The 16th session of the board of directors of Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry will have a different outline than the previous ones, as women will be participating in the elections for the first time.

In the current elections, held from June 13 to 27, complete equality between businesswomen and businessmen has been assured, and any businesswoman who finds herself capable and skillful has the right to run for membership on the board of directors.

A subcommittee, made up of members from the elections’ supervising team, has been designated to review the technical specialties of the candidates and supervise all the women election processes on the day of their voting.

The 16th session is witnessing modifications in a number of technical conditions that control the voting and election process. Previous competitions were based on coalitions or alliances of parties formed within block votes reflecting consistency of goals and programs. This block voting has been canceled in the present session, as voters will vote for one candidate.

In the last few years, Riyadh chamber saw a vertical expansion in the number of participants — which exceeded 80,000 — and a horizontal expansion represented in the number of branches and offices as well as the additional women’s department.

Due to the approval of the new elections law, the 16th session is expected to witness a large participation of voters, and the candidates will have greater commitments regarding their efforts and election campaign, raising the competition fever among candidates.

The single vote law enables every candidate to become a sole player in the election process, which requires greater efforts to define the candidate’s general profile and the role expected from him/ her to serve the voters from the business sector.

Each of the last 15 sessions was faced with complicated requirements on the overall and the sectorial economic level. Each session lasts four years, a period long enough to achieve much on the grounds of the largest oil economy in the world.

The previous sessions marked connections that led to accumulated literature in all fields, which expanded to include economic work about what is expected of the business society towards social and humanitarian issues.

The Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry successfully merged social and humanitarian work in the structures of institutional and managerial work. This contributed in building extensions for it to include all society sectors, seeding a competitive culture to contribute to philanthropic work.

Since its establishment, Riyadh chamber was based on consent and election approaches. The present chairman, Abdulrahman Al-Jeraisy, has been on this post since the 11th session.

In accordance with its mounting institutional and hierarchical development objective, Riyadh chamber developed new and unprecedented forms of business throughout the succeeding sessions to achieve a major position in its partnership with the government.

The chamber’s experience is too rich to present in brief, as it included in its 15 sessions 128 members with expertise and intellect, enriching the chamber on both business and institutional level.

While meeting with chamber officials, visiting delegations from other countries expressed their keenness to find out more about the course of action of Riyadh chamber and their appreciation and respect of this distinguished experience.