1. Introduction
“We are in a dilemma: What to do
with our education? Where to work?
A number of girls get their diplomas
but are lost afterward due to the lack of
job opportunities. Saudi women should
participate more in society, and there
should be more social support for them
to seek work opportunities so that they
could also give in return.”
— Head of a women’s welfare association in Jeddah*
The situation of women is a debated issue not only in Saudi Arabia but also at an
international level. It is estimated that there are 1 billion women not participating in the
labour market all over the world (Aguirre et al. 2012: 5). The testimony of the woman
above expresses some of the main problems Saudi Arabia is facing today: one of them
is related to employment and the other to education. In fact, the country has one of the
lowest rates of women participation in the labour market and the educational system is
constrained by traditional factors.
The increasing integration of women into the economy in developing countries
has become one of the most important goals of the global development efforts, as the
United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) suggests. The case of Saudi
Arabia represents a paradoxical example: not only because the percentage of women
participating in the labour market is low, but also because a great number of high
qualified Saudi women is leaving the country to look for job opportunities and better
working conditions, while low skilled foreign women are arriving in order to work, mostly
in domestic service.
Only through women empowerment and full participation at all social, economic
and political levels, human development can be sustained and the eight MDGs
achieved. The United Nations Development Programme focuses on gender equality and
women’s empowerment not only as human rights, but also because they are a pathway
to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and sustainable development.
The Saudi government has been working to improve the conditions of the labor
market as well as the inclusion of the women but there are still some discriminatory
measures that can be linked with the traditions and social norms. As Al-Tuwaijri (2012)
states, Saudi Arabia is a country in transition, trying to modernize but also with traditions
1
very rooted in society, with religious and cultural heritages affecting all aspects of life in
the country.
When referring to social and traditional norms in the Middle-East, it is common to
tackle the subject in a Western and ethnocentric perspective, but it is relevant for this
project to incorporate other visions of the region, in order to achieve a better
comprehension of the problem. For instance, Said asserts that “as much as the West
itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and
vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West.
The two
geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other” (Said 1979: 5). As
the author explains, Orient was always seen as “the exotic, the mysterious, the
profound, the seminal”, but nowadays ”Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as
either oil suppliers or potential terrorists” (Said 1998).
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is part of this ‘Orient’, with many controversial
issues whereof one of the most debated is the condition of women, often considered by
Western societies as backwards, since women often face prohibitions and limitations to
access political and economic life. News about this are often published in newspapers,
as an example is the case of the Saudi male guardians of women getting text messages
whenever the women leaves the country (Harding 2012). This fact is extensively
exposed as a great restriction that Saudi women confront and news like that contributes
to the image of Saudi Arabia as a society where women do not have the same
opportunities as men.
As mentioned above, one of the limitations women face in the country
concerns their participation in the labor market. There is a gap between the female
educational achievements and the job opportunities for them. This generates a female
brain drain, with many high-skilled women leaving to find jobs abroad, constituting a
great loss of human capital for Saudi Arabia. Moreover, migrant women, in particular
from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Philippines, work in the domestic service and healthcare
in Saudi Arabia and they are facing poor labour conditions especially because of the lack
of a legal framework (Human Rights Watch 2012).
To analyze the situation, firstly the Modernization Theory will be used to question
the economic model of Saudi Arabia and the exclusion of women from the labor market.
Furthermore, the Empowerment Theory will be applied to try to examine the different
cases of women working in Saudi Arabia (or leaving the country to work), and to identify
if the jobs really bring empowerment to all these types of female workers. For this
2
reason, the connections between empowerment, development and employment will be
explored, as well as the concepts proposed by Naila Kabeer (1999) to distinguish if
empowerment exists or not.
After this introduction, the problem formulation will be presented, followed by the
Methodological Approach. Then, a background of Saudi Arabia will be provided, focusing
on relevant aspects for this project. Afterwards, the theories applied to the case study
are discussed, in order to contribute to the analysis. Before the analysis it is important to
characterize the different cases of women which will be examined, so an empirical
section will describe this overall situation and finally, the analysis is presented
succeeded by the conclusion of this project and the corresponding annex and
references.
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2. PROBLEM FORMULATION
The increasing integration of women into the economy in developing countries
has become one of the most important goals of development efforts. The case of Saudi
Arabia represents a paradoxical example: not only because the percentage of female
workers is low, but also because high qualified Saudi women are leaving their houses
(and in some cases also the country) to look for new job opportunities while low-skilled
foreign women are arriving in the country in order to work, at the same time as a womenonly city is being built in order to include women in the labor market
The question for our problem statement is:
How are development,
empowerment and employment interlinked in the case of the women’s
participation in the labor market in Saudi Arabia?
●
Sub-question: To what extent does the Modernization Theory investigate the
economic development of Saudi Arabia and the inclusion of women in the labour
force?
●
Sub-question: To what extent the Empowerment Theory can be used to examine
the job opportunities available for women in Saudi Arabia?
In this project we will use the Modernization theory to explain the link between
economic development and women's employment, focusing on Rostow’s stages of
development. Moreover, in order to explain the connection between women’s
employment, empowerment and development we will analyze the case of Saudi Arabia
women labor market.
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3. Methodological Approach
In this section, the tools used to write the project will be explained to reach the
aims settled in the introduction. The first step will be explaining in detail the methodology,
followed by the research design, where the case of study is exposed. Then, the sources
and the limitations will be described. Finally the methods used to explore the issue will
be presented.
3.1. Methodology
Finding the most suitable methodology in a research in social science is not an
easy task, by the way the debates in the field show that “the argument seems to be
that quantitative and qualitative methodology (and their various synonyms) are or
exhibit distinctive epistemologies and that particular methods of research are
appropriate to each. The argument of this article is that, while these are highly
stimulating suggestions, they need to be subjected to considerable investigation
before they can be considered axioms of research in the social sciences” (Bryman
1984: p. 90).
In order to reach a better understanding of the complexity of the role of women in
the Saudi labor market, this project will deal with both quantitative data, mostly provided
by the indexes that will be explained later in this work, as well as qualitative data
especially provided by a variety of sources such as articles and reports from the different
NGO’s. Taking into consideration what Bryman (2012) asserts about the methodology, it
is possible to say that “quantitative and qualitative research constitute different
approaches to social investigation and carry with them important epistemological and
ontological considerations” (p.24) and it is also important to remark that a combination of
them is the better approach in this case of study.
It is common to think that social research needs to be somehow measured, but
social sciences specialists argue that the qualitative methods have the same importance
as the first one have (Bryman 2012). In this project the qualitative data is as relevant and
useful as the qualitative. In fact, WIDE (Network Women in Development Europe) has
arisen that qualitative indicators can be created to measure empowerment, for example,
through questions such as: to what extent are women aware of their legal rights?; Do
5
they account that women are becoming empowered? They accept that this proposal
may be more complex than numerical measurements of development agencies and
analyzing data from the various indexes but may reflect more realistically what is being
measured in a multi-dimensional process. The constraint, which was also pointed out by
this organization, has to do with the definition of how the results can be compared in
different contexts or projects, but still it is, as it will be shown under Naila Kabeer
approach, actually possible to get a good measurement of empowerment.
3.2. Research Design
Taking as a reference Alan Bryman’s work (2012), following his guideline and
distinction between the different research methods proposed, we decided the design of
the present project. As the author asserts, this section “provides a framework for the
collection and analysis of data”, so it is the foundation of this project (Bryman 2012: 46).
Among other kinds of research designs, this project follows a case study with the main
focus on Saudi Arabia and with the unit of analysis a single but crucial point of the
workforce in this country, the female labor force.
Saudi Arabia presents a growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and the Human
Development Index (HDI), the country also has a high position in the economic rankings
and grows over the average of Arab States and among others around the world. Despite
this increase in growth and development, the statistics do not consider that the country
has a small representation of women in the labor market with only 8% of the total labour
force (ILO 2009). On the other hand, the various initiatives under a major change to
include women in the labor market, call attention: the government seems to be taking
measures to include them in many fields and seems to be concerned about women
conditions in the national economy. The active role of the King regarding women in the
last years as well as the recent news about the women achievements which will be
explained afterwards.
In addition to the reasons explained above, we choose this case study because,
among the MENA countries, the Saudi situation of women represents an extreme
situation of gender inequality: there is 0% participation of women in politics and the
participation in the labor market is the lowest among the MENA countries: 21.2%
according to the Human Development Report of 2011 (UNDP 2011).
To sum up, the reasons why the focus of the current project is on Saudi Arabia
6
are plenty and are related to many different aspects; the issue relies in politics, social
life, institutions, religion, among others, but the main point here will be on labor market
and employment
3.3. Sources
The present project will be mainly based on secondary sources: data collected
and analyzed by others, such as journalists, scholars, researchers, among other relevant
actors. The project is based on information taken from national statistics, reports and
articles from different international organizations such as the United Nations, the World
Bank, , Non-Governmental Organizations such as Women In Development Europe and
Human Rights First Society and finally, publications and articles from relevant
newspapers and journals from both Saudi Arabia and the World.
Even though the term “empowerment” can be considered too broad, there are
ways to measure it. In this sense, Rai notes that there are “various methodologies to
measure empowerment – UNDP’s Gender Related Development Index and Gender
Empowerment Measure (GEM); OECD’s Social Institutions Indicator, the World
Economic Forum has the Gender Gap Index and the World Bank advocates economic
empowerment through Smart Economics by making markets work for women” (Rai
2007: 1) . These ways of measuring empowerment are explained below as well as why
the GEM is no longer used today.
It is necessary to mention that the Human Development Report of 1995,
dedicated specifically to women's situation in the world, introduced the GDI (Gender
Inequality Index) and the GEM (Gender Empowerment Measure) as complementary
indexes to measure gender inequalities. The GDI measured achievements in the same
basic capabilities as the HDI does, but takes note of the inequality in the achievements
between women and men. The GEM, on the other hand, was a measure of agency
which evaluated the progress in advancing women's standing in political and economic
forums, focusing on political and economic participation and power over economic
resources. While the GDI focused on expansion of capabilities, the GEM was concerned
with the use of those capabilities to take advantage of the opportunities of life (UNDP
1995). Both of these indexes suffered many critics, leading to the development of the
Gender Inequality Index (GII), launched in the Human Development Report of 2010.
Regarding the main critics made to the GEM and the GDI, Klasen (2004, 2011) points
7
out that many factors used to calculate these two indexes, such as salaries and labor
market participation, were based on estimated data and not on properly measured ones,
which really affected the indexes’ credibility. The Human Development Report of 2010,
when introducing the new gender index, also explains some problems of the previous
indexes, since they combined relative and absolute achievements in the same index and
that in many cases there had to be large imputations to fill in missing data. Moreover, the
report admits that “nearly all indicators in the GEM arguably reflect a strong urban elite
bias and use some indicators more relevant to developed countries” (UNDP 2010: 90).
There are various indexes available today that deal with gender, but it is
important to see this plurality of alternatives to measure gender inequalities, and
understand that all the indexes as complementary to each other. In this case, it is
relevant to notice Streeten’s argument when advocating on behalf of development
indexes. He states that undoubtedly development goes beyond what can be measured
and quantified by any kind of indicators, but they are important since they help to focus
attention and to simplify a problem. Also, they can have a greater impact on people’s
mind and can call public attention more strongly than a large set of indicators (Streeten
1994: 235).
3.4 Limitations
One of the main limits of this case study is the lack of time as well as the limited
length, reasons whereby the project is based on secondary sources. Moreover it would
be interesting to compare Saudi Arabia with other countries both in the MENA region and
outside the region in order to place the country in a more global context. Because of the
time limitation, it is not possible to go more in depth in this subject.
Secondly, some of the information needed to complete the analysis were difficult
to find and in some cases non-existent. One of the reasons might rely on the fact that
Saudi Arabia is a country more characterized by its conservatism than its openness.
Although the Kingdom has been showing a more liberal and modernized image to the
world, finding the exact data and some official numbers was a challenge.
Another limitation presented in this project is the focus on women and not on
gender. Although during the work some gender issues are mentioned, the main focus is
on women and the differences with men labour conditions in general in the Saudi labor
market.
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3.5. Methods
Since in this project we work with concepts such as development and
empowerment that can be considered abstract terms, the operationalization in
quantitative data offer us a measure of them. For this reason we utilize data such as
GDP, HDI and various data related to Saudi current situation (political, economic, social)
plus other indexes related to gender inequality or empowerment as well as the rate of
female participation in the labor force through time and data concerning emigration and
immigration.
Regarding the qualitative data, we will consider general and specific articles and
publications of journals and newspapers as well as related international reports and
studies, academic journals and books on development theories, MENA countries and
gender empowerment, even tough, as seen in the limitations, it is not always possible to
have access to the resources, for instance the number of illegal immigrants in Saudi
Arabia is not available in official statistics and therefore can only be appraised. In the
next section some general information about the case of study: Saudi Arabia is needed
in order to have a better approach to the problem formulation settled down above.
