Bridging the gender gap

Saudi Arabia's traditional values have often excluded women from the workplace, but the kingdom's younger generation is enjoying success in employment.

Emad Qanaq, left, adjusts the veil of his wife Ayat Ahmad, at the garden of their home in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Ayat Ahmad warned her husband before they wed that there was something he had to accept, something she could not give up. "I told him from day one, 'Emad, I want to work," she recalled. "And before working, I want to finish my studying, and take my Master's degree and even my PhD, inshallah'. "This is my dream and I have to continue it until the end'." Luckily, Ms Ahmad, 22, had met her soulmate. "Personally speaking," said Emad Qanaq, 24, an assistant food and beverage manager at the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh, "I would never imagine myself coming back home and finding my wife just sitting there, waiting for me, just being a housewife like what used to be in Saudi. "I want her to be to more than that. I want her to reach her potential in life. I want her to grow up in her career." When the couple married eight months ago, their Islamic marriage contract stipulated that Ms Ahmad, a hearing and speech pathologist in training at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, was permitted to work outside the home. Increasingly, marriage contracts of young couples have a similar provision, a signal of shifting Saudi attitudes towards what is widely recognised as a revolutionary development in any society: women joining the workforce. It is especially revolutionary for Saudi Arabia because of its unique place among nations, ranked lowest out of 128 - in terms of female "labour force participation" - by the 2007 World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report. Saudi officials say women make up only four per cent of the country's workforce. To be sure, the idea of women working is far from being universally applauded, even among young people, who make up around 70 per cent of Saudi Arabia's 22.6 million citizens. A strong cultural bias against women having any public role or interacting with unrelated men keeps many women out of the job market. A significant number of twentysomething men do not want their wives to work. And not all women in their 20s want a career outside the home. But it is also true that acceptance of women in the workforce - something the government is encouraging - is gaining ground among the kingdom's younger generation. "Before, people didn't like their wives working outside the home," said Hassan al Humaidi, 32, an engineer whose wife, Maram Al Fouzan, 28, is pursuing her residency in family medicine at National Guard Hospital. "Nowadays, me and my friends see that it's no problem, and maybe this is better. "You have a wife, she has principles, and she's got a certificate, which she uses in a good way to work for example, in banks, hospitals, schools. So I feel proud that my wife works." This increasing acceptance has been propelled by three factors. The first is economic. Rising living costs, particularly in the last two years, have made husbands appreciate the advantage of a two-income household. "It's getting harder and harder for the guy to be the sole provider of the family," Mr Qanaq said. A second reason is education. Formal schooling for girls was introduced just three generations ago, in the 1950s. Today, according to the deputy labour minister, Abdul Wahid K al Humaid, about 70 per cent of university students are female. After decades of restrictions on what they could study, women now can take a wider array of subjects. They also are being offered vocational training in more areas. Officials announced in October that seven new subjects had been approved for girls' colleges to facilitate their students joining the job market, the Saudi Gazette reported. The topics are accounting, small business administration, office machine and equipment maintenance, photography, design, jewellery manufacture and small food businesses. The third impetus for change is the aspirations of young women themselves. "Saudi girls now have different dreams than before," said Ms Ahmad. "Before, the main dream was to get married and have kids and maybe just be a grandmother. Now the thinking is different. Each girl has an aim she wants to reach. "We want to prove we can be like other women in the world. "And I want to prove to my husband, my father, my brother, all of them, that I can do it. I can be the one in my dream." Such dreams do not surprise Ms Ahmad's husband. "It's about globalisation," said Mr Qanaq, noting that more young women are travelling and studying abroad. "The world is getting a smaller place and they want to be more like their peers outside Saudi. They want to be what they see on television." Shortly before 7am on workday mornings, dozens of cars and vans drive up to a corrugated iron factory in one of the sprawling industrial zones on the outskirts of Riyadh. Stepping from their chauffeured vehicles, women file into the Saudi Lighting Company, exchange their headscarves and abayas for cotton jackets and begin a seven-hour shift on the factory's all-female assembly line. Nadia Abdul Rahman is director of the factory's "ladies' section". She supervises about 50 women, whose monthly salary ranges from 2000 Saudi riyals (Dh1959) to twice that, depending on how many fluorescent lights they assemble during their shift. There is a small prayer room off the factory floor, and a kitchen with pink walls "to get us into a better mood", Ms Abdul Rahman jokes. Many of the women are in their 20s. Some are there because their husbands want them to help with the family finances. But Ms Abdul Rahman added: "More are doing it because they want to." They are women like Wafa al Khudairi, 27, who says she likes working because "I want to feel my independence. I want to have money and pay for myself and not feel I'm someone else's dependent." One of Ms Khudairi's jobs is checking attendance on the assembly line. She has a high school diploma and is unmarried. She would