Saudi women are being heard, but not seen, at the 6th Jeddah Economic Forum, one year after triggering a storm of conservative protests for taking centre stage at the prestigious gathering.
In keynote speeches at the forum's opening Saturday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz dwelled on the expanding economic role of women in their conservative countries, fielding questions fired from the cordoned-off female-designated area.
"The role of women is expanding... This role will come with improved education," Aziz said of women in Pakistan.
The sight was a far cry from last year's opening, when a top Saudi businesswoman delivered the keynote speech, an unprecedented event in a country where women are still banned from driving.
Lubna al-Olayan, chief executive officer of Olayan Financing, jumped on the chance to send a hard-hitting message to her ultra-conservative countrymen, urging them to change in order to progress.
The Pakistani prime minister seemed puzzled when the moderator announced that he was opening the floor to questions from women participants, as the female section of the auditorium could not be seen from the podium.
Male participants could hear questions addressed by women from behind a mirror-blind, segregating the sexes in compliance with the strict form of Sunni Islam applied in Saudi Arabia.
Women have a separate entry to the hall and retreat to their coffee and lunch breaks in a separate area served by waitresses, as opposed to waiters in the all-male section.
But a few foreign women could be seen sitting in the male section.
"We were told non-Saudi women are allowed to sit here," Judith Kipper, director of Middle East Forum at the US Council on Foreign Relations, said, adding "she did not feel good about" the segregation.
Gina Abercrombie, US consul general in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah where the three-day forum is taking place, was allowed to sit in the main hall as a diplomat, she said, mingling with male participants during a coffee break.
A Jeddah-based young Pakistani businessman said segregation at the forum "did not make sense."
But the head of the Jeddah Marketing Board, which helped organise the annual event, argued that some women do not wish to be seen by men.
"This is the norm in our country and this is what is accepted right now," Abdullah al-Suleiman said.
Suleiman noted that the organisers of last year's forum faced protests from conservatives "due to a few mistakes."
"Around 10 women entered the male-section of the hall and sat there... while a photographer took a shot of Saudi women uncovered in the female section and published it in a newspaper the following day," to the fury of conservatives, he said.
The growing presence of women at the forum was in itself a success, Suleiman said, noting that they number a record 600 this year, out of more than 3,000 registered participants.
Karzai boasted in his remarks that around 42 percent of Afghan women participated in October's presidential election, while "women participate in both the Emergency Grand Council and the Constitutional Grand Council."
Saudi women, in contrast, were barred from landmark local elections which kicked off February 10 in Riyadh.
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