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4. BACKGROUND
4.1 Understanding Women's Situation in Saudi Arabia
There are important international reports which provide information about this
topic. Among two of the most important gender indexes available nowadays the country
is rated rather poorly: on the Global Gender Gap it is in the 131o position in a total of
134 countries (The Global Gender Gap Report 2012), and on the Gender Inequality
Index of 2011, launched by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP 2010), the
country ranks 135 out of 187 (UNDP 2011). This discrepancy is due to the fact that the
first one has a bigger emphasis on economic and political achievements, while the
second one contains also a very detailed set of variables concerning female health, in
which Saudi Arabia has a good performance.
Moreover it is important to mention the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), since it represents an important step
towards an effective and global set of human rights for women with an important role for
their empowerment. Ali (2002: 63) highlights also that this Convention is decisive
because it presupposes an active role of the national states in the provision of the
elimination of gender inequalities. For the countries that signed and ratified the
Convention, it serves as a legal tool for women to demand their rights. In addition the
countries have to elaborate reports every four years on the national women’s situation
with recommendations for improvement (Ibid.: 63-64). In the case of Muslim countries,
many governments adopted reservations in signing and ratifying CEDAW. Ali explains
that these reservations are due to the Islamic religion legal supremacy, and they
evidence the irregular positions on the matter of women’s human rights in the region
(Ibid.: 65). Besides, the author asserts that women’s human rights, the way they are
stated in CEDAW, are based mainly on the Western liberal feminist discourse, focused
primarily on the individual rights of women and this can be considered as “a combination
of law, modernization theory and Western liberal feminist jurisprudence” (Ibid.: 64). This
can make problematic the implementation of the Convention in non-Western countries.
The issue of religion is especially relevant regarding the adoption of this
Convention in the context of Saudi Arabia. In fact, many critiques of CEDAW focus on
the conflict between the human rights principles of the Convention on one side and the
right to freedom of religion, culture and custom on the other. These critics say that
10
CEDAW does not offer a clear methodology in order to solve this conflict (Ibid.: 64). The
last CEDAW report about Saudi Arabia was published in 2007, and among its main
recommendations to the improvement of women's situation in the country, mentions the
importance of measuring data related specifically to the gender disparities in the country,
especially regarding education and female labor participation, including the informal
sector. Besides in the document published in 2008 with comments on the country report
of 2007, attention is called to the importance of a legislation concerning violence against
women and about the rights of foreign workers in the country (Cedaw 2007, 2008).
4.2 The Context: Politics, Religion and Arab Spring
The origin of the country is deeply connected with Islamic belief since the
religious affiliation was extensively used in the process of creation the national identity,
especially to create a bond between tribes and people that in other sense did not have
that much in common (Doumato 2003). In Saudi Arabia there is a high presence of
Muslim people divided into Sunni (89-90%) and Shiites (10-11%). The Islamic law is
based on the Shari’ah, a set of duties that Muslim men and women have to follow and it
comes from “the Qur'an – the holy book, the Sunna – prophet Muhammad's life and
customs, and the Hadith – the prophet and his successor's verbal interpretations" which
became consensus in the Islamic community (Haghighat - Sordellini 2010: 7). Various
Quranic texts or certain passages, abstracted out of their contexts, are interpreted in a
conservative and literal way (Mashhour 2005: 564). Moghadam (1993) explains that the
Qur’an does not say anything explicit about women not being able to work. In any case,
there are regulations that end up segregating women in different spheres, coming from
the interpretation of the Qur’an. Moreover, the main current in Sunni Saudi Arabia is
Wahhabism which professes the return to the original and authentic Islam of the Prophet
and his Companions, the condemnation of Shiites and any form of social modernity
(Ungureanu 2008).
Without a written constitution, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saudi rules the
country since 2005 and he has released several reforms trying to involve women in the
political and economic sphere, as demonstrated by the grant of voting rights to women.
Even if Saudi Arabia can be considered a closed society, the King proved his openness
by taking into consideration also women rights affirming that this policy is not violating
the Shari'ah and he was not affected by external or internal dictations (Al-Rashed 2011).
11
Moreover, in 2010 the region experienced the so named “Arab Spring”, a series of
uprisings in some MENA countries, which have influenced Saudi Arabia too. For Noam
Chomsky, the protests, which began in Western Sahara in October 2010, can be
considered the starting point of the riots in the Muslim world (Chomsky 2012).
The starting point of all these revolutions, called by the world mass media “Arab
Spring”, was Tunisia with the self - immolation of a young man, named Mohammed
Bouazizi who was protesting against the corruption of the police force. The Arab Spring
started apparently "with a meaningless protest in an obscure region" leading to
"hundreds of thousands of youth protesters (…) to the streets in almost every Arab
country" sharing the same idea that is to bring down the regimes” (Lynch 2012: 7). This
domino effect affected Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Syria and others to a
lesser extent, i.e. Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iraq. As Lynch asserts that "the uprisings are
exceptionally rapid, intense and nearly simultaneous explosions of popular protest
across an Arab world united by a shared transnational media and bound by a common
identity" and these revolts developed in different ways entailing the overthrowing of
dictatorial regimes, civil wars, new democracies and more or less violent demonstrations
(Ibid.). In the specific case of Saudi Arabia only minor protests happened. Indeed the
Kingdom, during the last months, was involved in supporting, politically and financially,
the conservative regimes of the region becoming a centre of counterrevolution (Ibid.: 9).
Although the protests in the Saudi context were minor and silenced by the
government, the Arab Spring had effectively influence on Saudi women, who started a
protest for the right to drive, with great resonance in the Western countries' public
opinion because it was judged "symbolic, both inside and outside for Saudi Arabia"
(Forbes 2011). Moreover other signs of repercussion are the right to vote and to run for
local offices in 2015 and the possibility to participate for the first time in the Olympics of
London 2012, allowed by the King Abdullah. Under the pressure of the Arab Spring, the
King is following his personal slogan of: “balanced modernization which falls within our
Islamic values” (Hayward 2011).
4.3 Economic Context
Saudi Arabia economy needs to be understood in a wider framework: the MENA
regional economy. In 1970s the oil boom in the Middle East entailed two consequences:
the overflow of revenue which leads to the accumulation of wealth and the influx of
12
foreign workers especially from South Asia, other Middle East countries and Africa
(Haghighat-Sordellini 2010). Saudi Arabia economy needs to be understood in a wider
framework: the MENA regional economy. In 1970s the oil boom in the Middle East
entailed two consequences: the overflow of revenue which leads to the accumulation of
wealth and the influx of foreign workers especially from South Asia, other Middle East
countries and Africa (Haghighat-Sordellini 2010). The country discovered the oil in 1933,
after this year they became a powerful economy with an outstanding role, especially in
the region. Saudi Arabia can be considered the largest state within the MENA countries
and also within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In this sense, Lagarde (2012) adds
that “it also constitutes a key source of investments and remittance inflows for many
South Asian and neighbouring Arab countries”.
Saudi wealth, mainly based on high oil revenues, has lead to innovative
infrastructure, more effective health services and other opportunities to advance in social
priorities at the same time as it created strong external and fiscal surpluses. Considered
one of the largest oil producers of the world and “the only country that has consistently
maintained significant spare production capacity, Saudi Arabia has a unique position
within the global oil market” (Lagarde 2012), Saudi Arabia can also be contemplated as
a vital regional player. At the same time, its active participation in different international
institutions, financial organizations, especially in the context of the GCC and the G-20
have supported the previous idea.
Nowadays, the country is working to consolidate its gains, focusing on economic
diversification and sustained growth while seeking to help stabilizing the international oil
market. One of the most important challenges for the actual government faces is on how
to take advantage of their current positive position in case the oil price declines and also
how to diversify the economies to boost private-sector job creation. The context of the oil
in the Saudi economy is important for this project because it explains how the country's
economy was connected mostly to this aspect and did not consider other important
features of economic development, and this had a huge impact on women’s inclusion in
Saudi society. (AlMunajjed 2009: 8).
One of the main obstacles to the inclusion of Saudi women in the labor force is
the oil-based economy which is a capital-intensive industry “that created many laborintensive jobs in construction and oil industry suited for men” (Haghighat-Sordellini 2010:
117-118). Despite this, in the last years there have been improvements in this area:
since 1992, women’s participation rate in the Saudi labor force has been increasing
13
(AlMunajjed 2009: 2).
Although the last statistic can be considered as an important improvement “it
represents one of the lowest levels of national female labor participation in the region”
(AlMunajjed 2010: 2). Mona AlMunajjed (2009) also shows that the main area where
they work are in the education field, in both teaching and administrative positions, and
this creates a segregation since they are not able to get jobs in strategic and
management areas. Moreover AlMunajjed’s study clearly shows the strong division of
public and private spheres in Saudi society through the case of the labor segregation,
since women generally occupy positions related to family and care, typical of the private
sphere, while men have jobs associated with public life (Ibid.).
Regarding the economic situation in the country, the last CEDAW report about
Saudi Arabia (2007) calls attention to the development plans executed by the
government, and cites the development of human resources as one of the primary goals
of this plan, which reflects the preoccupation of the current government to make a better
use of its potential working force. The development plans mix religion issues with
economic and political ones, and it declares “adopting all the criteria of development,
modernization and continuous improvement” (CEDAW 2007: 5). It also states that one of
its goals is the preservation of Islamic values and to defend the nation’s faith so it is
clear the broad range of aims that the current government is trying to cover. The
development plans have been executed since the 1970s in the country, and the last one
was made to cover the period of time of 2005-2010 bringing the changes (Ibid.: 5).
4.4 Education
Originally, the female educational achievements in Saudi Arabia are
connected with demands from the ruling elite of the country that are partly responsible
for creating public school opportunities for girls. Since 1960 it is available for girls to
study at public schools, separately from boys, like in all other aspects of their life. From
kindergarten to college their studies is supervised by a board of Ulama (footnote) called
“the General Presidency for Girls Education”, to ensure that what is being taught to the
girls is in accordance with their “female nature” (Doumato, 2003). Through this policy of
supervision and control of what girls can or cannot study, is possible to understand the
segregation that exists regarding the careers that are enrolled mostly by women in the
country, since they are encouraged to study for example home economics instead of
14
micro or macroeconomics. Also, throughout their entire school life there are classes of
religious studies, where messages about gender roles are embodied and help to
consolidate the expectations and opportunities women actually have in the country. Girls
are encouraged by the Ulama to study subjects related to family and private life, while
boys are given the opportunity of studying topics more related to public and strategic
fields (Doumato, 2003).
The educational and labor segregation existing in the country can be
exemplified through the extensive gap between the female educational achievements
and the labor opportunities women actually have. Hopenhayn (2007) explains the
problems that occur from this particular kind of gap as affecting a whole generation that
doesn’t perceive education as something important and therefore won’t “fight” for it or
value it for their children, and this can have various negative consequences. This gap is
easily measured through numbers and it has been mentioned previously on the present
work. According to AlMunajjed (2010), more than 50% of the college graduates in the
country are women, while about 20% of them actually work.
15
5. THEORIES
In this section the theoretical framework is presented. First of all, the concept of
development is explained since it represents one of the main features analysed in the
project. The contributions of gender and women studies to field also are mentioned.
Finally, the Modernization Theory will be explored, followed by the Empowerment Theory
and the approaches within this discipline.
5.1 Conceptualization of Development
Traditionally, development was seen as an increase on the level of income or on
the capacity of production of a country, and measured through the growth of the GDP
(Gross Domestic Product) or the GDP per capita. Development strategies were focused
basically on industrialization and on the boost of economy (Todaro & Smith 2003).
Around the 1960s, many countries started to realize that only the economic growth per
se in many cases did not necessarily alter the life conditions of the population, especially
of the most poor, and that “something was very wrong with this narrow definition of
development” (Todaro & Smith 2003: 16). Seers (1969) explains that some happenings
from the previous decade showed that political and social crisis occurred in countries of
all kinds of stages of economic development, including in countries with a growing GDP
per capita (p. 2). So, in this period, development became to be seen as a
multidimensional process, with various influential factors.
Among the theories emerged from this perception of development as economic
growth, the Modernization Theory was one of the most prominent ones. This theory will
be better explained later, but for the evolution of the concept of development it is
important to refer to a social aspect present in it. The modernization process implies a
change in people’s beliefs, meaning that as modernization occurs, family sizes decrease
and domestic responsibilities for women diminish. As
Weber (Weber in Haghighat-
Sordellini 2010: 28) mentions, traditional values and ways of life, characteristic of premodern societies, are replaced with less traditional and more rational and flexible ones.
