Sue Lloyd-Roberts - BBC Newsnight - Saudi Arabia, the Lives of Women, 2011

Haifaa al-Mansour: I Wanted to Have a Voice

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Saudi Arabia's leading film director, Haifaa al-Mansour, says the taboos of her country, where women aren’t supposed to ride bikes, drive cars or show their faces, let alone make groundbreaking films, are there to be broken. Horatia Harrod meets her.

It’s hard to imagine becoming a filmmaker in a country with no cinemas. It’s especially hard if that country is Saudi Arabia, and you happen to be a woman, forbidden to drive, or show your face in public, or travel in or out of the country without permission.

(Every time a Saudi Arabian woman crosses the border a text message alert is sent to her male guardian, who could be her father, husband or son.)

Haifaa al-Mansour, Saudi Arabia’s first female film director and the first person to shoot a film entirely in Saudi Arabia, was 30 years old when she decided she’d had enough.

Born and raised there, she went to university in Cairo before returning and finding a job in media relations with a leading oil company.

'It was hard as a single woman to find a place to live,’ says al-Mansour. 'They wouldn’t write a [rental] contract for an apartment until my father came and helped.'

'And then I had to find a driver to take me to work every day – and he didn’t show up, or slept in. I bought him an alarm, but he sold the alarm.’

She says, 'I felt, “I’m so invisible, nobody cares and I am no one.” I wanted to have a voice, and I wanted to say something.’ » | Horratia Horrod | Friday, July 19, 2013

Screens to Separate Saudi Advisory Body
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A screen will separate genders on the country's main advisory body to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah when women join it for the first time.

Following a decision by Abdullah, women will be allowed to join the Shura Council, his main group of advisers expected to reconvene early next year. The format is seen as a compromise with hardline Islamic factions that oppose even small reforms in the ultraconservative kingdom, where sex segregation is a widespread custom. » | Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Saudi Women Scenting a Whiff of Small Changes in the Kingdom?
Photo courtesy of Arab News
ARAB NEWS: LONDON — Princess Adelah bint Abdullah, the daughter of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, should perhaps take a leaf from the copybook of Marina Mohamed and Nori Abdullah. Marina is the daughter of former Malaysian Premier Dr. Mahathir Mohamed and Nori is the daughter of the current Premier Abdullah Badawi. They are known for giving their fathers “an earful” regarding the rights and empowerment of Muslim women.

Perhaps the reforms which Saudi Arabia has instituted in the last year or so regarding the greater role of women in Saudi society and economy may indeed have had some influence from Princess Adelah.

But, women such as Lubna Al-Olayan, CEO of Olayan Financial Services; Samra Al-Kuwaiz, managing director of Osool Brokerage Company (Women’s Division); Nabila Tunisi, acting manager, projects department at Saudi Aramco, and Soha Aboul Farag, a banker with 17 years of experience who last year was chosen for the “International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership” in the US, are the pioneers for the new and future generations of Saudi women especially in an era of socio-economic reforms in the Kingdom where the contribution of women to economic development is being increasingly acknowledged.

As professional women in high-powered jobs, they have successfully managed to carve out careers as working mothers while at the same time managing their families and dispelling the oft-quoted stereotype of Saudi women — of a meek, compliant and oppressed section of society. The good news is that the government is actually engaging with women in the Kingdom as part of a speeding up of the reform process. Women ‘Own’ Some 1500 companies >>> By Mushtak Parker

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