Small acts of courage: Women shaping our unique history
Last week, The Arabian Business launched its 2012 Power 500 List, and Reem Assad a Saudi woman, came 3rd, preceded by Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoom and topped by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. When I heard the news I was genuinely uplifted. You see, for quite some time now, awards of any kind in the Arab world have been going to people famed either by birth, or positional authority, or acts of defiance.
Reem on the other hand is different. You see, Reem is not born to royalty nor is she an entrepreneurial tycoon, and most certainly she is no trailblazing rebel.
Reem is as normal as anyone can be. She is a homemaker as well as a financial consultant who deeply understands the dire consequences that can result if the chronic issue of unemployment is not taken care of… To Reem inaction was not an option.
What Reem did anyone could do, but didn’t consider doing. You see, the decision to employ women as sales personnel (instead of men) in lingerie retail stores was decreed some 7 years ago by the Council of Saudi Ministers. But public resistance triggered by conservative zealots (who believe that a woman’s place is in the home) as well as by business men (who consider the employment of women an added cost equation) shelved the Ministerial Decree and left it to gather dust.
Saudi laws being shelved is not an uncommon practice, in fact it is usually the norm. For one person however, the undoing of such a practice became her 4-year-old mission. In 2008, Reem Assad began her relentless “lingerie” campaign to lobby for the activation of the law.
The project started with a Facebook group, and when things were going slow, Reem shifted her strategy by initiating a two-week boycott of lingerie stores as a tool to apply pressure. The payoff came-in early this year with the implementation of the law that brought on the employment of thousands of women in the Kingdom to date.
Reem’s method was not rocket science, but it was structured and well thought out. Armed with the knowledge of the system, as well as the calculations of an economist, Reem’s simple plan was to create awareness by informing public opinion so as to gather momentum, and eventually lobby for change. The result of Reem’s tactics showed us Saudis that there is a critical mass of people within our midst who are not ultra conservative and who have no issue whatsoever in having their women work as sales people in retail stores side by side with men.
Saudi women like Reem are plenty and Reem’s award in the Power 500 List is not hers alone to bear but, in its significance, it belongs to all our unknown Saudi heroines whose daily initiatives make our world a better place. To our anonymous unsung heroines out there, who have not had the chance — or the exposure to share your stories, we thank you for taking the responsibility of shaping our unique history day by day.
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