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PROJECT REPORT ON

SAUDI ARAMCO: BLAZING A NEW TRAIL IN WOMEN


EMPOWERMENT IN SAUDI ARABIA

NAME: AMIT AGGARWAL


SUBJECT: MPOB

Summary
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil and natural gas producer, enjoyed a
dominant position among the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Aramco, the Saudi Arabian state-owned company emerged, over a period of time, as a 'fully
integrated petroleum company' with operations extending to exploration, production, refining,
marketing, and petrochemical manufacturing. Aramco already had a 550,000 barrel-per-day
refinery. Under a joint venture with Dow Chemicals of US, Aramco was set to double its refining
capacity: 4.5 million tons a year of basic chemicals and 7 million tons of plastics were estimated
to be produced. The company appointed a woman executive, Nabilah Al-Tunisi, to head the
project. In Saudi Arabia, women can't vote, drive or appear in public with their heads uncovered.
However, several initiatives have been taken to reform society and to give educational and
employment opportunities to women, which yielded good results, and these efforts needed to be
sustained and stepped up. The case deals with issues that occur when a woman is put in charge of
a giant expansion project of a leading Saudi Arabian company, Saudi Aramco, and highlights
how women in Saudi proved themselves as competent in the male dominated corporate world.

Objectives of research

To know the rights of womens in Saudi Arabia.


To know the women empowerment initiatives taken by Aramco in Saudi Arabia.

Introduction
Rights of women are in Saudi Arabia
Women's rights in Saudi Arabia are defined by government laws and the Hanbali interpretation
of Sunni Islam. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that prohibits women from driving.
Women were previously forbidden from voting or being elected to political office, but King
Abdullah declared that women will be able to vote and run in the 2015 local elections, as well as
be appointed to the Consultative Assembly.
The average age at first marriage among Saudi females is 25 years in Saudi Arabia. Child
marriage exists in Saudi Arabia, but is not common. 60% of all university graduates in Saudi
Arabia are Saudi women. Female literacy is estimated to be 91% whereas male literacy is
estimated to be higher.
Saudi women constitute 18.6% of the country's native workforce as of 2011. The World
Economic Forum 2009 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 130th out of 134
countries for gender parity. It was the only country to score a zero in the category of political
empowerment. The report also noted that Saudi Arabia is one of the few Middle Eastern
countries to improve from 2008, with small gains in economic opportunity.
The government under King Abdullah is considered reformist. It has opened the country's first
co-educational university, appointed the first female cabinet member, and passed laws against
domestic violence. Women did not gain the right to vote in 2005, but the king supports a
woman's right to drive and vote.
Women are not allowed to do most of the jobs that men can do in Saudi Arabia. Industry-wise,
the sole company that employs female engineers is Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company in the
world. Other companies would not be allowed to hire women as engineers. Most women work in
either education or the medical field. Women have only recently been allowed to work as store
clerks or at department stores. At the time of writing, a few hypermarkets have allowed women
to work at checkout counters and some department stores have allowed them to work there as
well. These companies require employed women to cover their faces at all times while working.

One notable place of business where women are absent from is the lingerie store, which are still
fully staffed by men.
Women have never been allowed to drive unless they drive in the desert or inside private
compounds. Otherwise, families have to hire private drivers to take women to work and
elsewhere if the men in the household have no time. The main arguments for preventing women
from driving are that it may cause women to leave their houses more often than they need to
(which is frowned upon); they may have interactions with unrelated males and the need to
uncover their faces.

Saudi Aramco
Saudi Aramco, officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, most popularly known just as
Aramco (Arabian-American Oil Company) is a Saudi Arabian national petroleum and natural
gas Company based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco's value has been estimated at up to
US$10 trillion in the Financial Times, making it the world's most valuable company.
Saudi Aramco has both the world's largest proven crude oil reserves, at more than 260 billion
barrels (4.11010 m3), and largest daily oil production. Headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi
Arabia, Saudi Aramco operates the world's largest single hydrocarbon network, the Master Gas
System. Its yearly production is 3.479 billion barrels (553,100,000 m3), and it managed over 100
oil and gas fields in Saudi Arabia, including 284.8 trillion standard cubic feet (scf) of natural
gas reserves. Saudi Aramco owns the Ghawar Field, the world's largest oil field, and the Shaybah
Field, another one of the world's largest oil fields.

Saudi Aramco appointed Nabilah Al-Tunisi to put in charge of the engineering on a new $25
billion refinery and petrochemicals plantthe Ras Tanura Integrated Project, headquarters in
Dhahran. It is the most prodigious diversification ever for the worlds largest producer of oiland
the state-owned Saudi company put a woman at the helm. At home Al-Tunisi cant vote, drive or
appear in public with her head uncovered. Now she and a codirector from Dow supervise 300

engineers. Almost all my colleagues, the guys, were saying, How come you? Al-Tunisi, 49,
recalls.

