Hissa Al-Oun is one of the first Saudi women to establish a company for training and preparing women for the job market. Sayidaty interviewed her to discuss some solutions for unemployment. Excerpts:
Q: What do you think of the currently available jobs for Saudi women? Do you think that other fields and other job opportunities ought to be found?
A: We know that education uses some 80 percent of female graduates so other fields ought to be explored. Manufacturing is one suggested sector. By establishing a women’s industrial city, more than 8,000 women could be employed and if the practice became widespread in the Kingdom, it would eliminate many problems related to women’s unemployment.
Q: Do you think that Saudization has failed?
A: I can’t say that all the plans and programs have failed but the mechanism for implementation has played a big role in the failure of Saudization. I would also add that too many theories and the absence of accurate statistics concerning unemployment have played significant roles as well. The best example is the industrial cities which are worth nearly SR44 billion. Saudization was not carried out in all the administrative sectors or in technical, professional and services areas. In fact, the Saudi share is about four percent while the expat work force is 80 percent. And in the industrial cities, there are no training centers at a government level. It’s no secret that training leads to employment.
Early Retirement
Fatmah Al-Ali, the head of the government department which deals with women’s retirement, says there are those who maintain that increasing the retirement age for Saudi women has been one of the reasons for the spread of unemployment and for depriving many women of jobs. Demanding early compulsory retirement for those at the top will only provide a limited number of job slots; it will not result in widespread employment.
In addition, the practice would be unfair for a woman forced to retire early while she’s still fit to work and make valuable contributions. Making her retire would cost the government a great deal in pensions and would have a negative effect on the ability to maintain its obligation toward the retired and their next of kin. This is why we call for retirement for women to be optional. The simple fact is that in order to eliminate women’s unemployment, job opportunities must be provided for them.
