One woman's work

Azza Raslan has spent two decades challenging accepted stereotypes of women’s roles in the Middle East. Despite numerous setbacks, she refused to give up on her chosen career in accounting. Currently the chief internal auditor and financial adviser to the CEO of a prestigious hospital in Saudi Arabia, she is blazing a trail for women accountants in the Kingdom. Colette Steckel went to meet her

Such is the camaraderie among the management at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, that Azza Raslan can’t help but laugh at the playful remarks she gets from her peers. “I employ five of the most fantastic young ladies in the finance department. And my colleagues tease me about it. ‘Azza is building an empire of women,’ they say. ‘There are more girls in the finance department than anywhere else in the hospital.’’’ She smiles broadly. “I tell them, how can you compare five girls with 600 nurses?”

Azza quips that there might be another reason why her girls are being singled out. “We don’t have a uniform at the hospital but I always wear black trousers and a long black coat [as well as the hijab, a headscarf worn by Muslim women]. It’s elegant, conservative, and discreet so it doesn’t draw attention to me. All five girls have started wearing exactly the same outfit.” She starts laughing. On a more serious note, she reasons that her young charges are challenging widely-held views about women in business. “Why do they stand out? They are pioneers in a highly charged and sensitive workplace, and so it is important for them to stand out as role models.”

For a woman, Saudi Arabia is not the easiest of countries in which to embark on a career. Until recently, there was a ban that kept women from working in most professional fields, with the exception of education and medicine where jobs as teachers and doctors have always been tolerated. And then there is the overriding concern about the mixing of sexes. “When you talk about attitudes to women in Saudi Arabia, it’s not that men are against women in the workplace. Many aren’t, but it’s important to cater for the cultural requirements of segregation of the sexes in the workplace, as well as other conservative considerations, before society becomes completely open to women working in various industries,” explains Azza.

With women comprising barely 6% of the workforce in the Kingdom, many offices have traditionally been male domains that are equipped with few facilities, if any, for women. But Azza notes that employers are now starting to handle the issue of what is acceptable in the workplace. “More offices are now recruiting ladies but they are given their own separate section, which is fine because both men and women are comfortable in their own surroundings. It’s an excellent compromise and it removes the main objection to women working from traditional voices who are opposed to the principle.”

Last year, the Council of Ministers, the highest government body in Saudi Arabia, issued a nine-point plan urging the creation of more job opportunities for women in most professional fields, and asking the Chambers of Commerce and Industry to form committees for women to help them find jobs. Among the most significant developments is the right for women to hold commercial licences and to run their own businesses in the various professions. “Times have changed. Saudi Arabia has moved on,” notes Azza. “Little by little, women are making progress in a way that is not rocking the boat. People are gradually getting used to the fact that a woman can do her work without offending her traditions and religious beliefs.”

This is a poignant point for Azza who spent her early years as a finance professional struggling to overcome prejudice in the workplace and whose own career path in the Middle East was littered with disappointment and, occasionally, disillusionment. Born in Saudi Arabia in 1950, Azza grew up in Mecca, the holiest of cities in the Kingdom. She later moved, with her family, to Cairo, Egypt, where she went to school, and where she later met and married an Iraqi doctor who was studying surgery at the Kasr El Ainy, Cairo’s prestigious university hospital. The couple soon moved to Edinburgh in Scotland where Azza’s husband was accepted for fellowship training at the Royal College of Surgeons.

Continuing her education, Azza graduated in computer studies from the University of Edinburgh while juggling married life and motherhood. “Looking back on it now, I wonder how I managed, but when you are young you take everything in your stride,” she recalls. Fresh from university, she was recruited as an audit trainee by Arthur Young McClelland, Moores and Co (now part of Ernst & Young). She became an ACCA in 1978.

It was the year that marked her return to the Middle East. Her husband, who was by then working in Baghdad in Iraq, spotted an advertisement for a financial controller at the Thomas Cook office in the city. “They wanted an Iraqi, I’m married to one. They wanted an Arabic speaker, which I am, and they wanted someone to take up duties immediately, which I could,” notes Azza. She was interviewed in the UK but, despite her CV ticking all the right boxes, the job was given to a man. “I was told I was the best applicant but that the company was advised locally that a man would be more acceptable. To tell you the truth, that was the first real shock that there would be a time when I would be discriminated against because I am a woman.”

Progressive

In a delicious volte-face, the job was later given to Azza when an investigation into the financial operations of the Baghdad office revealed that the FC’s ethics were questionable. “I thought that I might have had difficulty working in Baghdad but actually Iraq was, and still is, much more progressive than people give it credit for,” remarks Azza, adding that the political situation in the country presented the biggest challenge.

Simmering disputes between Iraq and Iran spilled over into an all-out war in 1980, which was to last eight years. Iraqis were forbidden from travelling and the Thomas Cook office felt the full force of the ban on its business. Azza advised the company to close the office. “Things were becoming very tense in Iraq, there was a very hostile feeling towards anything foreign, and Thomas Cook stood out because of its prominent role in the travel business, so the company was beginning to worry about the safety of its staff,” she reasons. “When the Central Bank of Iraq stopped the repatriation of the profits, it was time to reconsider the reason for being there in the first place.” She locked the door to the office in 1983 and, along with her family, fled the country. “We left everything in Iraq. Our house, furniture, carpets, money, everything. We had to start from scratch.”