Nevertheless, in the 1970s American feminists began to doubt the effects of the
Modernization on women. Indeed, as Boserup asserts, some processes of economic
development left behind women (Marchand & Parpart 1995: 227). For this reason, in this
period, the development programs focused on women were part of the “Women in
16
Development (WID)” approach, which was “grounded in the assumption that women
needed to be integrated into the development or modernization process” (Ibid.).
Considered vulnerable victims, it was assumed that the Third World women needed the
intervention of Northern countries in order to solve their technical problems (Ibid.: 229). If
in the WID approach women were beneficiaries of development projects, in 1975 a new
approach, called “Women and Development” started considering women as agents of
change and as integrated in participative action in grassroots initiatives (Ibid.: 233). If, on
one hand, the focus of WAD is only on women, in the 1990s another approach arrived,
called “Gender and Development” whose focus is on relations between women and men
and the concept of equality and empowerment (Sharp et al. 2003).
In 1986 the United Nations stated that “development means total development,
including development in the political, economic, social, cultural and other dimensions of
human life, as well as the development of economic and other material resources and
the physical, moral, intellectual and cultural growth of human beings” (UN in UNESCO:
1999). This demonstrates the shift in the development concept as including aspects that
before were disregarded when approaching the topic. The Human Development Index
(HDI) was created by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 1990, based
on the assumption that earnings should not be the only factor to measure development.
The HDI is therefore an alternative method to measure the growth of a country taking
into consideration also other elements like health and education. Haq (1995) referring to
the creation of this index and the choice of variables, explains that “they cover the hopes
of living longer, of acquiring knowledge, and of having a comfortable living standard”
(p.1).
In 1995, the Human Development Report was dedicated solely to gender
inequalities (UNDP 1995). As one of its main conclusions, this report stated that
development could not be seen as an embracing and inclusive process that would end
up incorporating everyone. The gender inequalities in the world were used as a proof
that active measures were required in order to include some people, especially women
that were being left out of the development process. It is relevant to highlight that
important organizations, such as the United Nations and the World Bank, consider
promoting gender equality as an important development goal. Women’s empowerment is
seen as an important goal for this matter. The United Nations established the Millennium
Development Goals in 2002, and the third goal is to promote gender equality and
empower women (UNDP 2009). This shows that this concept of development is also
17
including non-economic aspects, and including efforts to foment gender equality, has
been incorporated by different organizations dealing with development.
5.2 Modernization Theory
Among development theories, the Modernization school was the first paradigm in
the field of the Third World development and can be considered the origin of all the other
theories (Friedrichs in So 1990: 264). Indeed, even if it was replaced by a new paradigm
- the Dependency Theory - this school has been influential since it raised the issue of
development for the first time. It emerged in the 1950s thanks to American governmental
and private funds, given to scholars of various fields and backgrounds. This is why the
main idea of the theory relies upon Western countries way of modernization and
development which started with the Industrial revolution of the XVIII century (So 1990).
Within the Modernization school there are various contributions, but the focus of
this project will be on the economic school of development and, in particular, on W.W.
Rostow's “The stages of economic growth - a non communist manifesto” written in 1960.
The aim of the whole Modernization theory is to overcome the traditional stages to reach
a modern condition - characterized by industrialization, urbanization and so on - through
five stages described by Rostow. This social change from a traditional to a modern
society is an irreversible and progressive progress composed by different stages that all
the countries have to follow with the aim to go towards the Western “economic prosperity
and democratic stability” (So 1990: 33). Indeed the reason why the process of
modernization can be called also “Europeanization” or “Americanization” is that all the
countries should adopt the Western process of development which characterized
Western countries after the Industrial Revolution (Ibid.).
As Rostow explains, in origin all societies are traditional, characterized by an
agricultural economy with limited production of goods and without technical innovation.
In the second stage, this traditional society transforms into a pre-take-off one thanks to a
shock - provoked by the outside. Hence this stimulus entails cultural, political and
economic developments which coexist with traditional values. After this period of
transition the take-off stage begins and it is a turning point which leads to greater
technical and scientific innovation. This third stage is characterized by an exponential
growth which implies increasing investments to boost industries and modern sectors.
The take-off happened in Great Britain with the Industrial Revolution and after comes the
18
fourth stage: the road to maturity, which is an extension of technical innovation to more
complex processes. The last stage is the age of high mass consumption, in which
Rostow puts the Western societies of his century. Indeed the majority of population
works in the secondary and tertiary sectors and there is an increase on the real income
per head that leads to more and more consumption (Ibid.).
The title of Rostow's main work highlights that the stages of development will
lead to economic growth which is the aim of modernization. Economic growth is "an
increase in real gross domestic product (GDP)" and can be measured as the percentage
"change in GDP from one year to the next" (The Encyclopedia of Earth) but this is only
one feature of the economic development which comprehends also industrialization,
urbanization and education, as Lipset points out (So 1990).
During this process of transition from traditional to modern societies grows also
the employment rate and the educational opportunities (Haghighat-Sordellini 2010: 28).
So it can be argued that modernization, industrialization and progress go hand in hand
with an increase of the involvement of people, both women and men in the labor force.
In particular, focusing on women, the modernization theorists assert that the
augmentation of women participation in the work force entails further development in the
social and cultural field and implies more availability of female workers (Ibid.) Moreover it
is argued that the industrialization of societies reduces the physical differences between
women and men and give women the possibility to be more free financially as well as
intellectually enriched thanks to a job outside the domestic dimension (Rosen & LaRaia
in Jaquette 1982: 269).
Hence also for the women who enter the labor force there is a transition from a
traditional to a modern world which comprehends a change of values, lifestyles and
beliefs. Furthermore, if the traditional societies are characterized by male-domination
and authoritarianism, the modern societies are based on equality between men and
women and democracy (Jaquette 1982: 269). Indeed this dichotomy between modern
and tradition reflects also the separation of non-Western and Western women: according
to Rostow, the former are carrier of tradition and symbol of backwardness because of
their domestic role which prevents them to be influenced by the outside while the latter,
experiencing the outside, are more independent, culturally and socially full of new
modern values (Scott 1995).
This theory can explain very clearly the economic development of Saudi Arabia
which, before 1970s, was an agricultural society and, after the discovery of oil, it
19
transformed sharply in a modern and industrialized society. In conclusion, Rostow sees
these five stages like the only possible treatment for the underdevelopment of the Third
World countries and thanks to Western countries which can provide aid they would
modernize. In addition, it can be argued that the process of modernization, along with all
of what it implies, increases the opportunity for both women and men to be part of the
workforce which leads to a withdrawal with the past traditional world in order to enter
modernity.
Regarding the critics to this theory, it can be argued that there is a significant
weakness from the modernization perspective in explaining the different statuses of
women and the demographic changes influencing their lives in various regions of the
world, particularly in the Middle East (Haghighat-Sordellini 2010: 30). Moreover, based
on the belief that technology liberates people, Modernization Theory maintains a general
perspective on people, but does not refer specifically to the representation of women
and assumes that the trickle-down effects of more general development processes will
have a beneficial impact on them. In her work: “Women’s Role in Economic
Development” (1970), Ester Boserup has examined how urbanization, as a
consequence of modernization, has affected women in the developing countries. For
instance, she has emphasized how women’s economic situation is affected in the cities.
She notes that women are: “often excluded from formal sector jobs due to their low
levels of education and discriminatory practices” (Boserup in Haghighat - Sordellini
2010: 31). In other words, she argues that modernization enforces the sexual division of
labor and does not create favourable conditions for women, as they are excluded from a
majority of jobs in the cities. Boserup also argues that: “Urbanization in fact marginalizes
women not only from economic involvement but also from the kinship support networks
that were available to them in farm communities.” (Ibid.: 31) Therefore, one could argue
that the process of urbanization in some countries, serves to degrade women to a
greater extent, as they are cut off from the kinship support that could aid them in the
rural areas.
Furthermore, Inglehart and Norris (2003) examine why culture plays an important
role in women rights and the connection between Islam and patriarchal values. They
also explain that patriarchal values play an important role in Muslim societies. Fish
(2002), as an example to that, describes how adherence to Islamic norms can function
as a barrier to women’s advancement. Ross (2008) argues that oil rents keep women
out of the workforce and that this effect explains the prevalence of some patriarchal
20
aspects in the Saudi society (Ross in Alexander & Welzel 2011: 1). Similar to this,
Moghadam (2003) attributes patriarchal values also to different factors, which dominate
in Muslim societies for reasons other than Islam itself. These reasons are structural in
character as they emerge from economic and political power relations (Moghadam in
Alexander & Welzel 2011: 1).
5.3 Empowerment
The concept of empowerment has occupied a central place in many academic
fields such as community psychology, and at the same time has been identified as one
of the fundamental ways to the development and transformation of communities
(Montero 2003). Several authors (Maton & Salem 1995; Montero 1998, 2003; Rappaport
1981, 1984; Zimmerman 1995, 2000, Zimmerman & Rappaport 1998) have developed
and enriched the meaning and implications of this concept.
The term “empowerment” started being used in the context of development
programs focusing on local initiatives, as an alternative to mainstream approaches that
concentrated mainly in top-down interventions. The term, in the case of women studies
became somewhat “comfortable and unquestionable” (Parpart et al. 2002: 3), widely
used by many kinds of development institutions and approaches and not enough defined
and explained. It is important to highlight that the concept gained momentum especially
within the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 in
Cairo, which devoted a special chapter to equity, gender equality and women's
empowerment. This was the first major international conference on population where
women activists, claiming for women's health, played a major role (Sen & Batliwala in
García 2003: 224).
From a classical view, empowerment can be seen either as a value or result or
as a process. Rappaport, for example, “states that empowerment involves a process and
means by which people, organizations and communities gain control over their lives”
(Rappaport 1987: 122). For Mechanic (1991) empowerment is a process in which
individuals learn to see a closer match between their goals, a sense on how to achieve
them. In turn, the definition as an outcome variable provided by Silva and Martinez
states that empowerment happens when individuals are "using analytical skills to
influence the social and political environment and to exercise control actions involved in
community organizations or activities and participatory behaviours" (Silva & Martinez
21
2004: 31). The problem in the previous definitions of empowerment relies upon the
question of where the processes end and where the outcomes start. It is possible to
think that this happens in consequence of the difficulty in defining what is a process and
what an outcome is, and the definitions might be considered relative.
In a different perspective, the authors of “Rethinking Empowerment” Parpart, Rai
and Staudt (2002) propose a mainly critical view of the mainstream empowerment
theory, and vindicate a change of focus from measurement to processes of
empowerment. They explain that “the emphasis has been on grassroots, participatory
methods and their empowerment potential for the ‘poorest of the poor’ especially
women’s empowerment” (Papart et al. 2002: 3). They first point out that even the most
marginalized communities are influenced by global and national forces, not just by the
local sphere. Therefore, the society needs to be analyzed not only in local terms but also
in the national and global. Secondly, they assert that “empowerment is not simply the
ability to exert power over people and resources” (Ibid.) and add, in agreement with
Rowlands (1997), that empowerment “must be understood as including both individual
conscientization (power within) as well as the ability to work collectively, which can lead
to politicized power with others, which provides the power to bring about change”
(Parpart et al. op. cit.: 3). In third place, the cited authors believe that more attention is
needed on the political and economic structures, cultural aspects and discourses,
notions of human rights, laws and practices because empowerment as a process takes
place in institutional, material and discursive contexts. Finally, with regards to the debate
mentioned above, they postulate that empowerment is both a process and an outcome.
They explain that as a process it is fluid, unpredictable and demands attention to the
difficulties over place and time, meanwhile as an outcome it can be measured.
The concepts described by Rowlands (1997) of “power to” and “power within”can
also be useful for a better understanding of empowerment. "Power to” refers to the
interests, relations, structures and institutions that constrain women; "power with" means
to make shared decisions with other women and "power within" is to build upon itself and
is not given or given away. This way of understanding empowerment implies the power
and the control of various materials but also symbolic resources necessary to influence
different development processes.
From a more analytical view, Naila Kabeer defines the concept of women
empowerment as the “process by which those who have been denied the ability to make
strategic life choices acquire such ability” (Kabeer 1999: 435). In this context, the
22
concept implies a process of change. By choice, the author means the possibility of
alternatives, which can be seen as the ability to have chosen otherwise. She highlights
the lack of a consensus when it comes to the definition of the term, and sees it also as
something positive: “Not everyone accepts that empowerment can be clearly defined, let
alone measured. For feminists, the value of the concept lies precisely in its fuzziness”
(Ibid.: 436). This broadness of the term empowerment can be positive in the sense that
there is not one specific strategy that will lead towards it. Empowerment can mean
different things in different contexts and this is viewed as a favourable aspect for Kabeer.
