Working Women Are Changing Saudi Arabia

In May 2023, the Saudi biomedical engineer Rayyanah Barnawi became the first Arab woman to go to space when she joined a private company’s mission to the International Space Station. Saudi Arabia has long been known for its harsh restrictions on women’s employment, but in the past 15 years it has raced to offer women more chances to work outside the home. Barnawi’s trip was just one of many firsts: hundreds of thousands of Saudi women are now becoming the first female members of their families to work outside the home in places such as movie theaters, train stations, shopping malls, and corporate offices, benefiting from a spectrum of opportunities unthinkable to previous generations.

Historically, women’s employment in Saudi Arabia has been extremely low, both by global standards and those of the Middle East. In 2011, 56 percent of Saudi men were employed, but only 10 percent of Saudi women were. The Saudi government has long encouraged women to earn high school diplomas and attend college, and many women studied abroad on the King Abdullah Scholarship, which supports Saudi students seeking degrees at foreign universities. But Saudi men’s relatively high incomes and the government’s extensive social support programs made it financially possible for most women not to work. And many chose not to, given the kingdom’s strong cultural norms against mixed-gender interactions. Women who did work outside the home faced legal restrictions, too; they were barred from certain industries and occupations and from night shifts.

But the Arab Spring protests of 2010–11 forced the Saudi government to confront the fact that rising youth unemployment could no longer only be addressed by providing public-sector jobs. The population was outgrowing the country’s oil revenues. The government’s subsequent campaign to push the private sector to start creating more jobs for Saudis had the unexpected effect of increasing opportunities not only for men but also for women, who joined the workforce in numbers that shocked policymakers: as of 2023, 31 percent of Saudi women were employed. This shift is remolding both the economy and society: Saudi women are becoming a source of tremendous economic potential and a visible and powerful presence across public life in the kingdom.

SPRING TIDES

Saudi women have long benefited from a comprehensive public education system, with free schooling available through college and often beyond. Formal schooling for women and girls began to be widely available in the 1960s, when King Saud announced a commitment to educate girls in subjects that would prepare them for motherhood. Thanks to support from elite Saudi women, higher education for women expanded in the 1980s. But this did not often translate into private-sector employment: before around 2010, about two-thirds of Saudi women who were employed worked in the public sector, the vast majority of them at girls’ schools.

Such jobs were high-status and socially desirable; they often offered higher wages, better job security, more attractive working hours, and gender-segregated work environments. Work in the non-oil private sector, such as construction, hospitality, and retail jobs, was lower-paid and less appealing, even to men. These jobs tended to be filled by expatriate guest workers: in 2011, Saudis made up less than 15 percent of the private-sector workforce. And women composed a tiny fraction of this already small percentage. Eighty-six percent of private Saudi firms had no female employees.

The Arab Spring protests in Saudi Arabia were milder than in many other countries in the region, but unemployment had become a particular source of public concern. The government responded aggressively to reduce youth unemployment—worryingly high, at 30 percent—and the country’s reliance on foreign labor. The jobs were there, policymakers thought; they just weren’t filled by Saudis. By June 2011, the government had announced a Saudi employment quota for private-sector firms and an unemployment program that offered monthly financial assistance to job seekers. In the program’s first month, over 500,000 women signed up to receive benefits, including access to online training programs.

Unexpectedly, the ranks of female workers ballooned: aside from the lure of benefits, many women jumped at the chance to find work outside the home. As firms searched for Saudi employees, many hired women for the first time. By 2015, nearly two thirds of private companies based in Saudi Arabia had hired women, and the female share of Saudis in the private sector had nearly tripled, to 27 percent.

UPWARD SPIRAL

After the Arab Spring, King Abdullah also announced reforms specific to women. Saudi women became eligible to vote and stand as candidates in municipal elections. Regulations that took effect in 2012 mandated that certain types of retail work, such as selling lingerie and cosmetics, be open only to women, which dramatically expanded the number of jobs available to them.

In 2018, the government lifted a driving ban on women, a decision that increased their mobility and even enabled them to work for ride-share companies such as Uber. In 2019, it adjusted the so-called guardianship system, which had required women to get a male relative’s permission to work, travel, or even obtain medical care. The new law ended these restrictions and prohibited firms from making guardian permission a condition of employment—signaling that the expansion of women’s rights was now a priority for the Saudi leadership.

