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.
“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.
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.”
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.”
“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.
