BAHA, 24 August 2007 — There is one small business that women in Saudi Arabia essentially dominate, and for good reason. Beauty salons are by definition more or less for women only, so it is no surprise to know that it is one of he most common types of small business enterprises for women in the Kingdom.
But a number of salon owners complain that they are harassed by officials for myriad reasons, including restrictions against certain types of spa treatments that add value to a small enterprise like a beauty salon, such as massages. Such enterprises are also only allowed three foreign workers, much lower than other types of businesses. The reason might be because the government would like to see more Saudi women working in these establishments, but owners say the stigma that Saudi women feel taking such jobs makes it difficult to find Saudis to take these jobs.
“Such rules restrict our businesses and force us to come up with different tricks to proceed in our jobs,” said Mariam Al-Ghamdi, a salon owner in the southern city of Baha.
The beauty salon industry was born in Saudi Arabia wholly by the efforts of foreign workers in the Kingdom, which really began to take off about a decade ago. Today more Saudi women are entering into ownership of such salons, but they still depend heavily on expatriate labor.
Sometimes these salons open up in residential houses, and start as informal gatherings of women who come for perms and manicures. In Jeddah it is not uncommon to see a licensed hair salon with a lighted sign on a converted residential home.
Mariam says she started her business at home as a tailoring and alterations outfit. Eventually she said she had to expand her operation in order to attract more customers. She said that it is easier to run a front business as, say, a photography studio because that type of business works under different rules whose license is issued by the Ministry of Culture and Information. To run a salon, she says, involves more regulation from the Ministry of Labor. She also says that the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice tend to scrutinize beauty salons more than other types of small businesses. More than one woman interviewed by Arab News described how agents of the virtue commission often show up at peak business hours for inspections to assure no behavior deemed by the commission to be immoral is taking place.
Mariam says this type of scrutiny is bad for the economy. She says that her business pays up to SR7,000 a month during the peak seasons, considerably higher than the average SR2,500 monthly wage of a Saudi citizen. During the summer wedding season, Mariam says she invests SR227,000 in seasonal decor and marketing, money that is circulated into the local economy.
According to Mariam what makes her proceed and take all that risk is the fine profit she manages to collect specially in peak seasons such as summer when many wedding ceremonies take place. “I pay the rental and make decor changes with SR227,000 and I pay the workers their salaries which goes as high as SR7,000,” said Mariam.
Nurah Al-Ghamdi (no direct relation to Mariam) who graduated from King Abdul Aziz University with a sociology degree said that she decided to open her own beauty center. She too complains that the Ministry of Labor makes it difficult to find workers for her business and that the virtue commission often scrutinizes her establishment.
She says that at times her business needs up to 30 employees, but according to the law she can only sponsor three foreign workers. (Other types of similarly sized businesses often legally have a much higher number of foreign workers.) She admits that she has resorted to temporary hires she brings in from Jeddah. In 2005, she said she was fined SR5,000 for having five foreign employees in her salon who were not under her sponsorship. Since the five workers were legal, they were returned to their sponsors.
Nurah said the families of these workers had given them permission to take on part time peak-season work at her salon, but Saudi law prevents even sponsors from granting their labor wards permission to seek outside work on their spare time.
Nurah says that she can’t find Saudi women to work at her salon, partly because they are typically prohibited by their families from going to and form work by themselves. Technically speaking, it is illegal for a woman in Saudi Arabia to venture out of the house without her mahram (legal male guardian) but in practice women often venture out of their households without their mahrams because of the impracticality of expecting the mahram to be present at all times, especially if he is fully employed and there are few or no male adult family members in the household. Nevertheless, the social stigma of a Saudi woman commuting un-escorted to and from a low-paying service-sector job exacerbates the problem of hiring Saudi women.
“I train some Chadian and Yemeni girls for a year and then I bring them to Baha all the way from Jeddah,” said Nurah, adding she provides these workers with food and shelter as long as they are with her.
In any case, Nurah says she would be concerned about training Saudi women even if they were readily available because they may simply quit to start a competing beauty salon. “There is no guarantee that they won’t go and have their own businesses after learning the skills, so what would I benefit then,” she said.
A source at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry told Arab News that running a beauty center does not require a commercial register but the owner must abide by the rules set by the commission and the Ministry of Labor. Among these restriction, he said, is that the center must be located on a main street and must have only one entrance.
According to the source, who did not want to be identified by name, the virtue commission scrutinized these salons because they must be inspected before Saudi women can work there. And since these types of establishments are ideal places for women to work, they have higher Saudization quotas that place a legal limit on the number of foreign workers that can be employed at theses salons.
