Ebtihaj Minyawi is a journalist who has fought hard to get where she is and has made a point of proving that women are as qualified as men. She heads the women's department at Al-Madina newspaper. Every person has undiscovered abilities that show up unexpectedly at some point in their life, and that is what happened to Minyawi, who has spent 15 years working in the field of journalism in Saudi Arabia. Changing her career from medicine to business while at university was the starting point in a creative journey that led to business reporting and analysis. “I always dreamed of being a dentist, but after graduating from high school in 1995, my grades did not allow me to study dentistry. So I decided to start in a different field and then shift to medicine after a year or two,” she said. Minyawi started her journalism career at the age of 18 and even though her family was opposed to her working in this field, she persevered and has become one of the Kingdom's best-known journalists. “My mom was against the idea of my being a journalist, especially as in those days not many females worked at that field,” Minyawi said. Specializing in business administration, Minyawi soon discovered that she has business analysis abilities that she was never aware of. “Joining my study of business with my journalistic abilities eventually led to my becoming the youngest female department managing editor in the Kingdom,” she said. Minyawi, who started to work as a freelance journalist at Okaz newspaper while still at university, found that her first analytic piece became a first page business article in 1995. According to Minyawi, one of her university courses focused on business journalism analysis, and it was at that point that “I found that I could be successful and start a new career for myself with the support of my teachers and supervisors at King Abdulaziz University”. The work situation for women in the Kingdom is similar to that of women in many countries, she said. There are obstacles when women want to enter the field of journalism and write on topics, such as business and sports that were in the past restricted to men, she explained. “After graduating from university, Minyawi started working full time as a reporter for Al-Watan newspaper in 1998. “Working in journalism exposed me to all the issues of society, even though I was mainly thought of as a business journalist,” she said. “One story which touched me emotionally was when I wrote about parents meeting with teenagers in a juvenile correction home. Such sensitive human interest stories made me aware of aspects of life that I had never known about,” she added. Minyawi covered most of the important business issues in the Kingdom, such as the annual budget, the financial impact of Saudi Arabia's entry to the World Trade Organization and the role of women in business in the Kingdom. “After working in Al-Watan, I shifted to Okaz where I worked for ten years,” she said. Minyawi was appointed acting head of the Okaz women's department in 2004 and then women's department managing editor in 2005. Minyawi has shared her job experience by working as a member of the training staff at the Prince Ahmed Bin Salman applied media institute in Riyadh. “I started at the Prince Ahmed Bin Salman Institute by training a group of Yemeni female journalists with the cooperation of the Saudi Ministry of Information,” she explained. With tremendous support from her husband, Minyawi's dream is to be part of the higher framework of media and journalism in Saudi Arabia. “Saudi women have worked in journalism for more than 30 years, and I think now is the right time for us to be part of the decision making,” she said. Minyawi, the mother of a three-year-old boy, took off eight months to care for her baby, before joining Al-Madinah newspaper in December 2008. “Being the mother of a toddler never stopped me from my work, but, in fact, has helped me to learn how to divide my efforts equally between my family and my job,” she said. “I want to use my success to provide my son with the best learning environment and fight through my pen against whatever may affect his life negatively in the future,” she added.
