About 30 Saudi women teachers have demonstrated outside the kingdom's Education Ministry, demanding full time jobs.
An Associated Press reporter saw women holding posters Monday calling for full time contracts and benefits that include steady pay and retirement packages.
According to photos posted on Twitter, another protest was staged by women teachers outside the Royal Court in Jeddah on Tuesday.
Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg reads into the unemployment numbers released by the government and focuses on unemployment among Saudi women:
Their unemployment rate was already extremely high in the first quarter (34 percent), but it went up to nearly 36 percent in the fourth quarter, increasing by nearly five percent in that interval.
Unemployment among Saudi women has been on the rise for some time. In 1999, their rate of unemployment stood at 16 percent. It has since steadily climbed to reach 36 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.
In other countries, such high rates of unemployment are associated with economic decline or deep recessions, but as the economy grows unemployment rates usually decline for all social groups, regardless of gender or national origin, even when there are differentials in their unemployment rates.
Not in Saudi Arabia, where the economy is booming but the unemployment rates keep rising.
Tackling unemployment among Saudi citizens was the main justification for the recent crackdown on illegal foreign workers, but will it really solve the problem? Somayya Jabarti dares you to imagine Saudi Arabia without expats:
In the case of Saudi unemployment, the scapegoat has been (drum rolling)...of course “guest workers” — whether they are illegally here or, legally here but illegally working. The solution: detain them and/or deport them. Then Saudi unemployment will be resolved and all will be happily ever working again.
Whom are we kidding? We can’t be serious, though the situation utterly is, can we?
Can we — and have we ever bothered to imagine our country without its guest workers? As it is wrong to assume that we have all been blessed with an imagination, perhaps all guest workers should indulge us and for 24 hours just totally stop working. Period. Why not experience an expat-less Saudi Arabia?
Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg:
Considering that Saudi Arabia has been going through an unprecedented boom during the past three years, the employment rate should have increased more dramatically. GDP nearly doubled from 2009 to 2011. But the employment rate rose to only 34 percent, almost half the average rate for industrialized countries.
The main reason for rising unemployment rates in Saudi Arabia can be found in the difficulties women find job seekers face in securing work. Between 2009 and 2012, women’s rate of unemployment increased from (28 percent) to (36 percent). Let us see if the rate of employment is any different.
In fact, we find out that chances for Saudi women in finding work have slightly improved since 2009, but that improvement has been quite limited and their employment rates are still extremely low. In 2009, there were (505,000) employed Saudi women, compared to (647,000) in 2012. Accordingly, their employment rate rose from (8.5 percent) to just (10 percent). The new rate is still miniscule by international standards — less than one fifth of the comparable rate for industrialized countries.
Saudi Labor Minister Adel Fakeih in statement:
It is a threat to national security that hundred of thousands of Saudi job seekers remain unemployed when they see business owners making billions of riyals thanks to the government huge budget and the strong economical position of Saudi Arabia.
Despite the rapid economic growth in Saudi Arabia in recent years, the government has failed to keep the unemployment rate down. Actually, recent stats show that the employment rate is rising. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg tries to explain:
What happened since 2009? Economists are fond of saying that rising tide lifts all boats. According to this theory, the invisible hand of economics would automatically translate high rates of economic growth into higher employment levels. But we just saw that that we have had the opposite: Higher rates of economic growth coincided with high rates of unemployment.
It seems that the proverbial invisible hand has lost its touch in our case. Many Saudis believe that there are other forces that have prevented it from doing its magical work. First, laissez faire labor policies have ensured that whatever jobs are created are claimed by non-nationals, easily brought in from neighboring countries. Second, universities and technical schools are behind the times in providing the kind of skilled and semi-skilled labor that the new Saudi economy requires. Third, rising expectations have priced Saudis out of the labor market, as employers choose cheaper imported labor. Fourth, many Saudis prefer to work in government jobs and would rather wait for a civil service job than accept low-paying work in the private sector.
Ali al-Ghamdi:
Those who today object to women working and who consider that those who permit them to do so should die of cancer are the same men who forbade installing television dishes a decade ago but are now competing with each other to appear on — both paid and free – satellite channels. Of course, while formerly they prayed against those who permitted such dishes, they now pray for the forgiveness and mercy of the same people!
The same thing happened in the case of girls’ education more than 50 years ago. A large number of clerics forbade the opening of schools for girls. In some regions, they sent delegations to the late King Faisal asking him not to give permission for such schools in their parts of the country. But King Faisal, who was determined in his position, settled the matter by saying that the government would open schools but would not force anyone to send his daughter to them.
The unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia has reached 12.1 percent in 2012, according to new numbers published by the Central Department of Statistics and Information (CDSI). The stats show that there are 602,853 Saudi nationals who are unemployed, 243,983 of them are men. But the unemployment rate is far higher among females (36 percent) than males (6.1 percent). CDSI says 73.3 percent of unemployed women have a college degree.
The Saudi government has worked in recent years to tackle the problem of rising unemployment by encouraging more women to join the workforce. They have limited work in some retail jobs to women and announced plans to lift the ban on female lawyers arguing cases in courtrooms. These moves were faced with resistance from religious conservatives who accuse the Minister of Labor of pushing a liberal agenda aiming to “Westernize” society through gender mixing at the workplace. Hundreds of clerics have visited the Ministry headquarters in Riyadh during recent weeks to protest women employment policies implemented by Fakieh.
“We want to open a whole new world for women, and at the same time will be in tune with our culture with how we’d like our families to continue to be,” he told the Washington Post last November. “We don’t want necessarily to copy a Western lifestyle.”
