Job Discussion Forums

[Rin]

No I don't want to date them.

What I do want to know is what they do? Where do they go? Where do they hang out together? What do they read?

Basically I need to know the best way to reach women in Saudi Arabia. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks

[PeterBar]

Depending on the ages of your potential clients why not simply make contact through the women's colleges and universities ? On women's wards in hospitals/nurses stations etc etc

Otherwise, get a few appropriately dressed arabic speaking women to stand in various malls and buttonhole the Saudi women as they pass by.

[Rin]

Thanks Peter, I think I need to be a bit more specific. Where do wives and mothers get together? I need to reach women with husbands and children who are interested in eating healthy.

[Cleopatra]

I'm a bit puzzled by your post, rin.

You say you want to 'reach Saudi women'. How? Why? Just out of interest?

While, as I say, I'm not at all sure what your post is about, a few pointers:

- Saudi women (and men) basically don't read at all. Certainly not for pleasure: if they have to read books for educational purposes, they may reluctantly do so, though in general they are much more comfortable with the 'say after me' process of 'learning'.

- Saudi women tend to socialise almost entirely within the family group. That's not as claustrophobic as it might sound, because extended families here can have as many members as a small town. It should go without saying that - with a very few exceptiions - they only ever socialise in female-only groups.

- Saudis in general tend to be very suspicious of outsiders - that is to say, just about everyone from outside the family. That's why I don't see Peter's suggestion of 'buttonholing' women in malls as being likely to have any success. It's not appropriate for strangers, even other women, to approach Saudi women in public.

- As for 'eathing healthy', I'd rather you than me. The very concept is quite alien, and while some well to do women among the idle classes may have read about 'heathy eating' in some woman's magazine, few Saudis have the perseverence or discipline to persue any form of long-term eating regimen. Plus, even for these women, 'healthy eating' means 'losing weight', although most of these kind of women prefer a quick fix like liposuction.

[Bebsi]

It is truly amazing how little some people know about Saudi culture, especially given the reams that have already been written in this site about Saudi life.

True, many Saudis indeed do not read. However, I wonder how many EFL teachers read as much as members of their profession might be expected to?

[Rin]

While I posted before how I am in public relations now, one of my clients is a major frozen foods distributor, they want to expand into the Gulf market, starting with Saudi. Since it is the women that decide the food purchases we need to reach them with advertising and such. My job is not ads, my job is to find stories to put in newspapers, magazines or on TV.

Our focus groups say there is a lack of knowledge, but a desire to know, what consititutes healthy and unhealthy eating. Hence, my post.

[jonks]

I agree Bebsi. But I am curious. Why do you want to "reach" Saudi Arabian women? So odd...

[Rin]

And Bebsi I looked but I didn't see any posts about the most popular publications and newspapers. As for what women do in Saudi, I've read that, but I was hoping there might be a bit more insight, unfortunatly it doesn't look like it.

[veiledsentiments]

I'd try to find out what Arabic language women's magazines sell best in Saudi. I really don't see much of a market for this sort of thing in the Gulf countries in general.

So many of the Saudi families that would be reading are also probably those with enough wealth to hire cooks... and frozen foods are for working women trying to save time...

Maybe I'm wrong, but...

VS

[Cleopatra]

Bebsi,

You seem to be suggesting that I was wrong in stating that very few Saudis read for pleasure.

You might like to read the UN's Human Rights Development reports for the Arab world. Accoring to both reports, what is striking is that not only in KSA, but in the Arab world in general, reading has a very, very low priority. There have been fewer books translated into Arabic than into Greek, a language spoken by about 10 million people (as opposed to Arabic's 280 million). In addition, any research which has been conducted on the learning styles of Saudis has shown that they much prefer the 'aural' style, and have extremely poor reading skills even in their own language. My own experience - and that of every single EFL teacher I know in KSA - has definately borne this out.

And I'm not sure what you meant by making a comparison to the reading habits (or lack of same) of EFL teachers: whether or not they read as much as you believe they should (?) does not alter the fact that only a small minority of Saudis ever choose to read. Count the number of bookshops in Riyadh, and compare that to what you'd see in other similarly sized cities, and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, back to the OP...

[Rin]

Thanks Cleopatra, but our focus groups revealed all that stuff, and just to let you know, the women in these homes make the lists of foods that the maids take out, and we aren't targeting rich Saudi's. Also are research indicated that the women are interested in reading about it, if not following it. We are just trying to get them to read the name of our supplier.

As for your rather deragatory comment about how our firm doesn't deserve to suceed, I chose to post on this site because sometimes people who have lived in an area for awhile know some little things that might not have made it into the research, like the name of a particuarly popular womens magazine. I've already found many, I was just hoping one of you might have been observant enough to notice if there were any particular ones that stand out. Also I personally noticed that sometimes people have intelligent insights about the countries they are living in that I could use.

In this case I guess not.

[Cleopatra]

[Rin]

The name of the most popular womens magazine in Sindayyati another popular one is Laha, unfortunately for as popular as it is there readership is still fairly low. Good thing these aren't are only tactics.

I was mostly wondering if there was a way that perhaps people who live there would know, that I wouldn't since I don't live there. I've found this site useful in the past for questions about culture, my company doesn't even know it exists. I simply thought it would be a good idea to ask people who live there.

I guess I was wrong, since despite your (apprentely) many years there you don't know anything about the culture that I don't already know.

Thanks for being a complete and total bitch though, it's a wonder really why you find yourself stuck in Saudi Arabia teaching ESL.

[Henry_Cowell]

As if a newly arrived "25 year old single blond haired blue eyed Canadian girl" is going to know how to do market research about women in the Middle East. A job in "public relations" is typically one of the lowliest scams on the planet. Sounds like a match.