Di donne imprenditrici, in Arabia Saudita, ce ne sono. Anzi, alcune tra le donne più ricche del mondo sono proprio nel regno degli Ibn Saud. Il caso più conosciuto, almeno nel mondo arabo, è quello di Lubna Olayan, la figura forse più di rilievo di una delle ricche famiglie saudite. Nell’economia, le donne si sono ritagliate uno spazio d’azione, uno dei pochi concessi in Arabia Saudita. Spazi limitati che ora un rapporto di Human Rights Watch ha esaminato nel dettaglio. C’è il problema dei trasporti e del divieto per le donne a guidare la macchina (ed è il fatto forse più conosciuto in Occidente), ma ci sono anche altri limiti. Spaziali e di comunicazione. Due elementi, invece, essenziali nel lavoro. Come spiega il rapporto di HRW.
“Sex segregation in the workplace has particularly adverse and discriminatory consequences for women by making them unattractive as employees. For employers, the need to establish separate facilities for women, and women’s inability to interact with government agencies without a male representative, provide significant disincentives to hiring them. An additional disincentive is that employers must sometimes coordinate their female employees’ transportation since women are barred from driving. One businesswoman told Human Rights Watch that she is forced to raise the salaries of her female employees to compensate for their transportation costs:
‘Otherwise her salary will go solely to pay for transportation. If a cleaning lady gets 1500 SR [US$400], 500 SR [US$133] goes to the driver. Transportation is a big problem. As a businesswoman, I’ll always hire a man over a woman; for the woman, I have to figure out how she’s going to come into work every morning. Some will tell me the driver didn’t come today or came an hour late. How can I blame her for that? I’m not talking about rich women who can get a driver, but everyone else. You can’t depend on your brother or father or uncle to take you where you need to go. It’s not a luxury; it’s one of the basic needs of life’. (la citazione è di una donna imprenditrice saudita)
‘Otherwise her salary will go solely to pay for transportation. If a cleaning lady gets 1500 SR [US$400], 500 SR [US$133] goes to the driver. Transportation is a big problem. As a businesswoman, I’ll always hire a man over a woman; for the woman, I have to figure out how she’s going to come into work every morning. Some will tell me the driver didn’t come today or came an hour late. How can I blame her for that? I’m not talking about rich women who can get a driver, but everyone else. You can’t depend on your brother or father or uncle to take you where you need to go. It’s not a luxury; it’s one of the basic needs of life’. (la citazione è di una donna imprenditrice saudita)