Kabeer describes the central role that “choice” occupies in the definition of
woman empowerment as the ability to choose. This can be thought of in terms of three
interrelated dimensions: resources, agency and achievements. Resources can be
understood as preconditions for the empowerment process to happen and it includes
material, human and social resources. They can be comprehended as the means
through which agency is exercised and they can be “acquired through a multiplicity of
social relationships conducted in the various institutional domains which make up a
society, such as family, market and community (Ibid.: 437). Meanwhile agency can be
seen as a process, which means the ability to define a goal and to act upon them;
“agency tends to be operationalized as decision making” (Ibid.: 438).
The last dimension to take into account for a better understanding of
empowerment as a process is achievements, the outcomes. Moreover, disempowerment
occurs when the failure to achieve one’s goals reflects a deep-seated constraint on the
ability to choose (Ibid.). Finally, Kabeer states that “the three dimensions mentioned
before are indivisible in determining the meaning of an indicator and hence its validity as
a measure of empowerment” (Kabeer 1999: 452), this means that empowerment cannot
be measured in a correct way if agency, resources and achievements together are not
taken into consideration.
Sen’s words are accurate, since resources and agency together constitute what
he refers to as capabilities: “the potential that people have for living the lives their
want/achievement valued ways of ‘being and doing’” (Sen in Kabeer 1999: 438). Indeed
in 1980s, Amartya Sen worked on the Capability Approach which can be defined as the
“choice of focus upon the moral significance of individuals’ capability of achieving the
kind of lives they have reason to value” (Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy) and this
approach is linked with Kabeer's concepts.
As previously seen, there are many different circumstances regarding women
23
and employment in the country and therefore, an approach which deals critically with
empowerment and aspires to discuss diverse features is needed. Kabeer’s concepts can
be applied in analysing the situation, so they will be further used in the next section.
24
6. EMPIRICAL DATA
It is important to make explicit some essential data since they will be mentioned
and help the analysis. Firstly, is important to say that women and men have had different
kinds of roles in the Saudi labor market. This gender segregation in the job positions is
clearly not only a local issue but a problem that concerns almost every country in the
world. The last report by Booz & Company1 launched some interesting results regarding
women in the labor force around the world (Aguirre et al.: 2012). The report, called
“Empowering the Third Billion Women and the World of Work” 2012, concludes that
“there are 1 billion women with the potential to contribute more fully to their national
economies by combining the estimated number of “not prepared” and “not enabled”2
women between the ages of 20 and 65 in 2020, using data from the International Labor
Organization” (Ibid.: 16). This report specifies that most of the women that are “out” of
the labor market lives in emerging and developing nations, especially in areas such as
Latin America, Asia, the Pacific Rim, the Middle East, Eastern and Central Europe, and
Africa.
Gender segregation in the labor market is an issue in most of the countries in the
world, and can be explained simply as “the tendency for men and women to work in
different occupations” (Blackburn et al. 2002: 513). There are various opinions about the
reasons for these phenomena: while Klasen (2004) explains that gender divisions
emerge from biological facts, even if socially constructed, Gamba (2008) finds very
dangerous to explain the sexual division of labor in biological terms since this could
contribute to a naturalization of this phenomenon and therefore help to reinforce and
perpetuate the idea that some jobs are for men and others for women. There are also
various outcomes coming from this sexual division of labor, such as difference in
earnings, with women usually earning less than men, a greater participation of women in
the informal sector and double work shifts, since in most cases women are still
responsible for the house work after working outside home (Gamba 2008: 101).
Within Saudi Arabia’s labor market, gender segregation can be partly explained
1 Booz & Company “is the oldest management consulting firm still in business, the first to use the term
“management consultant,” and the only firm to be a top-tier provider of consulting services in both the public
and private sectors around the world” (Booz & Company official website).
2 The term “enabled” refers to having sufficient social and political support to engage with the labor market.
This support spans family, logistical, legal, and financial dimensions. It can be measured by equal
opportunity employment policies regarding fair pay and non-discriminatory work environments, among other
indicators (Aguirre, Hoteit, Rupp, Sabbagh 2012: 16).
25
because there are some sectors that are “not deemed appropriate for a woman” (ITUC
2012: 3). Moreover, women need a permission of their guardian in order to work. In the
case of Saudi Arabia, it is interesting to notice that there are laws and norms to prevent
gender discrimination in the labor market, but no actual mechanisms to ensure that it
does not happen or to punish organizations where it does. The International Trade Union
Confederation Report (2012) explains that in September 2010 a Ministerial Order
ensured that “any discrimination in wages shall be prohibited between male and female
workers for work of equal value” (Ibid.: 3). Unfortunately, there are no projections of any
kind of punishments for the case of wage discrimination, and in the country “women
earning only 20 percent of what men earn” is the lowest percentage among other
countries like Iran, Libya, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen (HaghighatSordellini 2010: 156).
There are also no laws in the country criminalizing violence against women or
concerning sexual harassment in the workplace. Indeed the ITUC report illustrates also
the difficult situation of Saudi women regarding this topic with the example of a woman
who was condemned to severe corporal punishment and two-year imprisonment “for
filing ‘spurious’ harassment complaints against court officials and for visiting government
offices without a male guardian. One of the judges was the alleged perpetrator” (ITUC
2012: 4). This case shows how for many women in the country work implies great risks.
Also, this same report calls attention to the fact that the country has not ratified the
International Labor Organization Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and
Protection of the Right to Organise, and also the Convention No. 98 which states the
Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining (Ibid.). This has severe implications for the
workers, since they are not allowed to form unions, organize collective bargaining or
strikes. Hence public demonstrations are also prohibited and there is almost no room for
manoeuvre for the workers to act collectively in order to demand rights or changes.
Particularly in the case of women workers, this is an important tool for change that has
been systematically denied to them. Saudi women have less work opportunities than
men and if they are not allowed to act together to request more job possibilities, changes
within this situation are less likely to happen.
The creation of jobs in the last years in the country also can be seen in the
context of gender segregation: in 2009 the increase of the rate of employment affected
mostly Saudi national men (147.000 workplaces created), followed by foreign men
(85.000), then Saudi national women (12.000) (ILO 2010: 3). It is also relevant to
26
underline that 77% of the workplaces created for women were in the area of education
and 11% in the area of health and social services. Only 6% of the female workplaces for
Saudi national women were in the area of general administration (Ibid.: 3) This fact
shows that the difference in the number of workplaces created for Saudi and foreign
men compared to those for Saudi women is striking and attests the great disparity in the
priority of creating job opportunities for women and men.
In addition, it is important to point out that 85.6 percent of the nationals in the
labor force are men (Ministry of Economy and Planning 2007). Although there are some
signs from the government to encourage national and non-national women in the current
Saudi labor market, in particular since 1992, when the women’s participation rate has
nearly tripled: from 5.4 percent to 14.4 percent in 2008, their participation in comparison
with men is still low (Ministry of Economy and Planning 2008). In fact women in the
Saudi labor force have an unemployment rate of 26.9 percent, nearly four times than the
rate of men (Central Department of Statistics and Information, Forty-Fourth Annual
Report 2008: 242).
In this context of discriminatory measures some women decided to work actively
to change the current situation. For this reason, a group of Saudi businesswomen, in late
2003, proposed a project of women-only cities, which consists in building an industrial
city that "would focus on manufacturing of foodstuffs, clothes and handicrafts and offer
training opportunities for women in crafts like maintenance, painting, carpentry and
masonry" (Ghafour 2003). The first city - where only women will be allowed to work - will
be built in the Eastern province city of Hofuf but other four cities are planned, thanks to
the Saudi Industrial Property Authority (MODON) which is in charge of the constructions,
supported also by the government (Davies 2012). The main aim of the initiative is to
reduce the rate of unemployment among graduate women in the Kingdom creating
almost 5,000 workplaces (Abdullah 2012). Moreover, the underlying reason of these
cities is to move around the Wahabi Sharia Law and traditions which prevent women to
work in the same place with men. Indeed, the Kingdom aims to benefit the maximum
level of production out of its educated female population (Barry 2012). The women-only
cities will not only create more jobs but generate also gender segregation because the
labor positions which are going to be created concerns soft industry such as pharmacy,
textile and food processing but not the hard industry. Therefore, all the mentioned areas
are in accordance with the sexual labor segregation which assigns women to
occupations more related with care and the private sphere, excluding them from public
27
and strategic areas (The Week 2012).
Another important issue regarding women in the country is the case of foreign
labor force. In 2007, for instance, “the active workforce in Saudi Arabia comprised 8.2
million people, fewer than half of whom were Saudi nationals” (Central Department of
Statistics and Information, Forty-Fourth Annual Report 2008: 230). Indeed the last
demographic census was made in 2010 and the statistics were overwhelming:
27,136,977 inhabitants of which 18,707,576 were Saudi nationals and 8,429,401 were
non-nationals (Saudi Gazette 2010). The number of immigrants is not only relevant
regarding demographic and sociological aspects, the consequence of these statistics are
directly reflected in the formal and informal Saudi labor market. Approximately, the
immigrants make up 90 to 95 per cent of the private sector workforce, and their main
positions are related to domestic jobs. On table 1 in the annex section show the number
of migrants based on the country of origin.
Considering the information in table 1, the majority of the migrants are from India,
followed by Pakistan and Egypt with more than one million each one. Regarding migrant
domestic workers, in 2009 they were 777,254 and, among these, 506,950 were women
(Thimothy & Sasikumar 2012). Since it is really difficult to calculate the number of
migrants because of the presence of illegal migrants, these data are not exhaustive. It is
estimated that there were 1.5 million Asian women domestic workers, primarily from
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Nepal in Saudi Arabia (Human Rights Watch in
Thimothy & Sasikumar 2012). Concerning the structural imbalances which are
characterizing the labor market the Saudi government has launched a number of policies
called the “Saudization”. The aim of the measures is mainly indigenizing the labour
force, with a particular focus on the private sector, since Saudis dominate employment in
the public sector while non Saudis dominate the private sectors (AlMunajjed 2010).
After the oil boom, the life standards increased and consequently also the
necessity of labor force at low cost. For this reason, the migration rocketed and
Indonesian women started working in Saudi houses. The number of migrants in 2007
reached six millions people and two millions were women. These women, because of
the lack of regulation and the negation of legal aid for them "are routinely underpaid,
overworked, confined to the workplace or subject to verbal, physical, and sexual abuse"
(Human Rights Watch 2007). Human Rights Watch suggested modifying the immigration
28
sponsorship laws, the "Kafala"3 which:
"Ties migrant workers' residency permits to their “sponsoring” employers, whose written
consent is required for workers to change employers or exit the country. Employers
abuse this power to confiscate passports, withhold wages, and force migrants to work
against their will (…). As in years past, Asian embassies reported thousands of
complaints from domestic workers forced to work 15 to 20 hours a day, seven days a
week, and denied their salaries. Domestic workers, most of whom are women, frequently
endure forced confinement, food deprivation, and severe psychological, physical, and
sexual abuse" (Human Rights Watch 2012).
Regarding this case, the International Labor Organization Report underlines that
in 2009 the 88% of foreign female workers were working in private households
performing domestic jobs (ILO 2010). It is possible to assert that “migrant women
manage to dominate certain sub-sectors of the labour market for domestics such as livein child-care or elderly-care” (Moya et al. in Marlou Schrover; Joanne van der Leun;
Chris Quispel 2007: 532). In addition, a specific study on this subject suggests that the
main reason for the great number of foreign female domestic workers is associated to
“Saudi
female graduates' reluctance
to assume
the
type of
jobs occupied
by
immigrant women; there is a centrifugal relation between the availability of jobs,
which
require
abilities
and qualifications
that
are
lacked
by
Saudi
female
graduates” (Alnory in Al-Dehailan & Salman Saleh 2007: 131).
Foreign women employed in domestic services are the most subjected to
exploitation and abuse since there is no law regulating this sector. Hence they are
usually forced to work long hours, they do not enjoy a day rest, they suffer from very
poor accommodation and they completely lack of medical care. The Labor Code of the
country does not apply for domestic and agricultural workers, so they count with null
labor protection (ITUC 2012). For instance, to change job, a migrant worker needs the
written permission of her/his employer and this creates a situation of total subordination
to the sponsors (Ibid.: 6).
Even though the rate of unemployed women in general is decreasing each year
as it can appreciated from table number 2 in the section of annexes, there is still much to
do in this field. The number of unemployed women is still one of the highest among the
3 “Kafala is the sponsorship system by which temporary migrant labourers are recruited in the Gulf
countries” and consists of a sponsor who recruits workers in other countries and that leads to a dependence
of the worker on the sponsor that often degenerate in a ‘modern slavery’ (Thimothy & Sasikumar 2012: 32).
