“The questions that we have been asking are no longer relevant. They are also misleading. To ask whether women could, should, or would work, suggests we have a say in the matter, but we don’t,” said Noura Saleh Al-Turki, a business strategy consultant for the Riyadh-based Monitor Group and one of the keynote speakers at the event.
“Saudi Arabia has realized that it cannot achieve its goals for economic growth and prosperity without energizing and building on the talents and aspirations of its female population. This is not up for debate.”
She said she was disappointed that the issues relating to women in the workplace presented in a book published when she was a child remain unresolved.
“If we look at the number of women employed in the modern work force in Saudi Arabia, we would most likely reach the conclusion that we haven’t made much progress,” Al-Turki said.
“We are very much still in the early stages. Women are just 14 percent of the Saudi work force.”
It is time for the country to tackle the issues in earnest, she said.
“If the country needs women to work and society needs women to work, then there are two real questions: Why are women not working in greater numbers, and what can we do about it? If we ask ourselves why women are not working in greater numbers … most of us will instinctively say that tradition and culture are the biggest barriers.”
However, Al-Turki argued that culture and tradition were not the main barriers. “The question then becomes: If tradition and culture are not to blame, then what is? The answer is that we cannot separate women’s unemployment from the larger context. Unemployment is Saudi Arabia’s largest developmental challenge — for men and for women. So to speak of women’s unemployment without remembering unemployment among men is misleading,” Al-Turki said.
“There are not enough jobs for an ever expanding population. This is especially clear in areas outside the main cities of Jeddah, Riyadh, Alkhobar and Dammam. The problem across the Kingdom is not that women don’t want to work. It is not that their husbands and fathers won’t let them. Rather, there is a shortage of jobs.”
She also spoke of a mismatch between the educational system and the employment market.
“Even when jobs are available, our population is not qualified to enter them,” Al-Turki said.
“During a career fair in Jeddah, I surveyed women job-seekers as well as the recruiters from different private companies. The biggest requirements the employers had were English and computer skills. So jobs and qualifications — these combined — are the biggest reasons for unemployment in Saudi Arabia today. We have known this to be the case for men. We need to remember that it is also the case for women.”
The Oxford-educated strategist said it was time for the country to confront the real issues. “Instead of asking ‘How will women in Saudi Arabia balance between work and family responsibilities?’ we need to first remind ourselves that 69 percent of employed women are already married with children. Rather than questioning their ability to do so we need to be lending them the support they need.”
She said a failure to come to a resolution was more than a philosophical point and a true matter of urgent need.
“The landscape has changed so fundamentally over the past several decades that for a vast majority of families today, women cannot afford not to work,” Al-Turki said. “The country needs women to work, but society needs it at a much more basic level, as well.”
