articulate of princess amira
Princess Ameerah, the wife of Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal (who is a nephew of the King), gave an extensive interview to Christiane Amanpour of CNN during a recent visit to the U.S. for the Clinton Global Initiative. In it, she noted that 57% of university graduates in Saudi Arabia are women (though women account for only 15% of the workforce). This, in a country where women can’t drive, can’t travel alone and need their husband’s permission to take a job. “For us women, we are very educated, but we are not organized,” the princess said. She’s working to change that through her role as vice chair of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation. “We’re creating the first women leaders network in Saudi Arabia. We have women leaders in different sectors. They get together, they set priorities and how to tackle these priorities and reach their voices to the right people. This is a step that I think will create a positive change.”
The princess staked out what women need in her country: “It all starts with civil rights. So far there aren’t any written civil rights for Saudi women who are citizens. The Ministry of Justice said that they’re working on it. However, rights are not given, they’re taken. It’s up to us to state what we want to happen with our civil rights.”
This wasn’t the first time the Princess has gone on national U.S. tv. She spoke to NBC’s Today show in June 2011. (See my take on that here).
Though the princess is not allowed to drive on Saudi streets, she can do so on her husband’s vast land an hour or so outside Riyadh. Alwaleed, who ranked 29th on Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires in March, with a net worth of $18 billion, is known for supporting women’s rights and has paid to train the first Saudi woman plane pilot and a competitive woman horse racer. But some Saudi laws restricting women’s rights have hit the princess personally. In a divorce, Saudi husbands typically have the right to custody of their children. “In custody battles, children get taken away from [mothers]. A lot of Saudi women suffered from that. My own mom suffered from that with us,” she said during the interview.
What’s next for Saudi women? Said Princess Ameerah: “I think it’s up to us to move and to ask for [our civil rights]. The government is moving and it’s making a lot of reforms, but we need to move as well as civil society and as NGOs.”
