Saudi Arabia's First Female CFO

LS: And that drives more acceptance of women in the workplace?

SAK: It is changing, day-to-day, and I always say that we see the change in Saudi Arabia. I see it every day, I see it every month, every week, every year. That change, you smell it in the air. People coming in from outside, maybe, for the first time they don't see it. But people living in Saudi Arabia, we see it. We see the change.

LS: What does it look like? What does the change look like for Saudi women in business?

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SAK: Being able to be a board member is a change. Being able to be a CFO is a change. Being able to go to meetings where it was only male in the past, now it's just male-dominated is a change. Maybe somebody coming in from the outside won't see that. They see that women's place is very minimal, but we see it as a change from zero participation to 7, 8, 9 percent participation.

We have the lowest participation of women in the workplace in the world, that's right, but that participation is increasing year by year. My mother, the people of my mother's age, none of them worked. I was teaching in the university and I see all of my students now have an inclination to work. They want to participate in the workforce.

LS: How much more opportunity do they have now?

SAK: When I do the interviews [with young women] I see that each of them has had more than one offer to work. So, more and more companies are tapping into that resource. Women have capability to work in any company, and even the government now, they are putting more and more women's branches. So, they see that as a large workforce, that is a resource, that should be used, should be utilized in the workforce.

LS: Is there a backlash, a resistance to change?

SAK: There's always a part of society that doesn't want that change, that is afraid of that change. What we're doing, as women in the workforce, we are trying to ask for that change but we don't push for that change, because pushing for that change will end it for all of us. So what we are doing, we are in our own stride, in our own steady stride, we are pushing but very slowly.

LS: What's driving part of that change? Clearly some of it is the motivation of women in the workplace, but what of things like globalization and economic need?

SAK: Any development initially comes from the financial need. So, we see more and more families asking for double income, which encourages women to join the workforce.