A Somali shopping center in Minneapolis is home to 175 clothing stores, hair salons, henna shops, restaurants and even a mosque – 150 stores are owned by women, and many are Muslim. According to the Star Tribune, these women are “aggressive businesspeople, cherish financial independence and preside over a microeconomy at the core of the Twin Cities’ Somali community.”
Ubah Diriye owns a clothing store that sells modest fashion (and designs a line of clothing as well), and says her family started from the bottom, once living in public housing, but now she’s “after the American dream.”
