DAMMAM, 5 September 2005 — Saudi businesswomen are calling on the private sector to shoulder its responsibility and respond to the calls made by Minister of Labor Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi to provide suitable working environments for Saudi women.
Several businesswomen and women employees told Arab News that 50 percent of the current jobs available in the private sector do not suit neither the nature of Saudi women nor their culture. They said the private sector should come up with ways and means to accommodate Saudi women, who represent half of the Kingdom’s population. They also called for the establishment of certain committees that should coordinate with concerned authorities to create jobs that were reserved for men in the past.
Fatimah Al-Ahmadi, a businesswoman, said the private sector needed to fulfill its obligations toward the people of this country. She said it’s impossible for the government to bear alone the burden of employing thousands of men and women graduates — especially with the Kingdom’s swelling population.
“The population explosion in the Kingdom obviously means that there will be more graduates and more demands for jobs,” she said. “That should be the joint responsibility of the public and private sectors both of which are being supported by the government. It is time the private sector returned the favor to the government by employing young Saudis, especially women, who are in dire need of jobs.”
Muna Al-Toaimi, manager of the women’s section of Prince Muhammad ibn Fahd Institute for Rehabilitation, accused the private sector of lethargy, saying that while private institutions provide thousands of jobs for male graduates, it completely ignores Saudi women by either failing to create new opportunities or providing a suitable work environment for them. She said that such jobs were necessary to eliminate joblessness among Saudi women.
Other problems facing private institutions that seek to open women’s sections are the procedures required for compliance with government regulations, a matter that discourages them from proceeding.
“There are a lot of private institutions with a strong patriotic sense that want to provide jobs for women to comply with the Council of Ministers’ decision last year, but they later find themselves against a brick wall of bureaucracy and lengthy procedures,” she said, adding that the red tape results in the loss of thousands of jobs for women every year.
Haifa Al-Khaleefa, supervisor in a local hospital, said that the private sector should provide more job opportunities for Saudi women so that they could prove themselves in the market just as Saudi men.
“New laws must be created to guarantee that women retain their legal rights in the private sector and receive fair treatment from superiors who take advantage of their work, knowing their need to support themselves,” she added.
She said many women working in the private sector are subjected to harassment from male visitors and restrictions from supervisors.
The private sector’s acceptance of only 45,000 Saudi women in different jobs was an indicator that more should be done, compared to the public sector, which accommodates 70,000 women in the health care and education sectors alone each year.
Khaled Al-Zahrani, a Saudi working in an advertising company, disagrees with the Saudi women employees’ opinions.
He says there are obvious reasons why the private sector is not employing Saudi women and that is because 50 percent of the jobs in the private sector are unsuitable for them. Such jobs, he explains, are in factories, workshops, supermarkets, pharmacies, restaurants, showrooms and others. All of these sectors cannot employ Saudi women, as it would be against the law that they work in a mixed environment, with an exception to the medical field.
“In the advertising field, for example, it would be difficult for a Saudi woman to meet with male clients, let alone to try to persuade them — after numerous meetings — to place an advertisement in a newspaper,” he said.
“In addition, the supervisor or the recruiter would not feel comfortable leaving the woman alone surrounded by men as he would feel that she is his responsibility and that she could be harassed or be in an uncomfortable situation,” he added.
