Layan Damanhouri
Saudi Gazette
JEDDAH — Saudi women entrepreneurs and business leaders gathered to celebrate Women Entrepreneurship Day, held each year worldwide to commemorate the achievements and review the challenges in entrepreneurship.
Sofana Dahlan and Sarah Al-Ayed were nominated to represent Saudi Arabia as ambassadors for this year’s WED.
The message for this year’s campaign is we are all ambassadors, said Sofana Dahlan, CEO & Founder of Tashkeil SAL and Kayan Space & Studios.
“When I started Tashkeil, my goal was to empower creative innovators in dealing with obstacles in their careers,” she says. “I was then considered an entrepreneur, which I didn’t know what it was because it was relatively a new concept. I considered my work to be a sort of social responsibility”.
“I consider all of us to be entrepreneurs because we all aim to participate in nation-building and to promote change,” she added.
In an ambassador and fellowship program held in 144 countries around the world, this year marks the second time for Saudi Arabia to join the global trend.
Throughout the month, the hashtag #WomenWOW circulated on social media ahead of the reception ceremony held at Jathal Venue, founded by designer and event planner Suha Moussa.
Co-founder of TRACCS and freelance consultant Sarah Al-Ayed urged women to join the Saudi women entrepreneurship network. “We want this network to expand in all of Saudi Arabia, not just in the major cities,” she said. “There are many success stories of women entrepreneurs around the Kingdom. For example, the first Saudi coal factory run solely by women was established. The factory, based in Unaiza, uses recycled material and is environment-friendly. By promoting them, they managed to attract much publicity from businessmen to the media."
WED aims to empower women all over the globe by promoting change and spreading knowledge about entrepreneurship.
As a member of Global Shapers, an initiative of the World Economic Forum, Sarah Alharthey says, “Since Global Shapers consists of young successful leaders around the world to serve their society in tackling issues and problems, our main challenge here is women and unemployment”.
She continues, “WED was a great opportunity to serve our purpose as Global Shapers. We were able to gather 100 clips of Saudi women entrepreneurs in order to raise awareness”.
In Saudi Arabia, the gender gap in economic participation is about 27 percent with a female-male ratio of 21 to 80, according to an official report by the WEF. However, recent studies also show that women entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia are now establishing and managing more SMEs than at any time in history and are increasing. This comes in line with the national plan to diversify the economy by creating jobs and inviting more women in the labor force.
Some obstacles in the past have also been eliminated, such as the ability to control their finance and manage their businesses without a male manager.
As more and more Saudi women continue to pursue their studies in higher education, many have opted to knock on doors of opportunities, particularly in entrepreneurship in different kinds of businesses, including in beauty salons, retail, consulting and public relations, among others.
Many have also flourished in creative businesses such as art, fashion, gastronomy, interior design and photography.
December 2nd marks this year’s digital campaign of #WomenWOW.
