RIYADH, 28 April — Education authorities aim to replace all foreign women teachers at state-run girls’ schools with Saudi nationals within three years, a newspaper reported yesterday.
By the end of the Seventh Five-Year Development Plan in 2004, Saudi Arabia will have no foreign women teachers at public schools, the Okaz newspaper quoted Khaled Dhaish, undersecretary for planning at the Education Ministry, as saying. Saudi women teachers in girls’ schools already vastly outnumber their female counterparts from abroad, by a margin of 200,000 against 6,000.
Saudi women, who are not allowed to mix with men at workplaces under Islamic law, are mostly employed as teachers in girls schools.
A considerable number of women run their own businesses in the country.
