Luluwa Al Qatami

Founder of the Women's Committee, Kuwait

Luluwa Abd-Wahab Essa Al-Qatami founded the Kuwait Women Culture & Social Woman's Society in 1963, and is the founder of the Women's Committee in the Gulf and, previously, the Arabian Island. Her work for organizations in the voluntary sector also includes acting as President of the General Culture & Social Woman's Association, of which she was Honorary President between 1967 and 1995. Ms Al-Qatami is also the General Coordinator of the Women's Committee in the Arabian Gulf, previously the Arabian Peninsula.

Ms. Al-Qatami was the first President for Women's College in Kuwait University, in 1975. Her pioneering works also include being the first woman from Kuwait who traveled to the United Kingdom to study (in 1952), and the first Kuwaiti Woman to teach foreign languages at the secondary level (in 1959). She also successfully campaigned to free schoolteachers and students from wearing traditional cloths (Al-Abaiya) in 1963.

Ms. Al-Qatami was awarded Personality of the Year in 1987 for humanitarian work and outstanding effort through volunteer work In the Arab world by the Saudi publication, The Magazine.