29
MENA countries (AlMunajjed 2009: 2). About the women actively participating in the
workforce, more than 90 percent of them hold a secondary qualification or a university
degree (Ibid.) which represents a good indicator of the educational system, but those do
not translate into job opportunities.
Regarding Saudi women leaving to work abroad, an article from Al Arabiya
(2012) shows alarming rates regarding these women: 78.3% of female university
graduates in Saudi Arabia are unemployed as well as over 1,000 Ph.D. holders. The
figures explained partly why this exodus does exist. This situation can be better
understood under the concept of “brain drain”. Nejad, when analyzing the female brain
drain, asserts that female migration involves more risks and costs than male migration
(Nejad 2012: 4). Especially in the case of Saudi Arabia, women have “onerous legal
restrictions or lack protection from males seeking to prevent their migration” (Ibid.: 4).
The author points out that in the countries where women lack rights and freedom, it is
common for high-skilled women to migrate in search of a higher return on their human
capital, seeking also greater freedom. The creation of workplaces for women is
important in the context of the last Development Plan of the government, previously
mentioned, as well as for the fourth target of The Millennium Development Goals in
Saudi Arabia, that aim to the Promotion of Gender Equality and the Empower Women
(UNDP, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). Women, especially high-skilled women who leave the
country to work abroad, are a very significant source for development and it is up for the
country to include them and prevent the current brain drain. Concerning this, a
publication by Goldman Sachs in 2007 has shown the impact that the inclusion of
women in the labor market have on the national economy. They calculated how a greater
female participation in the workforce affects the internal economy as well as the good
image and prestige that a country can gain. This paper assumes that “raising female
employment to the male employment level in a country would boost the overall
employment rate by a measurable amount—([male rate-to overall rate]/overall rate)—
and per capita GDP by a similar amount” (AlMunajjed 2012: 15).
In addition, an article from the Washington Post of November 2012 reports this reality
and it suggests that many women that left the country to study abroad with scholarships
for post-graduate school (Master’s and PhD) provided by the government, come back to
the country and find no jobs for them (Sullivan 2012). There are about 40.000 Saudi
women currently studying abroad with government scholarship, from a total of 145.000
scholarships - men still have more than the double of the scholarship opportunities
30
(Sullivan 2012).
Besides the previous case, it is important to mention also the women who do not
intend to have a job. The traditions and cultural patterns play an important role and some
women may actually prefer to stay at home and take care of their family. The Human
Development Report of 1995 called attention to the fact that, in some countries, for an
equal percentage of men and women working might not be perceived as an ideal to be
achieved (UNDP 1995). What must be guaranteed are the freedom to choose and the
availability of work opportunities for the women who want to get a job.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, there have been some initiatives of Saudi Clerics to
encourage the government to give money to the women that decide to stay at home (Al
Arabiya 2012). The monetization of the domestic work may appear as a very radical
view, but it is a measure that has been discussed for a long time also in the West, and
the Human Development Report of 1995 stressed the importance of somehow valuing
the female housework. Different national contexts may call for different measures, and
until today this is an issue that has no obvious solution (UNDP op. cit.: 109). Ferree
explains that, assigning the domestic work with the word ‘housework’ “has enabled
development ‘experts’ to ignore the needs of women workers and exclude their home
production from calculations of GNP” (Ferree 1990: 874). This has made their
contribution to the economy invisible and this certainly affects their role in society, and
this can be said about the Saudi women that do not work.
Related to the problem of high-skilled women and the low rate of unemployment,
education has been a field in which Saudi women have experienced significant progress.
Coleman (2012) states that “it’s obvious that there have been a lot of resources poured
into education and there are new universities that have been created, along with
expanded opportunities for women students. But while there is a lot of money going into
higher education, a positive step, I would argue that there has been a little bit of ‘putting
the cart before the horse’”. This consideration gives an interesting point of view,
highlighting that modern infrastructure it is not enough to solve the structural problems
that Saudi Arabia is facing and solutions need to deal with the basis of the situation
(Arabia Link 2012).
The images are undeniable: the government has succeeded in building modern
infrastructure; the investment of large amounts of money over the last forty years in the
system of public education, in accordance to Coleman’s interview (Arabia Link 2012),
this information is shown in a chart in Table number 4 of the annex part. However, all the
31
substantial efforts and money have not resulted in more equality between men and
women. As Mona AlMunajjed asserts, a discrepancy exists between the types of skill
provided in the curricula of public education for girls and those needed in the labor
market (AlMunajjed 2009: 4). Moreover, following the CEDAW recommendations, apart
from highlighting the link between education and empowerment, the Convention
proclaimed the urgency in the country to “raise awareness of the importance of
education as a human right and as the basis for the empowerment of women” (CEDAW
2009: 65).
Even though the official efforts to increase girls access to education and reducing
the gender gap at school and university have partly worked (see Table 3), the
unemployment rate among graduated women is still high. Still, women’s education level
helped the country in many aspects such as “reduction in fertility and mortality rates,
improvement in health and nutrition, and an increase in female participation in the labor
force; lingering social norms, local traditions, and the structure of the system of public
education have been constraints on women’s realization of their equal opportunities in
society and their full participation in the labor market” (AlMunajjed 2009: 3). The author
concludes that the current educational system is failing to prepare Saudi women for
competitive roles in the labor force.
The last Human Development Report of 2011 shows that the female population
with at least secondary education is 50.3%, when the average of Arab States on this
same variable is only 32.9% (UNDP 2011). This clearly shows that in the MENA
countries, Saudi Arabia is doing far better in this field; again table number 3 in the annex
section shows percentage of female students at all school levels during the last years. In
addition, in accordance to the third target of The MDG’s in Saudi Arabia, which is the
Achievement of Universal Primary Education, indicates that the proportion of pupils
starting grade 1 who reaches grade 5 increased from 74.5% in 1990 to 98.30% in 2010,
and the literacy rate of 15-24 year old has gone up remarkably from 85.9% in 1990 to
98% in 2010. Despite good statistics in education what is paradoxical in this case is that
the female labor participation is only 21.2% (the lowest of the MENA countries) while the
average for Arab States is 26% (UNDP 2011).
After this section where some important empirical data about the general
condition of women in Saudi Arabia were presented, in the next one these information
will be used to link the concepts of modernization, empowerment and development, as
well as exploring the different cases of women in the country.
32
7. ANALYSIS
In this section of the project all the theories already presented and the empirical
data of the case of study are linked in order to go through the problem formulation. The
analysis is divided in three main parts under the aim of reaching a complete overview of
all the topics present in the work. The first part will explore how the Modernization
Theory can be applied in the case of Saudi Arabia. The second section will deal with the
interrelation of the main concepts of the project; Empowerment, Development and
Empowerment. Finally, Kabeer’s concepts of resources, agency and achievements, will
be applied and identified in the different cases of women in Saudi Arabia.
7.1. Modernization Theory applied to the case of Saudi Arabia
This part will focus on historical economic conditions which characterized the
country from the 1960s, in order to discuss how the Modernization theory explains the
process of development of Saudi Arabia and the condition of women in the labour force.
Firstly, this section will present a short analysis of the economic development of the
country and the situation of female employment in Saudi Arabia. Secondly, the situation
of the women in the labour force will be explored in the context of economic
development and through the influence of Islamic religion. It is possible to consider two
different points of view when trying to explain the condition of women in the labour
market with the Modernization Theory: one based on the classical Modernization
perspective, which states that women benefit from situations of economic growth, and
the second one which explains that women do not benefit of this because of traditional
factors.
The economy of Saudi Arabia is based on oil and it is currently one of the most
important countries in the production of oil (Metz 1992). In 1938 an American company
discovered huge reserves of oil, starting triggering some changes in Saudi economy, but
it is only during 1970s and 1980s that the control on the production of oil was taken by
the government (Ibid.). Consequently, during 1970s and 1990s, Saudi Arabia achieved
high rates of GDP growth (see Table 5 in the annex section) as well as managed to
reduce the GDP gap among other industrialized countries (World Bank n.d.). Therefore,
Saudi Arabia can be considered as a country where the GDP growth increased at the
fastest, particularly thanks to the oil reserves and other exports related to the primary
33
sector as seen in Table 6 and 7 from the annexes (Ibid.). As shown in the World Bank
data, the percentage of GDP from the agriculture sector is not very representative,
indeed the country could have suffered an economical change as the development of
industrialization and urbanization occurred in the country after the discovered of the oil
reserves (see Table 8 in annexes) (Ibid.). Another important factor that facilitated the
rapid industrial growth was the availability of a high supply of labor in the region.
Consequently, as explained above, the analysis of the labour market cannot be seen
without considering the shift from the rural areas to the urban that helped to increase the
growth of labor supply from the agricultural to the non agricultural sector, as a
consequence of the industrialization process. Indeed from the 1970s to the 1990s, this
process of urbanization started and the population living in the cities increased from 26
percent in the 1970s to 73 percent in the 1990s (Metz 1992). This situation brought an
extra growth in the labor force for the urban areas in the later of the 1990s and the
2000s; Table 9 in the annexes shows some of these changes.
However, it was in the 1970s that Saudi economy changed more radically and
this can be partly explained through Rostow’s stages. Indeed Wilson writes that the
country:
“Has clearly emerged from the first traditional society stage, and some of the preconditions
for take-off into self sustaining growth associated with Rostow’s second stage may have
been met, notably in terms of the physical infrastructure. It seems unlikely that Saudi
Arabia has entered the third take-off stage, and certainly it has not yet enters the fourth
stage, the drive to maturity. However, for some Saudi citizens at least the fifth has been
attained: the age of high-mass consumption” (Wilson et al. 2004).
Therefore, it can be considered that Saudi Arabia has not gone through all the
stages of Rostow but, due to the oil, development abruptly moved from the first and
second stage to the last one - the fifth - without passing through the third and the forth:
the take-off and more important, the drive to maturity. In addition, from the classical
Modernization perspective, the growth of the GDP during the decades can explain the
evolution in the labour market from the agricultural sector to a more industrial and
developed economy (So 1990: 29-31).
34
It is important to highlight the strong relation between religion and economy
in this country. Indeed, the control of the oil industry and, therefore, of the national
wealth by the ruling family who has strong and fundamentalist Islamic beliefs, dominate
the population, and in particular women, “breeding an interdependence of petro-wealth
and Islam” (Haghighat-Sordellini 2010: 153-154). Thanks to this wealth Saudi Arabia
spread the Islamic Wahhabist belief throughout the Kingdom and also other countries,
building Wahhabi schools and mosques inside and outside the country (Ibid.). Taking
into consideration that this dominant form of Islam, the so called “Wahhabism” is based
on the Islamic doctrine, but also on the alliance between the political and economical
power of the King of Saudi Arabia (Blanchard 2007), one can argue that, with a legal
framework based entirely on the fundamentalist Islamic law, the link between the
political, cultural and religious aspects can be unclear since there is no net distinction.
Therefore, it is difficult to separate the influence of religion and culture in the Saudi
society, being this “deeply rooted in tribal and patriarchal tradition” (Haghighat-Sordellini
op.cit.), which is the male domination on women through the control of resources and
the exercise of power leading to an “unequal position of women in societies” (Ibid.:34).
According to Doumato (2010), “gender inequality is built into Saudi Arabia’s
governmental and social structures, and is integral to the country’s state-supported
interpretation of Islam, which is derived from a literal reading of the Koran and Sunna”
(p.1). Similarly, Poya (1999), when talking about the influential of Islam in Iran, even
states that the current policy of segregation, which creates separate spaces for women
in the public domain, is implementing the exclusion of women from the public sphere.
The author explains that it can be seen as a “set of practices designed to control
women’s participation in the public economy, ranging from Islamic dress, and separate
seats and queues for men and women in all public places, to a rigid sexual segregation
within the law, education and employment - a form of sexual apartheid” (Ibid.: 10). It is
undoubtful that this has great implications for women and their participation in the labor
market of the country.
Nevertheless, considering some links between economic development and the
improvement of women's situation in a country, from a Modernization Theory
perspective, it can be argued that economic development can bring some advantages to
women. As for example in the case of Saudi Arabia, where the resources from the oil
reserves brought an increase in the education and therefore an increase in employment
35
opportunities, this can be seen as an opportunity for women to be part of the labour
force (Ibid.: 156). However, there is still a lack in the inclusion of women in the labour
force, despite the fact of the high rates of women education (see Table 10). The low
labour-force participation of women in Saudi Arabia, as mentioned in the empirical and
theoretical section, can be explained in terms of religious and cultural factors (Fish
2002), while Moghadam (1993) tried to explain it in terms of other factors, such as
women’s lack of experience.
