villages are the visitors’ main haunts and young women, backed by financing support from the governments and banks, happily cater to them.
Contrary to stereotypes in the West, Islam does not prevent women from doing business alongside men if they follow the Islamic dress code by covering their hair, arms and legs, as Patrick Reynolds, a British tourist, found out.
“After visiting the other Gulf states, I thought Oman would be the same. It is a pleasant surprise to find very young ladies using their trading skills very openly,” he said.
Reynolds was haggling for a colorful carpet woven from sheep’s wool with a young female entrepreneur dressed in an abaya, a black overcoat that covered her from head to toe.
With her broken English, Lamya, the proprietor of the shop, explained the technique used making the carpet.
She said it did not bother her to talk to men since she spent a large part of her business life rubbing shoulders with male traders in a bustling marketplace bustling with tourists.
Lamya has been in the handicraft business for five years and four of her seven employees are men.
“Women make better entrepreneurs than men and more like me run their own businesses these days,” Lamya said proudly.
Statistics show men outnumber women by just one percent in this conservative country of 2.3 million people.
A Ministry of Commerce official said that young women now increasingly apply for licenses for handicraft trade, boutiques, hairdressing salons and beauty shops.
“In the last two years, we have seen a rise of nearly 100 percent from women looking to establish their own business,” the official said.
He did not give figures but added, “Between the age group of 20 to 30, women stand a better chance of making a success out of business than men, I am not sure why.”
Bankers, however, know the answer.
“We have more confidence in financing young women because they come up with better business plans than young men. Perhaps they are more focused and seem to capture an exclusive market,” a credit officer at Oman International Bank said.
Like other Omani women in business, Lamya has set her sights on building a multimillion dollar business from a humble beginning as well as changing the way business is done in Oman.
“There are hardly any women sitting on the board of big corporate businesses, I think it is time we change all that,” she said.
