Safa Al Hashem


Safa Al Hashem, is a politician who is an elected Member of Parliament, and the only woman currently elected to the Kuwait Parliament. She is the only female member to be elected to the Kuwait parliament consecutively, after women re-gained the right to vote and stand for office in 2005.

Education

Al Hashem obtained a degree in English literature from Kuwait University and completed her MBA from the Pennsylvania State University. She also has a post graduate executive education diploma from Harvard Business School.
In 2011, she was awarded a Ph.D, Doctorate by the American University of Technology.

Career

Before entering politics, Al Hashem worked for the government in the Ministry of Higher Education. She later worked in various private companies being associated with PIC, PWC and the KIPCO Group. Al Hashem then started Advantage Consulting in partnership with KIPCO and Gulf One Investment Bank, Bahrain.

Politics

Al Hashem first stood for elections for 3rd Constituency in 2012 and won. After this parliament was annulled, she stood again from the same constituency and won again.
In the 2012 assembly, she served as the rapporteur of the Economic and Financial Affairs committee, and was a member of the Response to the Amiri Addrss and Foreign Affairs committees.
Al Hashem is notorious for her populist comments against foreigners living in Kuwait, including recommending that foreigners should be banned from obtaining driving licenses and should be taxed to walk on the streets.
On April de 2017, during a meeting of the Negative Phenomena Committee, MP Mohammed Hayef, chairman of the committee, refused to sit next to her since she was wearing perfume, arguing that Sharia dictates that a man cannot “sit next to a woman who wears perfume”, and adding that “The laws and principles of the sharia are immutable. We cannot change them just because there is a new age or a new ideology. Allah says in the Quran: ‘And stay in your homes and do not display your allurements.'”.

Awards