As the Executive Director of AlSayedah Khadijah Bint Khuwalid Business Centre at Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dr. Basmah Mosleh Omar has learnt the art of understanding diverse perspectives to market issues convincingly and to have the confidence to lobby for women’s empowerment.

With a PhD in Education Technology / Leadership & Management Dr. Basmah has imbibed new skills with each new area along the way. During your tenure in the center, you have famously said; “King Abdullah has tried to help women, his ministers support him. Yet so far, not much has happened. The problem is that in the ministries where the paper is handled, there is resistance to change.”

What are the steps required to speed up the endemic apathy that prevails towards gender equality in KSA?

I have been misquoted on this point, with two separate comments merged erroneously into one. King Abdullah has done much for women’s empowerment, but challenges lie in the implementation of regulations. Issues and obstacles are sometimes found in middle management or the bottom line at client interface level. The implementation of regulations should be realistic and feasible. Raising awareness about these new policy changes is also important; as is the coordinating between ministries to ensure compliance.

Islam traditionally exemplifies progressive women with pronounced leadership abilities being given the freedom to express these.

What milestones has the AlSayedah Khadijah Bint Khawilid Business Centre (AKBK) reached in women’s advancement through the use of national development plans, international conventions and reforming current legislation?

AlSayedah Khadijah Bint Khuwalid Center with the Ministry of Trade has ratified rules allowing women to become Board Members in IPO family companies and private companies, so women can now become Board Members, and therefore become a chairman.

Additionally, women were not able to get trade licenses in construction, contracting and real estate, and today this is permitted. Earlier, women’s paperwork all had to be processed in Riyadh, now it is decentralized. Women can now trade in all trades, no exception, just like men.

As for the Ministry of Labour, we have an official letter stating the abolishment of legislation 160 of the old labour laws advocating no mixing between genders in the work place. That has now been repealed and a clause mentions that men and women in the workplace must operate according to Sharia’a which means upholding greater leniency in a mixed gender work environment.

How and when you became passionate about the cause of women’s empowerment?   It was 2004; I returned from the States and was working as a consultant in Savola to discover ways of employing the disabled into the private sector, at the time the historic move in the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce took place allowing the election of women members. The then Board of Directors asked me to head the businesswomen centre. I agreed, saying I would try it for a couple of months when I realized the numerous issues that needed tackling. So we changed the vision from training centre for businesswomen in the Chamber, into a lobbying centre to work on reforming legislation, policies and procedures regarding women’s equality. Gradually, from a training centre we evolved into a women’s lobbying movement to help provide opportunities to pursue their professional goals. It wasn’t something that intentionally we wanted to get into, it just happened.

With government initiatives stressing on the need to establish a diversified SME base in order to sustain growth and absorb young people into the workforce, what specific programmes does the AKBK have for this vital group?

The Chamber of Commerce has a department dealing with SMEs for both genders, whilst we study the regulatory issues affecting ease of conducting business and working with government to enact viable reform. We don’t help them directly in training or in finding them loans, we handle the legislative side and then other departments in the Chamber of Commerce handle the more technical details of entrepreneurship. Ultimately, we are troubleshooters, concentrating on easing the obstacles for women entering business spheres by reforming legislation. We also act as facilitators on behalf of young people coming up with new concepts that may get stuck in ministry bureaucracy because their ideas are untested and licensing is challenging. Diverse age-groups have different needs that we handle.

Please list the challenges that you face in ensuring that the initiatives organised by the AKBK assist women to fulfill their entrepreneurial aspirations?

There are several, such as: Once a regulation has been changed, systems must be followed to ensure standardized implementation, raise awareness amongst women that these regulations exist, and gaining acceptance from society if some regulations are perceived as overly ‘Dramatic’ to enact. Above all, verifying that within ministries policies have permeated across the board.