Arlington Heights mayor’s Saudi trip mixed culture, business

Back from a nearly weeklong visit to Saudi Arabia, Arlington Heights Village President Arlene Mulder said in an interview this week that the trip gave her a better understanding of that country’s culture.

Her stay in the kingdom also served as a trade mission, and relationships developed could lead to business for companies in the Chicago area, Mulder said.

“You learn that people are people,” she said. “They were very pleased to have Americans visit their country. They want to work with Americans and create partnerships.”

Mulder’s trip was organized by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and paid for by Saudi Arabia. The group left the United States Oct. 13 and returned Oct. 20.

Three of the five U.S. mayors were women, and they were treated with “warmth and a sense of friendship and wanting to work together,” Mulder said.

One of Mulder’s concerns was the treatment of women in the kingdom, and the mayors met with a woman journalist and with faculty and students at a women’s college.

She found they “feel empowered” that the king had recently granted women limited voting rights. The women she talked with are looking forward to more reforms, including the right to drive cars.

Saudi women also study in the United States and Europe, and Mulder feels they are “taking that knowledge back to move women into a better standard of living and more access to different roles.”

The mayors saw construction cranes everywhere in Saudi Arabia, which hopes to build five new cities in the next decade for a population that doubles every 10 years. Mulder noticed that Turner Construction Company, which built the Arlington Heights Village Hall, is working there.

The lack of mass transit is a concern that Saudi leaders plan to work on, she added.

Mulder was thrilled to meet Mohammad H. Al-Nagadi of the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs, who told her he spent two of the best years of his life living in Arlington Heights. Another dignitary said the 1977 housing case that Arlington Heights won before the U.S. Supreme Court was an important part of his doctoral dissertation.

“It’s a lot easier when you actually know someone to understand the differences and respect them and hope that they respect the way of life that we have in the United States” said Mulder.

“We have more similarities than differences, and it’s a matter of respecting those differences. By meeting them you can see they value the same things we do: Family, people and heritage.”