To sum up, the Modernization perspective explains the economic development
as a set of stages but in the case of Saudi Arabia, the country went from an agricultural
to a high mass consumption society, thanks to the oil boom of the 1970s, covering only
the first two stages that Rostow mentions. As Lipset asserts, Modernization goes hand in
hand with a process of democratization but further researches by new modernists, like
Huntington, highlight the impact of Islam on society, politics and cultural beliefs (So
1990). Hence in Saudi Arabia, although it is a “modern” country in terms of economic
growth, urbanization and industrialization, there are still traditional aspects, like the
condition of women, which are usually seen as backward and conservative by Western
societies: “as the most backward group in society women serve as an implicit contrast
between Western modernity and non-Western tradition” (Scott 1995: 26). Nevertheless,
during the years the concept of development has dramatically changed and from an
economical view to a more inclusive one and consists, in the words of Amartya Sen “of
the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little
opportunity of exercising their reasoned agencies” (Sen 1999: 21). This idea of
development as freedom of choice is analyzed in the case of Saudi Arabia through
Kabeer’s concepts of resources, agency and achievements from an empowerment
perspective.
7.2. Employment, Empowerment and Development
In this section the link between Empowerment, Employment and Development
will be explored in depth. The connections between these concepts have already been
examined by different authors and represent the main terms of the project, therefore, on
this part of the work the main conclusions regarding this specific link will be displayed
trying to get through the problem formulation.
36
Many authors studied the link between women’s employment and empowerment
(Potterfield 1996; Koggel 2004; Patrick Briône and Chris Nicholson 2012). An important
report about Gender and Development launched by the United Nations Development
Fund for Women (UNIFEM)4 and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC)5 explains that women who do not have the possibility to work
outside home are denied from an important opportunity of empowerment and freedom
since it makes them more dependent of their husbands, characterizing a situation
subordination and vulnerability (ECLAC/UNIFEM, 2004). This is a rather tendentious
vision, since it does not take into consideration that some women may choose not to
work and have freely embraced their familial duties. Still, since it is a document
published by two important organizations that are involved in women issues, it is
relevant to mention its existence, even if this vision does may not apply to some of the
women in Saudi Arabia, that is, the women that prefer to dedicate their lives to their
homes.
Sen (1999) highlights the importance of women working for an improvement in
the female situation through their empowerment. The work outside the house has an
educative role the author explained, since it exposes women to the world outside the
home. Besides, the acquirement of an independent income can help women improve
their position inside the house and on the family dynamics, diminishing the degree to
which they are dependent of their husbands. This increase in the power of women within
the family can raise their voice also in the community, and they can therefore affect the
communities where they live and the position of women in general within a society (Sen
1999). Moreover Koggel (2004) explains that the improvement in the economic power of
women is important since it can challenge traditional and entrenched values that help
support and maintain gender bias inside a society.
4 Actually UNIFEM has been dissolved and incorporated into the newly established United Nation Entity for
Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The organization is dedicated to advancing women's
rights and gender equality and provides technical and financial assistance to innovative programs and
strategies that promote women's empowerment. For further information consult http://www.unwomen.org.
5 Founded 1948, ECLAC is one of the five regional commissions of the United Nations and is headquartered
in Chile. It was founded to contribute to the economic development of Latin America, coordinating actions
directed towards this end, and reinforcing economic relationships among the countries and with other
nations of the world. Later, her work expanded and Caribbean countries joined to promote social
development. For further information consult the official web site: www.eclac.org/
37
In addition, Sen (1999) calls attention to the fact that a working mother can
improve the share that is destined to the girls of the family, and therefore contributing to
a more equal family investment on daughters as well as in sons. Regarding specifically
the incoming earnings from female jobs, Sen (1999) describes their positive effect on
women´s lives through three main consequences. Firstly, it provides women a greater
breakdown position. Besides, it gives them a better perception of their individuality and
well-being, seeing that they are not only within the family’s physical and social domain.
Finally, it can contribute to an improved perception by them of their contribution to the
family’s economic position and general well-being.
It is also important to notice that working can be considered one of the main links
between economic and social development. Exclusion of labor market and labor market
segregation is determining factors of the perpetuation of gender inequalities in many
societies (ECLAC 2007). Work opportunities also represent an expansion in women’s
choices, as Mehra (1997) notes. The author affirms that for long-term development
programs focused on the reproductive role of women, and even when the focus was on
the expansion of women’s educational capabilities was rationalized on their impact to
diminish birth rates and increase the well-being of children. She states that “women’s
economic roles were simply not acknowledged” (Mehra 1997: 140).
Nevertheless, it is important to notice that not always employment will
automatically lead to women’s empowerment. Aspects such as the job conditions have
to be taken into consideration. Bagchi (2004) as well as others authors pay special
attention to the fact that today’s market economy can be prejudicial to women. Rai
(2008) argues that the current pressures for economic liberalization actually exacerbate
the burden women carry, so it is not any kind of jobs and any context of job creation that
will bring about women’s empowerment and create opportunities that would enable for
development, as freedom, to happen. Agarwal, Humphries and Robeyns (2004) also
stress this point, arguing that the actual impact of women's paid work will depend on
many global and local factors that can influence the gains from the job.
Meanwhile, Koggel (2004) emphasizes the importance of the good and proper
work conditions for a job to be able to increase women’s well-being and women’s
personal fulfilment. The author lists many factors that have to be taken into consideration
when analyzing the impact of female jobs, such as “whether women’s paid work is
38
located inside or outside the home; whether they have sole responsibility for domestic
work in addition to their paid work; whether they work in the formal or informal sector;
whether other family members have control over their income; whether labor market
permits high or low earnings; and whether jobs provide safety and leave provisions or
control over conditions of work” (Koggel 2004: 184).
The debate about women’s employment and the importance of the expansion of
the job opportunities began relatively late and development programs for a long time did
not focus on this relevant aspect. In 1975 the First International Conference on Women
took place in Mexico, and there attention was called to the fact that development policies
had indeed disregarded women’s economic role and they were actually being excluded
of development processes (Mehra 1997). The participation of women in labor market
was considered an important indicator of the availability, for them, of development
opportunities.
Although development has been a very central topic of debate in many fields, as
previously seen, this concept was for much time mainly linked with economic growth,
and it was around the 1980s that it started to be linked with empowerment. Parpart, Rai
and Staudt (2002) point out that “by the late 1980s, activists and theorists from the
South, and to a lesser extent from the North, began to discuss the need for a new
approach, one that highlights the need for women to become empowered so they can
challenge patriarchal and political-economic inequalities” (p. 10). In addition, Sen and
Grown, the authors of “Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World
Women's Perspectives” (1988) analyze the three decades of policies towards women in
the Third World. They focus on political crises and global economy, showing how
women's movements to organize strategies for basic survival are essential to understand
the process of development. They are considered to be one of the first academics to
introduce the terms of development and empowerment together. Also Caroline Moser 6,
through her work (“Reducing Global Poverty” 2007), can be considered useful in
analysing empowerment and development.
In addition, the concept of empowerment can be connected to the notion of
development proposed by Amartya Sen (1999), which sees it as the expansion of all
6 Moser is social anthropologist and social policy specialist, with experience relating to urban development
and social policy on a range of issues including academic and policy-focused research, teaching and
training (Staff Profiles at Manchester University, UK).
39
people’s freedoms. This concept implies an active role of people in making any kind of
life choices. Undoubtedly within this framework the women’s empowerment through
employment opportunities leads to development, since it generates more freedoms and
choices for them. Authors such as Agarwal, Humphries and Robeyns (2004) explain that
Sen´s contributions through this approach “have been crucial to the development of
several aspects of feminist economics and gender analysis” (p.1).
For Mehra (1997) the concept of women’s empowerment is strictly connected
with choice. She explains that “in the context of women and development, the definition
of empowerment should include the expansion of choices for women and an increase in
women’s ability to exercise choice” (p. 138). Her perception of empowerment is therefore
connected with freedom as well as the capabilities approach mentioned before, since it
presupposes the possibility of women having a set of capabilities to choose from.
The notion that employment does not always lead to empowerment proposed in
this section is important for this project, since its aim is to examine the women’s labor
situation in Saudi Arabia. There are many employment trends currently in the country
and this discussion, alongside with the application of Kabeer’s concepts of
achievements, resources and agency, can help to examine in which cases the jobs are
benefiting women and bringing about their empowerment and in which cases jobs does
not contribute much to the women’s well-being. The next section of the project will deal
with the application of Kabeer’s main concepts to the present case of study, essential to
understand if empowerment is present or not, as explained above.
7.3. Applying Kabeer’s Concepts of Empowerment to the case of Saudi women
As mentioned in the previous section, the concepts of resources, achievements
and agency, explained in detail by Kabeer (1999), will be further developed in this part of
the project, beginning with a focus on their measurement. Their applicability to analysing
empowerment processes in the situation of Saudi Arabia become essential to
understand to what extent the job opportunities for women in Saudi Arabia can lead to
real empowerment. Straight afterwards it will be explained how to measure the
mentioned capabilities and identify which are they in the current case.
First of all, Kabeer (1999) warns that measurement presents problems not only
regarding the different meanings that each actor gives to the term of empowerment, but
40
also about the role of people’s values that are in charge of designing the empowerment
strategies in the choice and interpretation of indicators to measure their impact. In
addition, the empowerment process in itself carries the idea of change and therefore the
indicators are intended to measure the change from a static picture of the current
situation and are not able to predict the coming changes.
Although, at first glance, “resources” seem to be the easiest capability to define,
they present several complexities. As Kabeer (1999) points out that “resources are at
one remove from choice, a measure of potential rather than actualized choice” (p. 443).
It is also fundamental to cite her words in order to understand how to measure this
capability: “how changes in women’s resources will translate into changes in the choices
they are able to make will depend, in part, on other aspects of the conditions in which
they are making their choices” (Ibid.: 443). Kabeer explains how the resources can be
measured through an example of women access to land and concludes that there is a
need to go beyond the simple “access” indicator in order to grasp how resources
translate into the realization of choice7. Finally the resource dimension need to be
defined in ways which spell out the potential of human agency and valued
achievements, more clearly than simple access or control indicators generally do (Ibid.:
444).
Regarding the measurement of “agency”, Kabeer (1999) highlights that most of
the indicators committed to that focus in both positive and negative types of agency,
such as women participation in public sectors, incidence of violence against them, etc.
The most popular indicator, however, is the decision-making agency, and it is the one
the author focuses on. This aspect is measured through “questions asking women about
their roles in relation to specific decisions, with answers sometimes combined into a
single index” (Ibid.: 445). This indicator is important since it can be linked to many
aspects of women’s lives: family decisions, decision concerning the possibility of women
to get a job outside home, decision about how to use the salary, etc. It may seem trivial
in countries where is very common to women to make this kind of decisions on their
own, but it is especially relevant for those countries where women cannot always decide
important features of their lives.
7 To cover the gap between formal and effective entitlement to resources, that often appears when referring
to the possession of some resources, the term “control” is used but is still not an easy way of measure to be
operationalized and is elusive to define and measure like power.
41
As with the previous dimensions of empowerment, it is needed to be analytically
clear when selecting what is going to be measured. In relation to empowerment,
“achievements” have been considered in terms of the agency exercised and its
consequences. Kabeer (1999) has established in her work that the indicators of
achievements to analyze women’s empowerment do not follow one line and she
exemplified this with two real cases, trying to show that the outcomes are diverse
depending on the scenario. Once that some practical data was established to
understand how and why is important the measurement of the concepts, following on,
resources, agency and achievements will be identified in the present case of study of
Saudi Arabia.
With the main focus on Saudi Arabia, resources, agency and achievements can
be as well detected to explore whether the inclusion of women in the labor market can
be considered as empowerment according to Kabeer (1999) and Parpart (2002)
approaches. In the next paragraph the three dimensions pointed out in Kabeer’s work,
will be identified with concrete aspects of the real situation of Saudi women.
The
interaction of these dimensions leads to the ability to choice and therefore to
empowerment, it is considered strategic the need to identify the dimensions with the
concrete situation of the country.
The educational accomplishments of Saudi women, already mentioned in this
project, can be considered achievements in the sense proposed by Kabeer (1999), since
they create necessary conditions for them to exercise agency. Education can increase
the agency condition because it is directly linked to the empowerment of those that have
the opportunity of studying. In the UNESCO report of 2002 called “Education for All”, the
example of literacy workshops for women in Pakistan is mentioned as a powerful
example of the relation between empowerment and education. When asked how the fact
that they can read has affected their lives, the women that participated answered as the
main result of literacy the capacity to trust their own judgments, and not be so
dependable on other people, especially their husbands.
