Instagram empowering Saudi businesswomen

DUBAI — If she had chosen the traditional route to opening her accessories business in Jeddah, Ms Rozana Daini would have had to enlist a male sponsor to represent her before government agencies and sign official documents on her behalf.

Instead, she sells jewellery, watches and wallets on Instagram, where Saudi businesswomen can avoid the gender restrictions they face in the kingdom. Ms Daini’s two-year-old business, Accessories_ar, has two employees and 67,000 followers, and handles up to 25 orders a day.

It also provides her with the ultimate empowerment: Her own income.

Ms Daini, 20, is one of a growing number of Saudi women turning to Instagram to start businesses, gain market share and skirt limitations in a country where women cannot drive.

They are part of an informal economy, as they are not counted in the 48 per cent growth in the number of employed Saudi women to almost 806,000 between 2010 and 2014.

Women owned 12 per cent of all companies in the Gulf nation of 30 million, based on a 2010 report from Strategy&, a global strategy consulting team at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Although women are entering the workforce at a faster rate than men, female unemployment was 33 per cent last year, versus 5.9 per cent for men, based on government data.

Saudi Arabia’s social and economic constraints on women derive from its Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam.

In 2014, it ranked 137th out of 142 countries in economic participation and opportunities, and 138th in labour participation, based on the 2014 Global Gender Gap Report by the WorldEconomic Forum.

Factors specific to Saudi Arabia have prompted women to create online businesses, said Mr Khalid Khudair,founder and chief executive officer of Glowork, a Riyadh-based organisation with 38,500 members dedicated tofemale employment.

“Social media has provided a venue for women who undergo some social restrictions, or prefer not to work or deal with men,” he said in a phone interview.

Starting a business on Instagram “is very easy” compared with opening a shop. “The only obstacle they might face is marketing.”

For Ms May Jasser, the owner of Alyamamah Gelateria in the Saudi capital Riyadh, Instagram had turned out to be a marketing bonanza. The former biology professor at King Saud University was struggling to get customers into her ice cream shop until she opened an Instagram account advertising her gelato carts.

Sales had improved “significantly” as residents placed orders for parties in Saudi Arabia’s capital, she said.

Social networking is more prevalent in Saudi Arabia than the global average, offering an outlet to interact free from constraints, saidDr Evangelos Moustakas, Associate Professor in electronic marketing at Middlesex University Dubai.

Where there are social restrictions, “the need for people to communicate becomes even higher”, he said by phone.

Saudis spend an average of 2.65 hours a day social networking, compared with a global average of 1.69 hours, based on a survey this year by London-based market research firm GlobalWebIndex.

While entrepreneurs also use Twitter and other social networks,Ms Daini said Instagram’s photo-based interface is a good fit for her business.

“The photography affects people,” she said. BLOOMBErG