Saudi women work their way in to jobs
police, who would have objected to the depiction of a woman’s body on the packaging. But at the time, she was furious.
She went home and poured her frustration into a Facebook post calling for a boycott of lingerie shops that didn’t employ women.
Her post struck a chord. Although the campaign to allow women to drive failed to persuade critics, who saw it as an attempt to foist Western values on the country, the so- called lingerie campaign won wide support by emphasizing the desire of women to protect their modesty.
King Abdullah intervened in 2011, issuing a decree requiring the enforcement of the 2006 law.
There are now women working in shopping malls across the country, and not only in the Victoria’s Secret stores. “There are evenmore women behind their desks and behind closed doors running entire retail enterprises and conglomerates,” Asaad said.
Rizan Ahmed is paying her way through college by working at a makeup counter in one of Riyadh’s ritziest shopping malls, Kingdom Center. Her father didn’t like the idea at first, but she said he came around when she showed him that she could keep her grades up.
Other families aren’t so open- minded, she said. A female customer berated one of Ahmed’s colleagues for wearing a knee- length skirt to work on a women’s- only floor known as the “Women’s Kingdom.”
“It wasn’t even that short,” Ahmed said.
Once, the incident might have given her pause. But now, she says, “I think if I want to do something I love, I don’t have to care about what other people think.”
Dahlan had to wait 13 years before she could get certified as a lawyer in Saudi Arabia. So she worked as a legal consultant, helping artists and designers navigate copyright and contract disputes. Thatwas the inspiration for her company, Tashkeil, which mentors entrepreneurs in the creative industries.
Dahlan is the first to acknowledge the advantages she had growing up in a family that supported her professional aspirations. But she said the rapid technological advances of recent years, including access to the Internet and social media, are expanding the horizons of many Saudis and giving women tools to start their own businesses.
She is now training her successor at Tashkeil and planning to go back into legal practice — this time at the head of her own firm.
“It’s important for me to finish what I started,” she said.