Many of these reforms were part of Saudi Vision 2030, a government program introduced in 2016 by Mohammed bin Salman, then the deputy crown prince, to decrease the kingdom’s dependence on oil and build a more diverse and resilient economy. A key pillar of the program’s economic strategy was to increase women’s participation in the labor force to 30 percent by 2030. At the time, that goal seemed ambitious, but it has already been exceeded.

The more Saudi society embraces women in the workplace, the more the government is encouraged to pursue ambitious reforms.

In the past six years, government reforms have also clarified which industries are open to women and what kinds of hours women can work, criminalized sexual harassment, guaranteed equal pay and retirement benefits, and prohibited employers from terminating pregnant workers. The net effect has been an unprecedented increase in the economic opportunities available to women across Saudi society: the number of women employed in the private sector is now eight times what it was a dozen years ago, with much of the rise driven by women with high school diplomas. As private-sector labor participation has surged, the share of working Saudi women employed in the public sector has fallen to a third while the proportion of male Saudi workers employed in the public sector has remained above 50 percent. The World Bank’s Women, Business, and the Law index, which measures countries’ gender equality in labor laws, increased Saudi Arabia’s score from 29 out of 100 in 2011 to 71 in 2023, among the largest gains for any country over the past 50 years.

This economic transformation has also raised women’s visible participation in public life, made families more financially resilient, and boosted businesses’ productivity by increasing their access to talent. These shifts, in turn, appear to be driving a feedback loop: the more Saudi society embraces women in the workplace, the more the government is encouraged to pursue ambitious reforms. In 2019, for instance, less than a quarter of Saudi children attended kindergarten. As part of Vision 2030, the government has set a target of 40 percent, in part to support their mothers’ return to work.

CONSOLIDATE THE GAINS

In 2022 research I conducted with Conrad Miller and Mehmet Seflek on the Saudi push for reforms since the Arab Spring, we found that once Saudi companies start hiring women, they tend to hire a lot of them. In the two years following its first female hire, a typical Saudi firm increases the female share of its workforce to about 20 percent. Twelve years, however, is a short time for an economy—and a society—to change so rapidly. In the United States and the United Kingdom, similar increases in women’s employment occurred over a period of 50 years. Both societies experienced significant disquiet and even backlash as they struggled to develop the social norms and legal structures to support women’s employment outside the family unit.

The Saudi transition has also been bumpy. A 2020 survey by the economists Leonardo Bursztyn, Alessandra L. González, and David Yanagizawa-Drott found that over 80 percent of Saudi men supported women working outside the home but that these men consistently underestimated how many of their peers did. Private-sector companies had very little experience in managing female workers. Many employers responding to a 2019 survey I conducted with Claudia Eger, Thiemo Fetzer, and Saleh Alodayni reported that they were confused about how to comply with regulations related to women in the workplace and accommodate employees’ preferences regarding gender segregation. Hiring female workers has posed challenges beyond merely figuring out how to create and manage mixed-gender workspaces: employers reported needing to broaden their recruiting strategies, upgrade their human resources policies, adapt their organizational structures, and even change their corporate cultures. These barriers may explain why about a third of Saudi firms have opted to remain all male.

There are several key ways that policymakers can support women’s employment. First, Saudi leaders must continue to communicate that women’s participation in the labor market is crucial. Vision 2030 and other recent reforms have sent strong signals that companies’ investments in female employment—and women’s investments in their own careers—will pay off. But Saudi leaders must continue to make clear statements and tangible changes to champion this agenda beyond Vision 2030. Change from the top is invaluable, but regional and municipal governments must also do more to make clear that they support the expansion of women’s employment.

Women also need practical support as they build careers. Saudi Arabia still lacks the infrastructure to support the rapid growth in women’s employment. Many Saudi mothers responding to a 2018 survey I conducted with Patricia Cortés and Claudia Goldin said that a lack of childcare was the reason that they were not searching for a job. The government already provides comprehensive public education starting at age six, but adding preschools and expanding access to kindergartens would help mothers stay in the workforce while their children are young. Better regulatory standards and financial support for care for very young children is needed, as well.

Saudi firms want to hire women but worry that doing so—at least initially—may be too expensive and risky. The Saudi government can help private companies offset the upfront costs by providing grants for workplace upgrades such as women’s restrooms and prayer spaces, supporting recruitment efforts, and offering training for human resources officers. And regulators can work to reduce uncertainty by giving companies clear, consistent guidance on how to comply with new laws about women’s employment. After the seismic shift in women’s work opportunities over the past decade, the challenge is to make sure that progress endures.