JEDDAH, 11 May — An item in yesterday’s paper reported on the rising unemployment of women in this country, and the efforts of the Manpower Council to meet this dilemma head-on. With only 5.6 percent of the four million working age women employed here, this could indeed develop into a social crisis in the near future.
This all sounded well and good, until I got to the bottom of the article. Sure enough at the conclusion of this report, an official was reported as stating that responses from women to the different training programs being offered by the public or private sectors were not very high or encouraging.
Now why would any Saudi woman not avail herself of these opportunities and choose to remain untrained or unemployed? Has anyone in the Manpower Council considered that there are several barriers that impede the need by women to learn and to excel, and that were these barriers to be removed enrollment would be running at maximum? While recognizing the need for a minimum wage law is an excellent idea, should not the Manpower Council consider other issues first that will encourage a more receptive response? Issues such as proper training facilities, and at a reasonable cost. Some of the private training facilities today charge fees beyond the budget of most unemployed women. Parents of these girls are often hard-pressed to sustain the basic necessities of living, let alone adding the costs of further tuition to their shrinking budget.
And quite often, the quality of training at free or public training sectors leaves a lot to be desired. In my encounters with several public and private training facilities around the city, I have always left with an unchanging conclusion. For the public sector training facilities, it has been "Just who has trained these trainers?" And for the training centers in the private sector, my impressions have invariably concluded that "this is indeed a big and profitable business." There are other impediments too. To begin with, just how would they get to the training facilities or the workplace? They cannot drive, remember? And not all of them can afford the services of family drivers or additional cars in the household. Public transportation is poor and sporadic at best, and quite often women are left at the whim of their male relatives who may not be too obliging.
That does not bode well for consistency in attendance or punctuality.
And what if they have small children? Do any of the work or training facilities here provide day-care for the little ones while Mama is trying to train for or make an honest living? I know of none here, and chances are no such services exist Kingdomwide, and Mama has no choice but to quash the desire to work and stay home to look for the little ones.
And often private sector employers take advantage of these women. By placing them in long internship or probationary employment programs with very low starting salaries, employers eventually discourage the spirit to produce within these women as false promises rarely ever materialize. The laws covering such issues are hardly ever discussed or published.
If indeed the Manpower Council is to attain measurable success, they must recognize and address some of these dilemmas facing women today. And they should open up more avenues of employment, venues previously considered the sole proprietorship of men.
Idle minds are indeed a devil’s workshop, and unless more practical and visible steps are taken to remove some of the hurdles facing women today, we would all be left wondering in a decade or two where it had all gone wrong.
Would it just be shrugged off as simply having been "their fault?"