As a Saudi citizen, the only option for Azza was to set up a home in Saudi Arabia. The family settled in Jeddah, a modern metropolis on the west coast of the Kingdom. Azza’s husband, a respected vascular surgeon, found work easily. Azza didn’t. “I was told outright that I couldn’t work in Saudi Arabia in the roles that I was trained to do,” she rues. Although not giving up on her aim to continue her accounting career, she took an opportunity to work as manager for the women’s branch of the Saudi Cairo Bank (now part of the Saudi American Bank) at the women’s campus of the King Abdulazziz University in Jeddah.

“The first thing that hit me was that I could not make any decisions without having them endorsed by a male counterpart. I had to report to the manager of the men’s branch on the men’s campus,” she begins, adding that neither she nor her male colleague could leave their campuses, which were separated. “That made life very difficult for me but it must have been much more difficult for him. Part of his job was to supervise me. But how can you supervise what you can’t see or get spontaneous access to?”

A year later, she was moved to another women’s branch of SCB and was granted autonomy and direct access to head office. Her forthright requests for ATMs and computerisation at the branch brought her to the attention of an open-minded management, who took the imaginative but doomed step of asking her to take part in a regional board meeting. She agreed, but her audience - a board of men - refused to take part in the meeting. “I arrived at five past nine and, within minutes, the room was empty,” she recalls. “To be fair, a woman attending a board meeting was a new concept then and I don’t think they were ready for it.”

She quit the bank in 1990 because her husband was Iraqi and they feared reprisals over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. “It was a tense time thinking we might be arrested at any moment,” she remarks. Thankfully, her fears were unfounded. “Saudi Arabia was very good to us.” Her career was later reinvigorated when a friend offered her a post as financial controller of a new private hospital. “This was really a fantastic opportunity for me. I could not only get back into my chosen profession but I could also work in a hospital setting, which was as normal as it got in Saudi Arabia at the time,” says Azza.

Two years later, when the hospital was sold as a going concern, she found herself out of a job. So began an unsatisfactory decade of moving from one job to another, encountering prejudice because of her sex and finding her dogged determination to stick to professional ethics questioned by some of her employers. In the 1990s, she notched up five jobs and a failed attempt to start her own consultancy, which she admits was virtually impossible anyway because the Kingdom refused to grant licences to women. “You had to tread very carefully back then. When you have an obvious handicap, like being a woman, you don’t know how and when people might use that against you. The most important thing for me was to establish credibility. If people take you seriously, then your being a woman doesn’t matter.”

By 2000, she felt at an all-time low in her career, which meant that, from here on in, things could only get better. They did, just as she began thinking seriously of going back to school for a new career. Through a friend who worked at the King Faisal hospital in Riyadh, she was brought to the attention of the hospital management who asked if she might like to consider heading up the finance department of a new facility in Jeddah. “I have never looked back,” she beams. “It has been five years of fantastic professional experience. I work with a management team that thrives on change and is constantly challenging established outmoded ways of doing business.”

Although initially recruited as the assistant finance director, Azza’s career has taken off as the hospital has grown into one of the most respected medical facilities in the country and often cited as a benchmark in the region. Two years ago, Azza was promoted from finance director to director of business affairs and was charged with strengthening the hospital’s private sector without compromising the free-for-all healthcare that the Kingdom offers all citizens. Mission accomplished (private income tripled in the two years Azza held her post), she was last year appointed chief internal auditor and financial adviser to the CEO. It’s a new role at the hospital and one she relishes. “Internal audit is a completely new function here, so it’s really exciting for me,” she enthuses, adding thoughtfully, “there comes a time in your life when you realise that everything happens for a reason.”

Achievement

2005 marks another professional milestone. Earlier this year she met with the director of Women’s Empowerment and Research at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce, who runs the women’s branch of the chamber. In 2004, the chamber held its annual economic forum attended by men and, for the first time, women who were separated by a mirrored glass partition. “That branch is a dream for us. To have a presence in the Chamber of Commerce and to take part in forums is a fantastic achievement.” Together, the two hope to run an accounting club for women, with the possibility of extending to a men’s club if they can find a sponsor. “We need to work at supporting female accountants in the Kingdom and giving them the confidence to do their jobs well,” explains Azza.

She also participates in the Miawiyah fund (Miawiyah is Arabic for centennial), the Saudi counterpart of Youth Business International, which seeks to help young entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. Azza finds mentors for the fund’s budding entrepreneurs and is a mentor to a young woman for whom Azza clearly has great admiration. “I mentor a lovely girl who designs abayas (a long robe worn by Muslim women). People are going to hear a lot about her. She’s going places.”

For someone who always hoped but never really expected to get this far in her career in Saudi Arabia, Azza has deservedly earned her status and professional responsibilities at the hospital. But she cautions that if it were not for her relocation out of Saudi Arabia, and her resolve to challenge accepted stereotypes of women’s roles, she might never have been an accountant. “What I went through in my career was awful really. My journey has been an uphill struggle from day one. I think if I had remained in Saudi Arabia, if my circumstances hadn’t dictated that I travel, probably I wouldn’t have gone into business and accounting. I might have chosen an easier path. Thank God I didn’t. More people should go out and challenge themselves and society into accepting you for who and what you are. Whenever I felt the urge to give up, I reminded myself that the day will come when women will come into their own in Saudi Arabia; when that day came, I wanted to be right there among them, celebrating our patience and resolve.”