In the World of Woman — Why Should Woman Confine Herself to Limited Fields of Work When the World Is Long and Wide??

Among Lebanon's guests this summer, or among the hundreds of its sons who come visiting to enjoy for a time the pleasures of life here, is a lady whom The Woman's Voice is pleased to present to its readers as a living example of the successful women who have faced life's difficulties with deep faith and steadfast hearts.

She is Mrs. Isabelle Bayda, resident of the Nile Valley...

In 1937 she stormed the world of commerce and industry, founding the "Cairophon" company for the pressing of phonograph records of song and the production of motion pictures, in partnership with the greatest of singers, Mr. Mohammed Abdel Wahab.

She says she began her work with four children around her, and met at first with difficulties enough to finish off more than one lofty resolve. Among these difficulties were the outbreak of the war in 1939, the halting of the wheel of her business, and her being obliged to pay the wages of all her assistants in her enterprises without any work or profit.

As for Mrs. Isabelle's effort, it is great and mighty: she finances half of Mr. Abdel Wahab's films, and readers cannot but admire this lady's steadfastness when they learn that the expenses of a single film run between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand pounds! And that she pays Miss Umm Kulthum five thousand pounds as the price of a single record!

Mrs. Isabelle has two sons, her partners in her work, and she attributes her success to her children and to her desire to open before them the horizons of work and to secure for them a comfortable future; and she acknowledges her debt to Mr. Abdel Wahab, who has given her enterprise an abundant share of his efforts, his art, and his devotion.

Her conversation is engaging, in harmony with two eyes radiant with intelligence, with a leaping vitality and a quickness of mind that explain the secret of her brilliant success.

The Woman's Voice asks her for a word to the Lebanese girl who looks toward a life of work, and she says modestly:

The cultured Lebanese woman is a pride to Lebanon: she is educated and widely read. My word to the girls of the rising generation is not to content themselves with learning and with the positions to which learning qualifies them. I urge them to storm the arenas of commerce and industry and all the occupations that call for vitality and energy — and I predict for them in advance a success near and assured...