By Ahmad A. R. BinDawood,

THE month of March has seen two major celebrations honoring women and their role in society across the Kingdom; International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day. With the current reform drive in the Kingdom that aims to see women play a more active role in society; this year, these celebrations seem more profound than ever before.

International Women’s Day was marked in Saudi Arabia in a way we have never celebrated; for example with women joining together in a celebratory jog across Jeddah, and the BinDawood Group honoring the occasion by releasing data that supports the trend that female millennial Saudis are driving the growth of ecommerce in the Kingdom (they are the largest customer group of our Danube online e-commerce platform and the Danube App).

As a young leader of the group that has pioneered the development of the retail industry in Saudi Arabia and as a business leader, it’s been wonderful to see how fast the transformation of the role of women is occurring across the Kingdom. This transformation underpins Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Vision 2030 goals and role women will play in driving Saudi Arabia’s economy.

As a business, BinDawood has a long legacy of championing and supporting women. Of course, smart retailers understand clearly that women are fundamental to the success of any retail business; but as a group we are proud that our business has a history of continuously striving to support women and we often herald their societal contributions in our marketing initiatives. For example, this week, for Mother’s Day, we launched multiple video campaigns that praise and commend Saudi working mothers and honor them as the person with most responsibility in the family. Across all our Danube stores, our female customers were presented with roses and cards as a gesture of acknowledgment of the female contribution to Saudi society.

These sentiments in our marketing efforts are also backed up by our business practices where we actively seek to hire female Saudis across our teams and business units. Currently women make up approximately 20% of the Saudi workforce. As a group, we employ over 10,000 people across our business entities and part of our vision is to become the retail sector’s preferred employer. That vision includes hiring more women. In 2017, when we brought the Danube brand online, launching the region’s largest e-commerce platform, we announced a drive to hire 1,000 Saudi nationals to support the growth of our online business and support the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. We see Saudi women making up a tremendous contribution to that number.

There remain many barriers; organizational, attitudinal and societal to the advancement of Saudi women in paid employment, however, as the leading retail group in Saudi, we understand that an inclusive workforce is a crucial factor to our success. Most importantly, we have a deep understanding that working together will help us all as a society achieve Vision 2030. With the recent plethora of announcements and moves that will enable women to participate more fully in Saudi society, a renaissance of the role of women is taking place that will lead to a better life for everyone in the Kingdom.

— The writer is CEO, DanubeCo Ltd, the BinDawood Group.