Women excelling despite all odds

A new survey among a seemingly endless number of studies on Saudi women recently concluded that Saudi females are more motivated to “strive to achieve” than the guys.
This latest look at Saudis is from Oxford Strategic Consulting, a United Kingdom-based consultancy company with a second headquarters in Dubai. Tabulating 1,000 Saudis, the survey found that 35 percent of the women polled were motivated to achieve compared to 20 percent of their male counterparts. About 36 percent of the Saudi men were more motivated by religion, while 22 percent of the women believed their motivation was rooted in religion.
The survey also found that women — 49 percent of the respondents — were more likely to be discouraged “by their own negative feelings” compared to 35 percent of the men who were surveyed. The results found that Saudi women eagerly sought to achieve their personal and professional goals, but face many obstacles.
Unfortunately, the survey does not define negative feelings or the roadblocks women face when trying to achieve their goals. But here’s the thing: We don’t need more studies. We need a means to identify those obstacles and find solutions to overcome them.
Yet identifying the causes of why women become discouraged with their career goals is fairly obvious. We are bound by tradition, customs and unwritten rules that allow men to rule our lives with an iron hand. Intellectually, most people agree that women in the workplace is beneficial to Saudi society, but emotionally we pull back by exerting needless control over working women.
Saudi women are motivated to achieve by the sheer will to prove themselves as equal to men. My anecdotal, yet telling, evidence is the time I spent as the bureau chief for a Saudi newspaper. The female reporters insisted on leaving the office and hunting down a story to write, while the guys remained in their air-conditioned cubicles and thought about using the phone for an interview but more than likely talked football the whole day.
If I am generalizing, I apologize, but my count of reporter bylines in the newspaper showed that far more women had published articles than the men. The guys had little to prove. They had a job, received a salary and felt little pressure to perform. In contrast, women felt the pressure, but that came from within themselves just to prove they were more than given credit.
When women in western countries obtain a job, their challenges are usually found in the workplace. Support from the family is generally taken for granted. In Saudi Arabia, women face the often verbal, but also silent, condemnation from society for allegedly abandoning the home and children to work in an environment in which mixing with men is all too possible. And while that a Saudi woman may have a job; a silent campaign emerges to keep her off-balance to minimize her achievements.
A case in point is my cousin, a bright, ambitious goal-oriented young woman who earned a bachelor’s degree at a Saudi university. She rejected the traditional role of becoming a teacher to work in the retail sector. She found work in a Madinah shop and loved her work. “This job is teaching me how to deal with all types of people,” she told me. “It is also teaching me about how to be independent and the principles of how to start and run a business. I hope one day I will have my own shop because I do love what I’m doing.”
But a few months ago I saw her on a visit. She looked pale and thin. She was demoralized and said she was thinking of quitting. She said, “I struggle every day to get to that job. Sometimes, my brother decides simply that he doesn’t want me to go to work for no reason, but once I open my wallet and hand him SR200, he says, ‘go but be respectful and don’t talk to men.’ ”
She also faces a supervisor who gives her excellent performance reviews but refuses to give her a salary raise and demands more working hours from her than her co-workers. Even without her brother’s help, finding a taxi or a regular driver is expensive and usually impractical. The battles my cousin faces is not simply her family dynamics or transportation issues, but continue throughout the day at work. Dealing with a less than supportive boss is one thing, and often the main thing for most workers anywhere, but here in Saudi Arabia those pressures are piled on with family disapproval and overt sabotage from male family members who wish for domination of their sisters and daughters.
Women’s employment issues are complicated. In fact, it’s multi-layered. It is social and legal. Though the Ministry of Labor has given women many employment opportunities to become financially independent, other ministries, such as the ministries of Justice and Social Affairs, have yet to support efforts to invest in the other half of the society. Saudi women work with high risks. Once they leave the house they are on their own. No one will protect their legal rights or even provide them with a proper environment where they can work and not worry about transportation or their children at home.
We should give credit to the Lady Khadija bint Khuwaylid Business Center at Jeddah’s Chamber of Commerce for its efforts to bring attention to the problems that working and businesswomen face to achieve their goals. Our biggest problem, though, remains the lack of implementation and accountability rather than lack of studies.
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