- Lubna Olayan, once the only woman in her family’s Saudi-based conglomerate, reflected on the rapid and welcome progress of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, emphasizing that real change is possible when leaders are committed to it.
For 18 years, Lubna Olayan was the only woman working at her family’s Saudi Arabia-based conglomerate, The Olayan Group, but even she could not have predicted how far women’s rights would have come in her home country in a relatively short period of time.
As a result, Olayan says research that shows it may take 100 years to achieve gender parity on a global scale must be proved wrong, and added it will be “very disappointing” if the target does take a century to meet.
The benchmark has previously been identified by the World Economic Forum, which said in a June study that it will take 134 years to achieve full parity worldwide.
“I will be very disappointed if that is [the outcome],” Olayan told Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International Summit in Riyadh on Tuesday. “The audience in this room should prove that this is wrong. We should really try to fast-track and make it as soon as possible.
“I don’t think we can afford to wait that long.”
Olayan, formerly the CEO of the Olayan Financing Group and now chair of the board of Saudi Awwal Bank (SAB), spoke from her own experience of how quickly progress can happen if people in power are supportive of change.
While Amnesty International reported that in 2024, women in Saudi Arabia “continued to face discrimination in law and practice,” legislative changes have been introduced in recent years to promote equality as part of a wider ‘Vision 2030’ plan.
In 2018, for example, the ban on women driving was lifted, and a year later, a ruling allowed women over the age of 21 to apply for a passport without authorization.
Olayan had previously commented on changes to driving regulation, saying in 2016 that she hoped they would happen “very soon.”
Speaking at a Most Powerful Women conference back in 2016, Olayan remarked that some people thought reform in Saudi Arabia was happening too fast while “others think they’re moving too slow.”
In the seven years since that interview, Olayan says progress has been happening at a rate that has surprised even her.
“To be honest with you, I think the changes that have happened in the country is beyond my expectation,” Olayan told Fortune’s Diane Brady.
“I was the first woman working in our company … I started quite early and I made it to CEO, and I was the only woman for 18 years. Then in 2001 as a group we started hiring women, even before Vision 2030 in ’16.”
Olyan, who has previously appeared on the Most Powerful Women list (the latest iteration of which was published Tuesday) continued: “In ’04 I gave a speech where I [shared] my vision for my country … and it was remembered for my headpiece falling down rather than the content of the speech, which I really worked so hard at, but I guess the appearance was more important than than the content of the speech.
“But the key thing … was there can be truly no progress without change. What we’re seeing here is tremendous progress since ’16 is because of this mindset … that we have to change, we have to progress.”
“I truly wasn’t expecting that we would be where we are,” she added.
