Saturday, 12 August 2006

JEDDAH: NASHWA Abdul-Hady Taher is a proud 45-year-old Muslim woman and mother who could make a change in Saudi society by becoming one of the first woman to sit on the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) board.

"I'm a Saudi woman who wants to make a difference and that doesn't happen unless you push yourself and admit that you do exist," Taher said.

Married at the age of 21 to Saudi businessman Mahmoud Al-Maeena and having her first and only child Omar did not stop Taher from achieving her other goals. She set her priorities so that each one - her family and her career -- got the attention it deserved.

"My first priority was my family. Even when Omar was young, I used to go to work during his school hours. He never felt that I was away," she said.

Taher graduated from Dar-Al-Hanan private high school in Jeddah and then went to the United States to attend university. She studied at the University of California at Santa Barbara, on the California coast, for two-and-a-half years before getting married and coming back to Saudi Arabia. She then finished a degree in accounting at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah.

"I was a dependent woman and I knew exactly what I wanted," she said. "My father had a big influence on my personality and he used to push me and always advise me to explore new things."

When she was growing up, Taher said her father would send her to take courses outside the Kingdom in places like Switzerland and the US "He always made me feel that I should depend on myself in order to get what I want," she added.

As the only girl in her family, and the youngest child with three other brothers, men have played a very important role in her life. Her father, brothers and husband all pushed her to have a successful business life and they were very supportive.

"When I graduated from college in 1985, my father gave me a separate office in our family company and gave me my own work to do. After I got married, my husband and I had our own international catering and trading company. By that time I already had a clear idea of how business is run," she said.

Although the family business faced some difficult times, Taher said the business survived and prospered. "We learned from our previous mistakes," she said.

At that time, she used to go to JCCI to file complaints about her business and the obstacles she used to face with her company.

"At that time, I used to attend many training courses and workshops in business development until we met Prince Abdul-Majeed Bin Abdul Aziz, Emir of Makkah Region. Then we had a women's committee under the supervision of JCCI," Taher said.

"We wanted such a committee because women have many problems, especially economically," she added.

During the recent JCCI elections, she wanted to become a candidate on her own, but eventually she decided to run as part of the LE-Jeddah group.

"I was afraid that the group would lose because of the women, but we got voices and we won because we worked as one group," she said.

Taher said she believes the women succeeded because they had a clear vision and because they knew who to appeal to. "People supported us and gave us the confidence to go on," she said.

She also said that if Saudi women weren't qualified for these positions, they wouldn't have reached them in the first place.

"We worked professionally and we earned what we got," Taher explained.

"The Saudi government and King Abdullah supported us a lot and gave us the push to depend on ourselves and prove that we are worth taking the chance.

 If King Abdullah hadn't given us his support, none of this would have been done," she added.

By Shroog Talal Radain

© The Saudi Gazette 2006