like a better paying job someday, but it is enough now that her work gives her a psychological boost. "Despite my age, I feel young," she said. "Even when I go home, I feel more strong, mature and confident because I'm employed." Several miles north of the sun-baked industrial zone, Mashel Y al Salami, 29, also gets a self-esteem boost from working. Ms Salami, who is divorced and lives with her parents, is a saleswoman in Nine West, an upmarket shoe shop located on the ladies-only level of Kingdom Mall, one of Riyadh's poshest downtown shopping plazas. "I love working. It has cut me loose of having to beg from anyone," said Ms Salami. "Before, it was my husband, today it is my father. My father is, of course, much kinder than my ex-husband, but I hate to burden him and that is why I love working." A Gallup poll of 1,006 Saudis aged 15 and older published last December found that 82 per cent of women and 75 per cent of men agreed that women should be allowed to hold any job for which they are qualified outside the home. The private sector is increasingly drafting females, but the jobs are not coming quickly, according to statistics released in September by the economy and planning ministry. It reported that unemployment among Saudi women is 25 per cent; six per cent among men. Three-quarters of unemployed women hold university degrees, as opposed to only 20 per cent of unemployed men. In addition, every new sector of the economy that welcomes women has to contend with the gender segregation still demanded by religious conservatives and a large section of the population. "The problem," said a senior government official who declined to be identified so he could speak candidly, "is that 75 to 80 per cent of Saudi males do not want their daughters to be in a place where there is mixing. The problem is that a lot of men, and women, don't want that." Last May, the Saudi Arabian monetary agency circulated a reminder to all banks that it was "forbidden" fora female employee - Saudi or non-Saudi - to mix with men "in government departments or other public or private institutions or corporations or professions". A woman had to "perform her work in a place completely separate from men". The conservative bent of some Saudi youth is captured on a video clip widely circulated among Riyadh's internet-savvy females. It shows part of a 2007 televised broadcast of a street interview with a group of men in their late teenagers and early 20s. Clearly, they would not opt to have working wives. One young man told the interviewer: "If I take my sister to the mall and to restaurants, you get me, I would be opening her eyes to bigger things. "When she stays at home, she is guarded, and her thoughts and judgement are narrow and limited to the things that matter. You get me? Her home, her family and stuff. Her future, her husband and stuff. You get me?" He would never take his sister out to the mall, he added, because "she will start thinking of things that are not necessary". Maram al Fouzan, the physician-in-residence at National Guard Hospital, said some of her male patients "don't have that trust in women, some of them prefer to see men". And while they do not say so openly, she knows they disapprove of her working. "I can feel what they are thinking, 'You are not supposed to be here. You're supposed to be at home'," said Dr Fouzan. By contrast, her professional peers at work "are very supportive. They are like brothers for me, most of them." Dr Fouzan and Mr Humaidi were married a little over a year ago and live in a modest, two-bedroom apartment in one of Riyadh's newly built neighbourhoods. Photographs taken by the couple on honeymoon in Austria hang on the wall. Dr Fouzan has wanted to be a doctor since she was in secondary school, and now spends more hours working each week than her engineer husband. Mr Humaidi is not bothered by this, nor by the interaction that his wife has with male colleagues on the job. "I prefer that they work together because they exchange experience with each other," he said. "And it shows the others in our country how you can treat ladies." Those who argue that separating the genders protects women go too far, he believes. "You can protect the girls, even the boys, by educating them about Islamic principles," he said. "If you educate your child well, they will treat other people well. "Before, they didn't say in Islam if you have a company, put a separate place for ladies, and a separate place for men. They didn't say that. They told us to respect the ladies, treat them well. And Islam even asks ladies to threat their men well." Working women say religious pamphlets, counselling that Islam favours stay-at-home women, are sometimes left on their desks, apparently by male colleagues. And some complain that they come under unfair scrutiny for working. Razan al Bakr works in the head office of a bank, a popular job for young women. She and her female colleagues have their desks in a separate, women's only room. But when Ms Baker needs to attend meetings or confer with her male colleagues, she puts on her headscarf and abaya and goes to the male section. As a result, many Saudis look down on women who work in bank offices as opposed to the gender-segregated branches that deal directly with the public. They assume that Ms Bakr and other female employees want to flirt with men. "Sometimes people start to judge me," she said. "If they see you talking with this guy they think something's going on. Even your colleagues think that way." So what does she think her work environment will be like 10 years from now? "There will be more women and I think they'll be stronger because the new generation working right now, they're very strong, they don't care about what other people think," she replied. "They just want to prove themselves." She added that the attitude of such women was: "I'm working, I'm not doing anything wrong ... I'm doing something that's natural, something that's normal. I don't care if you judge me. But I know what I'm doing. I'm well-raised." "Girls in my age range," said Ms Bakr, who is just 25, "we weren't like that." [e-mail]