Otto and Ziegler (2006) explain that literacy and education are important for
people to be able to exercise a life of choices in a modern society. Educational
achievements are fundamental means, with instrumental and intrinsic values, that allow
people to truly live the lives they chose and value and to practice their citizenship. In the
42
case of Saudi Arabia, the educational achievements are not yet translated into a greater
exercise of their agency in the political role, which means these achievements don't turn
into resources, in the meaning suggested by Kabeer (1999). In the case of the link
between better educational level and the possibility of better jobs, proposed by authors
such as Perkins, Radelet and Lindauer (2006), in the situation of Saudi women, also the
educational achievements do not turn into resources, since there are women leaving the
country in order to find jobs and better working conditions that are not available for them
inside Saudi Arabia.
The access to this resources as Kabeer (1999) denotes, reflect the rules and the
norms which govern the different institutions. This is important in the case of Saudi
Arabia as the women do not joy the access to all the resources that men do. One of the
answer to this differentiation in the access to the resources has to do with the norms and
rules that configured most of the Saudi institutions. At the same time, Kabeer is accurate
in pointing that they “take the form of actual allocations as well as of future claims and
expectations” (Kabeer 1999: 437).
From the previous assumption it is possible to mark out that in the case of Saudi
Arabia there are actually some policies, which have recently been taken by the
government that can be effectively considered as resources, specially understood as
future aims or expectations. It is therefore possible to signalize two important events in
the Saudi society: first of all and with a huge political impact, the right to vote; secondly;
the women-only cities, a project that is currently being built in order to create more job
positions for them and open the access to industries where they are actually not being
participating. Although these aims are not materialized yet and following Kabeer’s work,
it is possible to assert that as soon as they starts to function they are supposed to be
transformed in achievements, and therefore configure a process of empowerment, at
least at the local level. In addition, it is important to highlight that to be considering real
resources, the opportunities have to be actually available. In Saudi Arabia, some jobs
are not in fact accessible to women, because of the many reasons already mentioned,
such as the labor market segregation, women’s exclusion in some spheres of life, etc.
In this section the way to measure resources, agency and achievement, was
introduced following Kabeer's theoretical framework as well as a brief overview of the
application of them to the case of women in Saudi Arabia. In the next part of the analysis
43
Kabeer main concepts related to empowerment will be explored more in depth with a
special focus on the different cases of women in the labor market presented in the
current case of study, specifically migrants women, women currently living in Saudi
Arabia, women leaving for different reasons and finally the role of woman in the context
of the Arab Spring, that has affected all the region.
7.3.1 Migrant Women
Since the aim of this project is establish a link and explore the interaction
between employment, empowerment and development, in this part the relation of the
two last topics with the migrant workers' jobs will be analyzed. Considering Naila
Kebeer's theory, in the case of migrant women, the access to resources - precondition
for agency - is absent for several reasons. Indeed , first of all, the "domestic work as a
woman's job that garners low wages, provides little security and few benefits, involves
high rates of multiple forms of abuse, and offers only slim chances of occupational
mobility" (Silvey 2004: 49). Moreover, in the matter of education, migrant women are
very often unskilled who can work only in the domestic service to contribute to the
national development of their mother countries (Ibid.: 249), so they lack the education in
the sense of achievements proposed by Kabeer.
Another aspect to take into consideration is that they cannot take advantage of
the law and their rights because they are illiterate and they do not know the language.
Therefore even if they work outside their Indonesian home, for example, they are
confined inside Saudi houses where there are no witnesses of their condition and
"despite being victims of abuse themselves, many domestic workers are subject to
counter accusations, including theft, adultery or fornication in cases of rape or witchcraft"
(Human Rights Watch 2007). Since there is no control upon resources, there is no
agency and there is neither the possibility of making decisions nor to raise their voices.
They are silenced, and hence disempowered. Deprived of resources and agency, these
women are not able to reach any kind of achievement except of money, which for them
can be considered an achievement but clearly not in the sense that Kabeer's theory of
empowerment suggests.
Regarding to empowerment as freedom, because of the lack of access to
resources as education, a good salary and government aid, migrant women are not
agents of change, and therefore they cannot bring development. On the other hand, the
44
country, since it does not give a proper access to resources, is in itself underdeveloped
in terms of freedom of choice (Sen 1999: 189). In conclusion, because of the lack of
access to resources, migrant women, who are increasing every year, cannot be
considered empowered but yet exploited - as Human Rights Watch recently stated:
"many suffer multiple abuses and labor exploitation, sometimes amounting to slaverylike conditions" (Human Rights Watch 2012).
To sum up the main ideas of this section, where the situation of the migrant
women was explained under the light of Kabeer’s concepts, it can be say that in the
case of this woman, considered as non national labor force, is not helping to the
development of the country and neither to empower them in the sense of Parpart
understanding of empowerment. The only thing they take from working in Saudi Arabia
is money and therefore some kind of economic independence and as explained above,
more money does not always means and concerns and empowerment process. The
next part will go in depth in the case of women staying in the country.
7.3.2 Saudi women who remain in the country
This group of women is quite heterogeneous, inside this case it is possible to
identify women with high skills qualifications employed and unemployed and therefore
looking for jobs, women that decided not to study and prefer taking care of the house
and the family, women that have universities degrees but still does not want to work so
they stay at home, among other cases. The focus in this study is mainly on the high
skills women but women that decided not to work are as well mentioned.
One of the trends concerning women staying in the country is the creation of
women-only cities. Therefore, applying the concepts of empowerment, it can be argued
that MODON8 is creating new workplaces in the country, helping to reduce the rate of
unemployment graduate women, one of the highest of the region (Al Arabiya 2012).
Even if this is only a forecast, it is clear that it can be considered a resource because it is
a paid job and gives the possibility to work outside the domestic environment to more
women. Moreover the women who will benefit from this project are high-skilled,
8 The Saudi Industrial Property Authority was established in 2001. MODON is responsible for the
development of industrial cities with integrated infrastructure and services; whereas MODON has
established industrial cities in various regions of the Kingdom, and is currently overseeing 28 existing and
underdevelopment cities which include: Riyadh, Jeddah, among others cities. For further information consult
the official web page: http://www.modon.gov.sa
45
graduated women with no job, hence, thanks to their education; their agency will be
stronger and more aware. Nevertheless, they have access to material resources like
education and work but often this does not imply they have power of choice.
It is important to notice that women are often supported by the family or the
community and therefore they have also social resources. Although this initiative of
women-only cities or cities with access also to women, as MODON explained, is to be
praised because it can give women the resources and start a process of empowerment
and development, it is arguable that it is not enough since “access to resources is an
important aspect of women’s access to power and higher status in societies, but without
the ability to choose what to do with those resources and the ability to exercise
autonomous control of the new skills there is no power” (Haghighat - Sordellini 2010:
54). One of the main reasons of this lack of power is the male guardianship law which
states that a woman is obliged to have a chaperon, “a male relative who acts as her
guardian and has responsibility for and authority over her in a host of legal and personal
matters” (Zoepf 2010). Consequently there is no achievement considering it to be more
than just have a paid job as Kabeer suggests. In conclusion this initiative is a step
forward empowerment and development as freedom of choice but not a process
completed, indeed these women can become agents of change both inside and outside
the domestic environment.
It has been already mentioned that there are women in Saudi Arabia that
do not want to work and instead prefer to stay at home and take care of their family. In
the case of really being a preference and given the opportunity of looking for a job, these
women choose to stay at home, and then this can be considered an exercising of their
agency. The problem is that it is very hard to measure to what extent the choice of
staying at home was made freely and not imposed by social norms and expectations
based on the traditional role of women. In the case of Saudi Arabia, where women still
do not exercise their political voice, women that refute this model may suffer repression,
so it is impossible to say, with the information available nowadays, if there was really
choice in the decision of staying at home and not working. Still, it is important to call
attention that not all women that do not work and stay at home do it because of it being
imposed socially. Studies, including case-studies, need to be done with Saudi women in
order to hear them and know the reasons for the ones that stay at home.
46
As mentioned before, there is an information gap concerning the women's
situation in the country, and data about this particular case is part of this gap. A better
measurement of the resources, agency and achievements is needed but due to the fact
of some lack of information it is important to be really careful in analyzing the process of
empowerment in the case of women that remains in the country. In the next section the
reality of women who leave Saudi Arabia will be explored.
7.3.3 Saudi women leaving the country
In this group of women it is possible to identify two types or purposes in leaving
Saudi Arabia: some women decide to leave the country to study the career they want,
either with scholarships or not and others travel abroad to look for jobs or better working
conditions. Regarding the last case, as previously seen in this project, there is a
significant number of high-skilled Saudi women leaving the country to work abroad. This
shows that there are not sufficient job opportunities for women, and in some cases the
job opportunities are not interesting for these women. With data from the ILO (2010)
report earlier mentioned, it is clear that there are more jobs being created for Saudi and
foreign men than for women. Also, the jobs created for women are mainly in the areas of
education and health. This creates a scenario propitious for a female brain drain,
especially when considering the educational achievements of Saudi women, as well
explained in this paper.
A decisive outcome of education achievements is finding a job in accordance to
their studies which allows them to apply the knowledge acquired during the educational
years. It can be argued that not all women who go to college have the intention of finding
a job afterwards, but obviously in the case of high-skilled women leaving the country to
find a job abroad, they indeed have the intention of getting a suitable job. When the jobs
are not available in Saudi Arabia for some of the women, the educational achievements
are not being translated into actual resources, in the sense proposed by Kabeer. This
result has a great implication in the empowerment of these women, since without
resources such as a job in accordance to their educational achievements; these women
are prevented from exercising agency, and have, therefore, to look for opportunities
elsewhere.
Many authors, such as Docquier, Lowell and Marfouk (2007) and Docquier and
Rapoport (2009) explored the meaning of these losses for a country. Among the
47
negative aspects of this particular kind of migration, the authors suggest that “when
emigration is concentrated among certain fields and when it is from those workers with a
degree of higher education such a PhD, these flows can cause occupational deficiency
that can be damaging to a country’s development” (Docquier and Rapoport 2009: 3).
Saudi Arabia is often mentioned as a country with a female brain drain, despite there is
not official data about the exact number of women leaving Saudi Arabia; it is known that
the figure is alarming. This lack of information seems necessary for analysing the
country’s real situation and it is a figure that needs to be measured.
In the case of high-skilled women leaving Saudi Arabia in order to get jobs, if
there are not enough opportunities for them in the country, the conditions for their
empowerment through employment is clearly missing. It can be considered that the main
responsibility to change this situation relies on the government. One option to empower
the educated Saudi women and at the same time to prevent them to leave the country in
order to get better job opportunities, would be non restricting the careers that woman
can choose inside the country, so they will be able to get degrees in different subjects
and areas where people is needed. More jobs need to be created for women, also in
areas where women have not been traditionally present in the country. As AlMunajjed
(2009) points out “the national system of education is failing to prepare Saudi women for
competitive roles in the labor force, even at the highest levels” (p. 5) and therefore,
education can be certainly seen as one of the most important pillars of any society.
In conclusion it can be highlighted that working on a better educational system
should be a priority for the Saudi Government in order to empower their female labor
force through giving them more job positions. Although it can be understood that the
educated women are already empowered when reaching their degrees in the different
levels, the empowerment is not complete and it is not a resource for the development of
the country if they remain unemployed. In the next section the role of women in the
context of the Arab Spring, one of the last huge event that affect the whole region, will be
analyzed.
7.3.4 Women in the context of the Arab Spring
As we mentioned above, during the so named Arab Spring, even if the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia acted as a centre of counterrevolution, some protests raised also in the
country. These uprisings burst in March, 2011 to ask for more rights like free elections
48
and the end of the Saudi dynasty (Hutchins 2012). The influence that Arab Spring had
on women's movement in the country, also if marginal and minor, can be considered a
step towards empowerment and a consciousness rising.
First of all the Arab Spring was an inspiration for an organized group of women
that on June, 17th 2011 protested against Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving
(MacFarquhar 2011). This demonstration was organized by a group of women whose
leader is Manal al-Sharif who took a video of herself driving, uploaded it on Facebook
and Twitter and was finally got arrested because of this. The campaign known as
"Women2drive" gained consensus among both Arab world and Western people like
Hillary Clinton and Catherine Ashton. Clinton declared that "the United Nations must
stand firmly behind the right of all - the rights of women, the rights of men, but in
particular for women to sit at every table where decisions are made" (Lemmon 2011).
It is important to consider that there is no law which denies women's right to drive
but a ban issued by the clergy in 1991 from which the decision of interior ministry not to
issue the driving license to women (Khalife 2011). This is therefore the situation that
women have to face everyday; without a male relative or guardian they cannot reach
their workplace, one of the reasons which prevent them to work outside their houses.
This movement, blossomed thanks to the Arab Spring, is bottom-up since it comes from
an organized group of women and not from a top-down initiative (from the government,
institutions, international pressure).
