Saudi women grow their ventures at US incubator

Washington : Reem Dad, a 22-year-old from Saudi Arabia, is developing a platform for pilgrims and tourists to experience a virtual reality tour of Medina, one of Islam’s holiest sites. Heba Zahid, 37, is working on GreenDesert, a venture that would be one of the first to help create a recycling culture in the Middle Eastern country.

Dad and Zahid were among 14 young women social entrepreneurs from the kingdom who recently attended an intensive programme at Halcyon, a Washington-based business incubator, to turn their ideas into reality. The initiative comes after Saudi women were given the right to drive in June, among reforms backed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman raising hopes for greater gender equality.

“Everything is changing now... There is space for females everywhere,” said Dad, whose virtual reality programme is called Taibah VR. “If a man wants to establish a company or wants to start up something, there’s a process they go through -- the same process we also go through. So I feel we are equal,” she told AFP.

Other projects include an Arabic-language app to help autistic children communicate, matching employers and workers to reduce unemployment and underemployment, as well as a video game to motivate youths to engage in community service. The Saudi government’s Vision 2030 aims in part to promote local businesses, including those run by women, whose participation in the workforce is expected to grow from 22 per cent to 30pc by the end of the next decade.

That’s still far behind most other nations. In the United States, where large gaps remain between women and men’s employment rates, wages and job positions, around 60pc of women participate in the labor force, according to the Brookings Institution.