You’ve become a majoradvocate for women’s right in saudi Arabia particularly the right to drive yeah Why is that important to you how long do we have Ha ha ha ha well it’s a it’s symbolic both inside and outside Inside other than it being an economical barrier where an average spends uhm twenty percent to thirty percent of her salary on her driver being a social barrier where she can’t go to some places because of this driver lack of privacy sometimes safety issues other than all of these issues all together just inside of our community The fact that it’s symbolic outside where we’re being judged as suppressed and as happy with the status quo when we’re not because of the fact that we’re not driving and no matter what we do no matter how many accomplishments we do like having the highest rates of entrepreneurs in the middle East like having seventy percent of bank accounts owned by women no matter how many great things we do we will always be judged as as a country who suppresses women because we are the only country in the world where women can’t drive So it’s symbolic both inside and outside and if we want the world to look at us differently this symbolic issue must change Tell me about some of your other priorities for women in the region We have lots of priorities for me uh the biggest one is the legal sector uh we have women graduating from law but they can’t get their license because they have to practice for three years and she can’t practice for three years until she gets the license so it’s a loop If we fix this loop and we’re doing that in the Al-Waleed foundation where we started this workshop for six hundred women lawyers to actually voice out their opinion and come to courts and actually want to become lawyers and want to push for their license If we have more women lawyers in courts inevitable we will have women judges and inevitable it will affect that that uh system where it will be much more comfortable for women to go to court you know imagine you’re coming into an environment where it’s you know all male dominated you know male lawyers male judges male everything and you’re the only woman there and you have to explain a private situation in your case you really can’t and you end up being on the wrong side of things because of that So having more women in the legal system is very important for me since I come from you now a middle class family my mom is divorced my aunt is divorced I know what they went through and I don’t want to see any woman go through that again Uhm other than the legal sector we need to have more fields in the workforce for women like engineering uhm I think uhm that will be uh and and I saw a lot of young girls who said I want to be an architect I want to be an engineer so we want to actually facilitate that and help them in the workforce with that and of course having more sectors in the educational sector for women and we’ve been seeing a lot of steps uhm like the First University that teaches law uh but we want more you know we’re we’re satisfied with the way things are going but we’re we still want more until we get our full equal rights And I do think the perception among many western women is that the Middle East is a little backwards to us the word but women are second class citizens how would you respond to those women Just come and you’ll see we’re not backwards we’re sec we’re not second class citizens maybe the rules are backwards and maybe uh the uh policies uh are backwards but it’s not us we’re very much educated we’re very much respected within our own families uh we’re very much you know we’re entrepreneurs businesswomen uh social leaders uhm interconnected globalized multilingual and when they come they’ll see it And they don’t have to come we have a lot of you know in the city Gerrha I just uhm uh I was at the panel in the city Gerrha I saw a lot of a lot of Middle Eastern women and I was happy with that representation I mean if you just open your eyes you’ll see them around you and you’ll see how powerful women in the region are
