Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal: Women's Rights Advocate

Prayer Break Female professionals at Rotana insist they can be modern and independent, and good Muslims too. In Saudi Arabia, stores and restaurants must shut during prayer times. But work never stops at a 21st Century media company. Photo: Kate Brooks for TIME.

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TIME Europe’s Oct. 19 cover says Saudi Arabia’s Small Steps for Women.

Much of the story is focused on Saudi Arabia’s media company Rotana, owned largely by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men. Nicknamed by TIME, the Arabian Warren Buffett, the Prince remained the 22nd richest person in the world, his estimated net worth down to $13.3 billion from $21 billion. (As a note, the Prince got positively killed with Citibank stock and he is also a major stockholder of TIME, for the record.)

I found myself more focused on learning about Prince Alwaleed bin Talai and Rotana than sharing the obvious points from the TIME article Saudi Arabia’s Small Steps for Women.

The photos say so much, not only about the growing convergences in Saudi society and the lives of Saudi women, but the cultural mix of women living and working in Saudi Arabia and at Rotana. To be honest, we have a similar mix of AOC readers, and I try to acknowledge this mix in the writing and point of view.

Even our Muslim women readers range from the most progressive in a Western sense to educated, Niqab-wearing women like Pixie.

Royal Support Daneh Abuahmed, Rotana’s head of information technology, conducts a meeting in her office. With the support and protection of its royal owner, Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal, the female staff at Rotana work side by side with men and can choose what to wear and whether to cover their heads and faces. Photo: Kate Brooks for TIME.The photos are also provocative, creating images out of Saudi Arabia that even I can’t conceive. This Rotana workplace setup functions because Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is an ardent advocate for Saudi women.  When women leave the Rotana offices, they live by the restrictions of Saudi life.

Dr Maha Al Muneef, Executive Director of the National Family Safety Program, is one of six women named earlier this year to the Shura council, a 150-person advisory body appointed by the King. “The message is that women are coming,” she says. “The King and political system are saying that the time has come. There are small steps now, there are giant steps coming”.Photo: Kate Brooks for TIME.Some disgruntled women in Saudi Arabia want a faster mobilization of women’s rights, although all agree that women have more of a voice in Saudi Arabia than ever before.

Norah al-Faiz, deputy Minister in charge of girls’ education, is the first woman to hold a Cabinet-level post. Though al-Faiz is well known and admired, her appointment also reveals the limits to the changes under way in Saudi Arabia. Al-Faiz meets with her male colleagues only by videophone, asks her minister for permission to appear on television, declined to be photographed for this story and vented her frustration to the press when what appeared to be an old passport-style photograph of her (without a niqab) appeared on the Internet.

Saudi women look out onto Riyadh City from atop the Kingdom Tower, the tallest building in Saudi Arabia. Due to the strict laws and norms in Saudi culture segregating men and women, a public display of affection between young couples is very rare. Photo via Flickr’s expozara2008Still, Saudi women are making progress. The National Family Safety Program, started in 1999 by a small group of professional women, promotes improvements in domestic abuse. The program, headed by the King Abdullah’s daughter Princess Adelah explains, not only to the general population, but to senior judges that husbands can no longer beat their wives for spending too much money shopping.

“One of the most important things my father did was initiate dialogue,” says Princess Adelah. “Women need to be heard, and no one can speak for women but women.”

Returning to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, we learn more about his Washington foundation, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The foundation’s executive director John L. Esposito writes many articles relevant to AC readers, but I will call out this one: Muslim Women Reclaiming Their Rights.

Charlie Rose - Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal

I’ve listened to only part of this Charlie Rose interview with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. This TIME story leaves me fascinated by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s commitment to Saudi women’s rights and gender integration in the work place. Anne

See also: Coed Classes Invite Women Without Veils to Saudi Arabia’s KAUST University