When Ivanka Trump met with 15 Saudi business women in Riyadh today, president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, announced a sizeable donation to a women’s empowerment fund proposed last month by Ms Trump.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are contributing $100 miilion to the fund that will be administered by the World Bank.
We first heard of this fund in April, when Ms Trump mentioned it to Axios. At the time of reporting, it certainly sounded as if this was her brain child, and her baby. According to Mike Aleen of Axios:
Ivanka Trump told me yesterday from Berlin that she has begun building a massive fund that will benefit female entrepreneurs around the globe. Both countries and companies will contribute to create a pool of capital to economically empower women.
President Trump is a huge supporter of his daughter's idea, and she has consulted with World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim about how to pull it off in a huge way.
This perception was quickly countered by the White House:
Dina Powell, who was advising Ivanka before being promoted to deputy national security advisor, and who remains close to the First Daughter, told Axios in a follow-up story that the fund would be managed by the World Bank, not the White House.
Around the same time, Metro News reported
The administration official, who sought anonymity because the project is in its early stages, said Trump would have no official authority over the fund and would not solicit contributions, but would be a “strong advocate.”
It is not completely clear how one can be a ‘strong advocate’ while refraining from soliciting contribution — it would seem the two go hand-in-hand, flip sides of the same dollar, or riyal. It becomes even more murky when the announcement of this huge donation is so close in proximity to a $110 billion arms deal between the USA and Saudi.
The purpose and efficacy of this fund is still unclear, as is the way it will relate to countless other established initiatives to empower women globally.
The meeting between Ms Trump and the select 15 Saudi businesswomen has also not escaped criticism:
Activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was jailed in 2014 for driving, told the Post that her concern with meetings like the one on Sunday “is that they show these women as powerful and making an impact, making a change. But in real life, they’ve been given these opportunities by the men. They did not fight for them.”
‘Women who have been given opportunities by men...’ Hmmm, does that sound familiar, or is it just me?