These Businesswomen Are Breaking Norms – And Excelling At It

More and more Yemeni women open new business ventures despite conservative notions about gender and entrepreneurship, breaking one taboo at a time, even in times of an ongoing war and a pandemic!

“Society didn’t use to believe women could run businesses and underestimated their abilities for a long time,” says Faizah Alsulimani, partnership director at SMEPS, a national agency supporting entrepreneurship and business development. “These exceptional challenges have seen women excel at business and change attitudes, inspiring other women.”

Nadia Dhrah, for example, founded a company that provides personal protective equipment gear for doctors in a quicker fashion than expensive exports, and she now runs a business with 20 full-time employees. And Safia Omar set up an oxygen plant that produces more than 100 cylinders per day, thus meeting hospitals’ needs required to fight COVID. “I foresee many women starting their own firms in the future because women have already broken taboos and entered the market with their own projects,” says Muna Mohammed who runs an institute teaching women and empowering them.