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Article

5 Feb 2005

Author:
Natasha Walter, Guardian [UK]

Veiled hopes [Saudi Arabia]: Women...are beginning to make their way in business, journalism and industry...Can the women who've been struggling for their rights regain lost ground?

Saudi Arabia's leading businesswoman, Lubna Olayan, addressed a mixed audience at an economic forum with her face uncovered, saying that her vision for her country was one in which "any Saudi citizen, irrespective of gender" could do any job. This was explosive stuff in a country in which women face so many restrictions at work...The best factory for women in Riyadh is the Saudi Lighting Company..."The rights that we want to exercise are not invented by the west," Sara al-Mansouri, the 21-year-old graduate, tells me. "They are the rights that were exercised by women in the time of the Prophet, economic and religious and political rights that are given to us by our religion."