Women getting more jobs in changing Saudi Arabia
IT looks like a woman’s world on the 29th floor of Tamkeen Tower, where a call centre for Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Statistics overlooks Riyadh. The few men are vastly outnumbered by female colleagues.
The scene is the opposite of what most workplaces in the conservative Islamic kingdom looked like a few years ago, reflecting the growing influx of women into the job market. “Look where we were and where we are now,” says Reem Almuhanna, 31, who oversees the call centre’s 74 employees who gather data on households and businesses.
Keeping women at home is a luxury the world’s largest exporter of crude can no longer afford. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 35, is overhauling the economy for a post-oil future and striving to create jobs amid sputtering economic growth.
With the cost of living on the rise as the government cuts fuel and electricity subsidies and introduces new fees and taxes, including a 15% value-added tax, Saudi households increasingly depend on women working.
As a result, social and economic changes are ripping through the country – upending traditions, changing women’s lives across the class spectrum, and stirring resentment among some conservative Saudis.
The state, facing pressure from foreign governments and humanrights groups over its clampdowns on dissent, recognises that the narrative of female empowerment may help burnish its reputation abroad.
Gender segregation – once strictly enforced by religious police – is gradually dissolving. Men and women who aren’t related can mingle openly at restaurants now. Many offices are mixed, as are music festivals and business and professional conferences.
Decision-making remains largely in the hands of men, but female participation in the workforce increased from 19% in 2016 to 33% last year, according to the statistics authority’s Labour Force Survey. “The government’s strong commitment to Saudi female empowerment has been the main driver,” the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development said.
Increased female participation in the labour force was the only goal set out in Prince Mohammed’s Vision 2030 framework to be met a decade early, with Saudi women taking jobs as waitresses, cashiers, and police officers. In the process, the dress code for women has loosened; jeans and uncovered hair are now tolerated alongside traditional floor-length black abayas.
The shift began under King Abdullah, who died in 2015, but it’s quickened dramatically under Prince Mohammed, now the de facto ruler.
Campaigners such as Loujain al-Hathloul and Aziza al-Yousef, who spent years advocating for changes such as allowing women to drive, were arrested in 2018 and accused of undermining state security. (Al-Hathloul, sentenced to a nearly six-year prison term, was freed in February, and al-Yousef was released in 2019. Humanrights groups say they were tortured, which the government denies. Other dissenters have fallen silent out of fear.
As Saudi society evolves, some men worry that women are taking their jobs and subverting their traditional role as the head of the household, responsible for their families financially and otherwise. “I’m against the fact that women are prioritised in getting jobs while men are left behind,” says Yazeed, a 25-year-old Saudi dentist.
The logic of female empowerment is straightforward, says Rasha Alturki, Alnahda’s chief executive. The government has invested for generations in educating Saudi women, she says. “There has to be a return on your investment. Otherwise what’s the point?”
Few people have lived the changes in Saudi Arabia as viscerally as Ahlam Eisa, 32, a mother of four who works in a women's clothing shop in Riyadh and drives for Uber to make extra cash, all while studying for her high school diploma.
She got married when she was 19, living the closed-off life typical for many Saudi women. Her divorce three years ago jolted her into an alternative universe where women worked. Today, Eisa’s focus is to finish school and then train as a nurse.