Activist Profile

Rola Dashti

Activist and crusader for women’s rights Rola Dashti has made a career of defying expectations. She was born in 1964 in traditional-minded Kuwait to a large and traditional-minded Shiite family. Her father, a Member of Parliament, had four wives, giving Dr. Dashti 23 brothers and sisters. However, despite her conservative roots, Rola Dashti would not grow up as a veil-wearing Muslim accepting of the place that conservative Islam demanded for her sex.

Early on, Dr. Dashti broke through the glass ceiling reserved for women in her conservative country. After a fruitful academic career, she obtained her PhD in Population Economics from Johns Hopkins University. Returning to Kuwait, the young economist was determined to make a difference in her impoverished homeland for the social betterment of women and the poor. Using her knowledge to great effect, Dr. Dashti entered Kuwaiti life with goal-conscious flair; she commenced lecturing, conducting, and managing research in development and applied economics so as to assist Kuwait and its people in enacting economic, political, and social reforms.

Dr. Dashti’s brilliance soon resulted in her achieving a dizzying array of positions never before open to women in her traditionalist society. Among other things, she became Manager of Economics at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research and a Senior Economist for the Kuwait National Bank. She also worked extensively with the Red Cross in southern Lebanon, led movements to uncover information on Kuwaiti political prisoners during the Gulf War, and helped local women to initiate grassroots activism throughout rural Tunisia and Yemen. Currently, she is a member of the Executive Committee of Young Arab Leaders (Kuwait Chapter), the first woman to chair the famed Kuwait Economic Society (founded in 1970), and, resultantly, the first woman ever elected as head of a professional association in Kuwait. She has also provided consultancy services to the World Bank and managed all the contracts signed on behalf of the government of Kuwait for the Emergency and Reconstruction Program during the invasion and post-liberation period in 1990/1991. In 2005, the proud activist was the winner of the King Hussein Humanitarian Award. She has further been called “Kuwait's biggest economist female figure” and was listed among the world’s 100 most powerful Arabs for 2007.

For Dr. Dashti, however, economic reform is not just about dollars and cents but about social reform and women’s rights. Indeed, Dr. Dashti is known internationally as a prominent crusader for women’s liberties. For her, the issue of women and their social state is a matter of deep personal concern. Dashti, after all, was born in a country in which political rights were the exclusive domain of men. Women could not vote in elections and they could get nowhere near serving in the national parliament. In a speech delivered at the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Dashti stated:

“Radical Islamists wanted to limit our freedom, control our future and our destiny. They wanted to confine our role to cooking, cleaning and being subservient to men. We refused [to allow] these extremists to marginalize us and demanded that women should have an active role in public life, contribute to society and be granted her constitutional rights.” (AEI Speech, January 13, 2006)

Frustrated by the conservative attitude of Kuwaiti elites, Dashti sought to reform her country’s outdated political system. In May 2005, she lobbied for a revolutionary decree allowing Kuwaiti women the right to vote and the right to run in parliamentary elections. The public campaign of Dashti and other activists succeeded in passing the bill in conservative Kuwait. It even prodded the Kuwaiti government to appoint its first female Cabinet minister. Overjoyed by these results, Dashti stated:

“May 16, 2005 may just be another day for you…but for Kuwaiti women it's a day of recognition of being citizens. It's a day to our road to freedom and liberty. It was a day where we won our first battle against the ideology of radical extremists and terrorists. It's a day when women of Kuwait got their political right to run and vote for Parliament after 40 years of struggle, a struggle that was not easy. Yes, we were not terrorized physically, but we were continuously terrorized psychologically and socially.” (AEI Speech, January 13, 2006)

Energized by the growing success of the women’s rights movement in Kuwait, Dr. Dashti was determined to run in Kuwaiti parliamentary elections at the first opportunity. Unfortunately, this came sooner rather than later, when an early election for parliament was called in 2007. Although she would have welcomed more time to prepare her campaign, Dr. Dashti nevertheless threw herself into the fray. Indeed, due to her fame and high profile, she was seen as the woman candidate for parliament (one out of five) with the best chance at winning a seat. However, the electoral campaign for Dr. Dashti was not an easy one. Throughout, she faced brutal intimidation for her refusal to wear the veil and for her progressive campaign platform. As one newspaper reported:

“Opposition to Dashti's high-profile candidacy was intense. Her campaign posters were vandalized, she was the target of a smear campaign, and her family insisted that she only eat food prepared by them, for fear she would be poisoned. Dashti thought that request was a bit over the top, but she agreed to do it just to ease her family's worries.”

In the end, Dr. Dashti placed fifth in her district, missing out on a parliamentary seat by several thousand votes. Despite this failure, Dr. Dashti’s candidacy was a milestone in Kuwaiti politics. While this election is lost, the enthusiasm of women voters indicates the next one may well be won – and won big.

After her electoral stint, Dr. Dashti returned to her life of activism for women’s rights and economic justice. At the moment, she heads an international consultancy firm in Kuwait focusing on privatization and activation of small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). Dashti believes that stoking the civil society of the Arab world is the best way to bring social and economic justice to women and the poor. Internationally, Dr. Dashti is today more highly regarded than ever and has been profiled by the BBC (here and here) and the Washington Post (here and here) for her continued dedication to the cause of women’s rights and equality. Her opinions have also drawn the attention of policymakers: Dr. Dashti firmly believes that the media is a key outlet for liberal activists in the struggle for reform and that the United States and other outside actors should help spur grassroots activism in the Middle East.

That being said, no summation of Dr. Dashti’s life and accomplishments is better than that found in a June 2005 speech by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Elizabeth Cheney:

“And, in Kuwait, a brave leader named Rola Dashti led the movement to secure the right of Kuwait's women to vote. She spoke out to the men leading her country. She reminded them that women are Kuwaiti, too. She met with the Student Union at Kuwait University to encourage them to join her movement. The young men leading the Student Union agreed and brought hundreds of their members to Rola's rallies. They joined the women sitting in the gallery of Kuwait's Parliament the day of the historic vote. And the morning after the vote - having tasted the power of democracy - they called Rola to say, ‘That was fantastic...what issue are we going to tackle next?’”

More information and relevant articles on Dashti can be found at:

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/power100/profile/524?clr=2

http://www.zu.ac.ae/leadership2006/roladashti.aspx

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900063_pf.html