Women empowerment initiatives taken by Aramco in Saudi Arabia


Al-Tunisi launched Aramcos first commodity forecastswhich she broached, with trepidation,
before a dozen directors, including Chairman Ali Al-Naimi and President Abdallah Jumah. I
think I was the first lady before the board, at least from the Aramco side, she says. Based on her
predictions, in 2005 the Aramco board doubled its expected megaproject costs to $50 billion. Not
what anyone wanted to hear but not enough to halt the growth. In June no one blinked when
Aramco officials announced that by 2013 their investment in drilling, pipelines, refineries and
chemicals plants would hit a cumulative $129 billion.
The state-owned oil company, Aramco, allows both foreign and Saudi women to drive around its
large business and residential zone in eastern Saudi Arabia. Some 3,000 women, about half of
them Saudi, have been allowed to drive within the compound for the past 30 years. Aramco even
provides driving instruction to women, as company employees assert that women must be able to
drive children to school given the long hours their husbands work. Approval from a legal (male)
guardian is still required for the women to take driving lessons, and drivers licenses can only be
obtained from other countries such as neighboring Bahrain.
The 2011 Women2Drive Campaign by Saudi Aramco
In May 2011, a 32-year old Aramco employee, Manal al-Sharif, posted an eight-minute video on
YouTube featuring her driving around the city of Khobar while explaining the countrys driving
ban. The videographer was Wajeha al-Huwaider, one of the women who had coordinated the
2007 petition and had driven in 2008. The YouTube video quickly attracted about 600,000
viewers and gave momentum to the Women2Drive campaign, which called upon women to get
behind the wheel on June 17th, 2011. The campaign did not seem to have leadership or specific
expectations of participants beyond driving cars in their respective towns and cities. Strategy for
how best to go about driving a car -- with or without a male guardian -- was left to the individual
protestors. At the end of June 17th, somewhere between 30 and 100 women had driven around

Riyadh, Jeddah and Demmam. The exact number of participants was unclear, as it was up to
each individual to report their participation by posting a video on social media sites or finding a
foreign reporter who happened to be reporting on the event. One of these reporters, Jason Burke
of The Guardian, summarized the protest: It was certainly not a mass movement.
In the months after June 17th, 2011, al-Sharif, the public personification of Saudi womens right
to drive, made the rounds of the global speaking circuit, articulating the inspiring message of
womens empowerment and basic human rights. The struggle is not about driving a car, she
declared at the Oslo Freedom Forum. Its about being in the drivers seat of our own destiny. In
interviews, al-Sharif has also expressed a longer term goal: We are trying to change the future
for the next generation. Messages about empowerment, the future and the deconstruction of
Saudi Arabias patriarchal attitudes toward women are clearly aimed at Westerners who may
react with indignation at the image of veiled Saudi woman unable to leave her home without
male approval.
Diplomatic support from foreign governments has proven able to influence the trajectory of
nonviolent campaigns. In the most quantifiable example of foreign support for the Women2Drive
campaign, a Change.org petition circulated by the Saudi Women for Driving Coalition and
addressed to Hillary Clinton accrued over 22,000 signatures just before the June 2011 drive. The
petition called on Secretary Clinton to end the quiet diplomacy in which she was rumored to be
engaged with the Saudi government and to make a public statement of support for the lifting of
the ban.11 Shortly thereafter, Clinton publicly praised the women drivers: What these women
are doing is brave, and what they are asking for is right.
leader of Women2Drive, al-Sharif is what Bob and Nepstead refer to as prophetic in that she
provides a persuasive vision of social change and progress.17 Al-Sharif speaks eloquently and
passionately in international settings; she inspires empathy.

Womens Global Leadership Conference 2012 in Energy & Technology in Houston


Aramco Services Co. (ASC) supporting the 2012 Womens Global Leadership Conference in
Energy & Technology in Houston as a major sponsor, Saudi Aramco Reservoir Engineer Tasneem
Talal AlSharif participated in a panel discussion titled Challenges facing young professionals.

AlSharif joined a panel of three other women along with a moderator to discuss the challenges
facing them as young professionals in the energy industry striving to balance work-life issues
successfully.
As the conversation began, what quickly became clear was that there were more similarities rather
than differences between all the panelists. The overriding concerns were:
1. Gaining a seat at the table to contribute to an organization effectively
2. Growing in terms of personal and professional confidence
3. recognizing you have to give up some control because you cant do it all
4. Having a mentor in the workplace to provide you with advice and counsel.
What I found fascinating was that everyone shares the same challenges, said AlSharif.
To this last point, panelists agreed that they are challenged on many fronts to not only be a good
employee but also a good wife and a good mother. That is not easy to accomplish, and what truly
matters at the end of the day, said one panelist, is maintaining a proper perspective and
remembering that family is what matters most.
For AlSharif, the youngest of the panelists and also a woman from Saudi Arabia, there was a great
deal of interest in her accomplishments and the supportive role Saudi Aramco has played in her
career development.
During the question and answer session, she told an audience of 700 men and women about her
studies at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom where she earned a bachelors
degree in Petroleum Engineering. She also talked about her work as a production engineer
working for Saudi Aramcos EXPEC Advanced Research Center and now at the companys Gas
Reservoir Management Department where she is a reservoir engineer managing two satellite fields.
AlSharif also explained her role in a team that founded Qudwa, an affinity group that was launched
in April 2012 to be a catalyst in the development of a diverse, productive corporate environment
that capitalizes on the unique qualities existing among men and women by encouraging dialogue
and open discussions. The group is also constructing a mentoring program for young women.

Conclusion
The conclusion is drawn from the study on saudi aramco: blazing a new trail in women
empowerment in saudi arabia is that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that prohibits
women from driving. Women were previously forbidden from voting or being elected to political
office, but women will be able to vote and run in the 2015 local elections, as well as be appointed
to the Consultative Assembly. There are some initiatives taken by Saudi aramco for the women
empowerment like appointing female employees in the organization even at top level positions,
allowing womens to drive the car around its large business and residential zone in eastern Saudi
Arabia.

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