From an empowerment perspective, the bottom-up approach leads to a legitimate
development supported by the grassroots community. According to Kabeer (1999), since
empowerment is a process which allows people to make strategic life choices which
were denied before, the right to drive represents a resource because it consents to them
exercising a strategic life choice. Despite of the availability of resources such as the right
to drive, empowerment cannot be considered achieved since women should also be
able to "voice their needs and interests without them being predefined or imposed from
above" (Haghighat-Sordellini 2010: 54). Indeed if silence is related to disempowerment,
on the other hand voice is related to agency and empowerment (Parpart 2010).
In the case of the movement "Women2drive", women decided to demonstrate
publicly their agency, challenging patriarchal authority (Kabeer 2010) and thus
exercising the "power to" that is "to pursue their own goals, even in the face opposition
49
from others" (Kabeer 1999: 438). This campaign was not limited to a domestic domain in
a family context but spread in what is considered a male domain, the streets (Hossain
2012). Even if the achievement as a desired outcome can be the right to drive per se at
the same time it can be seen as a possibility to enter the labor market and the political
participation because it is an autonomous way to move around the cities and the
country, reaching the work sites and/or the polls without being driven by a male
guardian. Therefore, from Parpart's perspective, the campaign "Women2drive" can
represent women's empowerment. Although the protest was local because it was
organized by the grassroots community, it has to be also analyzed from a super-national
context since the Arab Spring can be understood as a starting point after its diffusion in
many of the MENA countries. Moreover, as we said above, the movement represents a
"power to" but also a "power with", because it is a collective demonstration, and a
"power within", because it is a gaining of self-awareness. Finally empowerment is seen
as an outcome per se but also a process which will lead to employment, political
participation and social change.
Furthermore, other possible repercussions due to the Arab Spring are the
participation of women in the London 2012 summer Olympics and the right to vote and
run in elections in 2015. Regarding the participation in the Olympics, the King declared
that their sports "meet the standards of women decency and don't contradict Islamic law"
and Martha F. Davis, professor at Northeastern University School of Law In Boston,
asserts that "it's a savvy move (…) it's trying to make sure there isn't a groundswell of
Arab Spring - like activities and being responsive to those yearnings to participate and it
is being proactive" (Longman & Pilon 2012). The same appears to explain also the
political involvement of women in 2015 because it seems a concession of the
government to face the radical change in the Middle East after the Arab Spring where
Saudi Arabia is standing still (Chulov 2011). Even if these two last changes have been
an achievement due to external pressure like the intervention of Human Rights Watch,
the desire of the Kingdom to align Saudi Arabia with other countries is still “a power
position. Maybe not always a prominent one but that's women making decisions and (…)
that's really going to challenge perceptions" (Longman & Pilon 2012).
In conclusion, in a certain way the Kingdom faced some transformations
influenced by the impact of the Arab Spring; these may be considered different
depending on the point of view of the empowerment approach but they share the idea of
50
renovation and development. Saudi women as well were influenced by this event and it
was politically important because some of them were encouraged and inspired by this
revolution in some parts of the Arab World to fight for more equality inside the country.
Having analyzed the different cases of the woman in Saudi Arabia, it is relevant
to point out that it is not possible to talk about empowerment in general in all the cases
of women in the labor market because each case has its own implications and specific
characteristics. Despite some official initiatives to include the women in more aspects of
the social, political and economic life were taken, there is still a lot to do for both, the
empowerment of the Saudi women and the reaching of a real process of development in
the country. In the following section some conclusions and appreciations will be shown
in order to connect most of the ideas presented in the work and finally try to suggest a
solution to the problem formulation; the interaction between empowerment, development
and employment regarding women's participation in the labor market.
51
8. CONCLUSION
In this last part some of the conclusions of the project will be drawn in order to go
through the problem formulation and the research questions presented at the beginning
of the work. It is important to highlight that there is not just one but various conclusions
since the project dealt with different aspects of the women in the Saudi labor market and
also because two theories formed part of the theoretical framework.
First of all, starting from the Modernization perspective, it can be considered that
Saudi Arabia went through an economic development after the oil boom in the 1970s
and consequently, proceed from being a mainly agricultural economy to a modern
society. Rostow’s description of the five stages of economic development is useful and
can be applied in the present case of study: Saudi Arabia has only faced two of the
stages (Wilson 2004: 8) but still, this characteristic is not enough to declare the country
developed or developing. In order to arrive to a similar consideration more factors and
features need to be studied in depth. However, it is a fact that thanks to the wealth
obtained from the oil boom, the country developed infrastructures as part of an
industrialization and urbanization plan which continues also today. Regarding the
contrast between the mentioned modernized infrastructure and the present social and
political constraints, also explained before in the paper, it can be argued that Saudi
Arabia has “one foot firmly placed among the most highly developed nations of the
world, the other foot remained in the Third World” (Metz 1992).
While the Modernization Theory explains the economic growth that the country
experienced, it cannot explain the attachment to traditional values that are not left apart,
but maintained as part of their cultural inheritance. This dichotomy of modernity and
tradition comes out particularly in the condition of women, because, as the modernist
scholars declare, women should benefit of the participation in the labour market in the
last stage of development (Ibid.). Summing up, the Modernization theory can describe
only aspects of the economic development process, but it lacks to describe why women
are not included in the labour market and fail to explore the low participation of them in
terms of employment.
In conclusion “it becomes apparent that the modernization process in MENA
countries with strong historical roots in a patriarchal social tradition, which did not
experienced a separation of religion and state prior to industrialization, does not follow
52
the same trajectory as that predicted by the Western models” (Haghighat-Sordellini
2010: 156).
On the other hand, the Empowerment Theory is used then as an alternative to
analyze the situation of the female workers in Saudi Arabia. As seen in this project, there
are many different patterns within the situation of women in the labor market and each
one deserves special attention. But from a general perspective and considering the
empowerment process proposed by Naila Kabeer, it can be indicated that women are
empowered when they exercise choice, in a combination of their achievements,
resources and agency. Reflecting on this, women who choose to stay at home and do
not work are empowered, just like the women that are working in a field they decided to
study. When the job opportunities available for women do not correspond to their
aspirations and they leave to work abroad, Saudi Arabia fails in providing the conditions
for their empowerment. In the case of migrant women something similar occurs because
of their poor working conditions and their lack of opportunities, their jobs do not mean
their empowerment as well.
To sum up, empowerment is connected with freedom and only the women that
choose freely to work - or not - ,where to work and in which kinds of jobs, these are the
actual empowered. Saudi Arabia does not provide the necessary conditions for all
women to work in the field they wish, this can be proved when analysing the female
brain drain existing in the country and the gender segregation in the labor market. It is
important to emphasize that Saudi Arabia, by not including women as the same level
than men, loses an important resource for development. As Watson (2012) states, with
the words of a Saudi women that cannot find a job, that a country will not improve if only
one gender is properly included in society while the other suffer strict limitations. As seen
in the current Saudi government initiatives and past policies the country is trying to
improve and modernize, but still some things remain to be done.
As well as employment, education can be regarded as another controversial field
for women in Saudi Arabia. It is important to mention that the area where the
government is putting most of its efforts is education and therefore there has been
significant progress (AlMunajjed 2009: 1). The public educational system improved as
well as the educational infrastructure and the changes allowed more girls to have access
to school, more women studying at universities and doing masters and PhDs, and
53
women gaining scholarships to study abroad, but still, the inclusion of the women in the
Saudi Arabia labor market and the educational system itself are not equal.
The constraints of the educational system are various: the most significant has to
do with the possibility to choose the career they want, since they cannot freely study any
career and they have fewer seats then men in other subjects. Therefore, most of the
Saudi women specialize in similar fields and consequently there are not enough job
opportunities for all of them. While the female employment rate, as shown previously in
the project, is still low, the educational rate is high; this gap remains one of the main
issues to be solved by the Kingdom. In this sense, AlMunajjed’s words can summarize
the current situation: “The national system of education is failing to prepare Saudi
women for competitive roles in the labor force” (AlMunajjed 2009: 3). From a Kabeer’s
perspective it can be said that the achievements in the Saudi educational area are not
being translating at the same level in the labor market. Education can be as well
considered as a resource, specially related to the concept of development mentioned
along the project. To sum up, education can be a useful tool to empower women but
only if they can be included in the employment system afterwards.
It is relevant to highlight that even though women empowerment is seen as an
important aspect of development, there are various views or ways that could actually
lead to this empowerment and often Western models to empower the women might not
be suitable for middle-eastern countries. As mentioned before, empowerment comes
from the freedom of choice which, in Saudi Arabia, is subordinated to religion and
tradition. As Nyrop asserts “Islam is the single most important factor in Saudi Arabia, it
dominates all activities and policies of both, the government and the people” (Nyrop in
Al-Dehailan 2007: 57). Hence, every aspect of a country like Saudi Arabia requires to be
taken into consideration for a better understanding.
In conclusion, Isobel Coleman words are accurate in defining the current situation
in the country: “Saudi Arabia is, on some levels, moving forward and quite rapidly in
terms of infrastructure development, and a lot of the “hard” aspects of change. But it’s on
the “soft” aspects, on the cultural-social issues, where things will be contested for a very
long time” (Coleman 2012). The situation of women might constitute one of the soft
aspects, which has not been included in the Saudi economy. As seen previously, the
rate of economic growth is not growing at the same rates as before. Therefore, the
54
effective inclusion of the women in the labor market can be seen as a development
strategy, at the same time as an empowerment tool, which would undoubtedly contribute
to a more inclusive development of the country.
55
9. ANNEXES
Table 1: Migration flows in Saudi Arabia
COUNTRY
NUMBER OF MIGRANTS
India
1,452,927
Pakistan
1,005,873
Egypt
1,005,873
Yemen
894,109
Philippines
558,818
Bangladesh
447,055
Sri Lanka
391,173
Sudan
279,409
Indonesia
279,409
Jordan
172,2660
TOTAL
7,288,900
Source: Zapponi 2012.
Table 2: The Unemployment Rate for Saudi Women & Men
Year
Male
Female
2001
6.8%
17.3%
2004
8.4%
24.4%
2007
8.3%
24.7%
2008
6.8%
26.9%
Source: Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), Forty-Fourth Annual Report, August
2008, p. 242.
56
Table 3: Percentage of Male & Female Students at All School Levels
(1974/75 & 2004/05)
Year
Male
Female
1974-1975
67%
33%
2004-2005
52%
48%
Total Students at all school levels
822.320
4.443.699
Source: SAMA, 2008, Ministry of Education, p. 374.
Table 4: Government Expenditure on Education, 2002/2009 (Budget SR Billion)
2002
SR47 billion (US$12.5 billion aprox.)
2003
SR50 billion (US$ 13.3 billion aprox.)
2004
SR57 billion (US$12.5 billion aprox.)
2005
SR70 billion (US$15.1 billion aprox.)
2006
SR 85 billion (US$22.6 billion aprox.)
2007
SR96.7 billion (US$25.7 billion aprox.)
2008
SR105 billion (US$28 billion aprox.)
2009
SR122 billion ($32.5 billion aprox.)
Source: Ministry of Education, Statistical Report (1426-27); Al Rajhi Report, p. 7; Arab News,
23/12/2008.
57
Table 5: Annual GDP growth
Year
Saudi Arabia
1970
5,2
1980
6,5
1990
8,3
2000
4,9
2004
5,3
2008
4,2
2011
6,8
Source: World Bank national accounts data.
Table 6: Export of goods and services % of GDP
Year/Country
Saudi Arabia
1970
-
1980
64
1990
47
2000
44
2004
53
2008
68
2011
62
Source: World Bank national accounts data.
58
Table 7: Agriculture, value added (%of GDP) in Saudi Arabia
1970
-
1980
1
1990
6
2000
5
2004
4
2008
2
2011
-
Source: World Bank national accounts data.
Table 8: Rural Population % of total population in Saudi Arabia
1970
-
1980
34
1990
23
2000
20
2004
19
2008
18
2011
18
Source: World Bank national accounts data.
59
Table 9: Literacy Rate (% of people ages 15 and above)
1970
-
1980
-
1990
-
2000
79
2004
85
2009
86
Source: World Bank national accounts data, and OECD Accounts data.
60
10. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CEDAW: Convention on the Elimination of all kind of Discrimination against Women
ECLAC - The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
EIA – U.S. Energy Information Administration
GCC – Gulf Cooperation Council
GDI - Gender Development Index
GDP - Gross Domestic Product
GEM - Gender Empowerment Measure
GII - Gender Inequality Index
HDI - Human Development Index
HDR - Human Development Reports
ILO - International Labour Organization
ITUC - International Trade Union Confederation
MDGs - Millennium Development Goals
MENA - Middle East and North Africa
OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
UNDP - United Nations Development Programme
UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNIFEM - United Nations Development Fund for Women
WB - World Bank
WIDE - Network Women in Development in Europe
61
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