JEDDAH, 19 September 2006 -- Women engineers can now look forward to being officially recognized, supported and protected through the Saudi Council of Engineers.
The council approved important decisions on employing women engineers inside the council and outside it, giving them a boost in terms of being licensed engineers to practice.
The women will have offices in the council's three main branches in the Central, Western and Eastern regions that would allow them to meet and participate in decision-making in accordance with Saudi traditions and religion. The women, Saudi and non-Saudi, are encouraged to register at the council as a step toward being officially recognized and licensed.
"There will be cooperation with the relevant ministries and the private sector to remove the obstacles toward employing women," said Nadia Bakhurji, an interior designer and the first and only women to win a seat on the council's board of directors.
"We began by establishing the first women engineers committee in the Eastern Province by holding elections in June and electing seven members to the committee board," she said at a press conference on Sunday.
A committee was formed in Riyadh. Now women engineers, including students, in the Western region are urged to register in order to form a committee here too.
"The purpose of these committees is to provide the means and place to communicate and coordinate their activities and to create independent work teams that implement the committees' strategies and decisions," said Bakhurji.
Until recently women engineers were not officially licensed to practice or open an office. "Women engineers do not fall under an official job classification or recognized salary scale, so to be included in the council is an accomplishment and a step toward gaining that recognition and protecting their rights," said Fatima Ba-Othman, representative of the Women Engineers Affairs Committee in the Makkah region.
Ba-Othman has a PhD in speech recognition signal processing, which she said is categorized under artificial intelligence and classified as engineering in the council.
"We want to form classifications for women engineers in the different specialties and establish a database of all the women engineers in the country because we don't even know how many are there," she said.
"We have to say that the men in the council have been very supportive and cooperative beyond our expectations in involving us in the decision making and accepting our proposals," said Ba-Othman.
She said they also want to promote more engineering colleges for women. In Jeddah, Effat College and Dar Al-Hekma offer various engineering specializations for women.
By Maha Akeel
© Arab News 2006