The government started last year to give unemployment benefits for those looking for work under a program called “Hafiz.” They have also tried to make jobs at the private sector, currently dominated by foreign workers, more attractive to Saudi nationals by decreasing work hours and increasing the minimum wage.
More controversially, MOL decided to fine firms with too many foreign workers, doubled the annual fees of work permits for companies who have less than 50 percent Saudization rate to SR 2,400. This resulted in a backlash from business owners who complained that the increase would hurt their interests badly. Economists are divided over the effect of this step as some of them see it necessary to push the Saudization efforts while others say it would lead to a rise in prices of consumer goods and raise the cost of government project contracts.
A recent report by Riyad Capital suggested that the work permit cost increase should be benign even in businesses with a high percentage of foreign workers. Dairy giant Almarai for example had 4,800 Saudi staff out of a total 15,000 headcount in 2011. “We estimate an increase in labor cost of about SR 6.5 million, or +0.5 percent,” Riyad Capital said.
Despite objections by some business owners, MOL is adamant that they will not reconsider the levy on foreign workers. MOL spokesman Hattab Al-Anazi said in a statement last month that “the ministry will not go back on its implementation of the Council of Ministers’ decision No. 353 concerning the higher fees on expatriate laborers when their number exceeds Saudi workers,”
Abdo Khal challenges the clerics who swarmed into the Ministry of Labor earlier this week to protest women employment to “take up the matter with relevant higher authorities,” i.e. the King, because he knows they won’t. He has one thing to say to them:
I say one thing to these scholars, if they do not have women in their family who need to work for a living, they should be thankful and grateful to Almighty Allah. But they should know that there are women out there who desperately need work to provide for their families.
If those scholars can provide for every woman who needs work thus saving her the trouble of going out in the market for work, they should do so. But if they cannot, they should not demand that the ministry prevent women from working.
Such thing is unacceptable and does not make any sense.
More than one hundred Saudi clerics gathered at the Ministry of Labor to express their objection to the ministry’s policy aiming to provide more work opportunities for women, local news sites reported Saturday.
Users on social media sites circulated pictures and videos showing droves of the clerics, dressed in their red-and-white checkered shmagh and cloaks as they entered the building of the ministry in Riyadh and waited outside the minister’s office.
Sources told Sabq that the clerics were at first denied entry to the ministry headquarters by security, but were later allowed to enter and met briefly with the Minister Adel Fakeih. The site reported that the clerics complained about MOL’s decisions allowing gender mixing in workplaces. Fakeih has reportedly listened to them “for minutes” before excusing himself because, he said, the clerics have shown up without appointment.
With the unemployment rate officially above 10.5, the Saudi government is under high pressure to provide work opportunities for its youth, especially women. Fakieh said last October that there are 1.5 million Saudi nationals looking for work, 80 percent of them are women. 40 percent of those women have college degrees, he added.
But the government push for women employment have faced resistance from religious conservative who warn that the mixing of genders at the workplace would lead to social disintegration and the Westernization of Saudi Arabia. The clerics were recently bolstered by a statement from Abdul-Latif Al Alsheikh, head of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, who criticized MOL for what he described as the minister’s failure to maintain a “good clean environment” for women working at retail stores.
The government dismissed these charges.
“We want to open a whole new world for women, and at the same time will be in tune with our culture with how we’d like our families to continue to be,” Fakeih told the Washington Post. “We don’t want necessarily to copy a Western lifestyle.”
Unemployment benefits program for Saudi nationals (Hafiz) would be extended for 12 more months, local online news site Sabq reported Sunday citing unnamed “reliable sources.” Hafiz, which provides a monthly stipend for 600,000 unemployed youths, is scheduled to end this month, according to an official of the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) who spoke to Arab News Friday. The Riyadh-based al-Jazirah quoted an unnamed official source who said it is now up to the King to approve the extension of Hafiz after several parties have recommended that it is necessary to do so but under a new mechanism.
The Saudi government has resisted the idea of giving benefits to the unemployed for years despite popular demand, but last year the King’s issued a royal decree announcing a change of that policy. The decision was seen as part of the Saudi Arabia’s response to the uprisings in neighboring Arab countries. The official unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia is above 10 percent, and is believed to be even higher among young people. The King is still not seen in public since an 11-hour back operation that he has undergone on November 17. Doctors have said the surgery was successful and the King is reportedly recovering at the National Guard Hospital in Riyadh.
Nathan Field, writing a guest post at The Arabist about the Washington Post story from Tuesday on unemployment among Saudi women, makes an interesting comparison with the situation in the US before the New Deal:
A useful historical comparison here might be with US firms before the New Deal. Until the 1930s, the balance of power between employers and employees stood firmly in favor of the former (see The Jungle). Business was generally powerful enough to beat back any government attempt to increase regulation of work conditions.
Only with the crisis of the Great Depression was public opinion so strongly siding with the workers that FDR had the ability to increase the state’s control in this area with policies like a minimum wage, unemployment insurance and to ignore complaints from businessmen which were largely anti-New Deal.
Is Saudi Arabia in a similar situation today with the Arab Spring? Does this give the government enough cover to go after the interests of business, the way FDR did in the 1930s?
Nice piece in the Washington Post about women unemployment in Saudi Arabia. Most of the good stuff are on the third page*, though, where the reporter Kevin Sullivan speaks with Saudi Labor Minister Adel Fakeih:
Officials acknowledge that change comes slowly in such a hard-line religious environment.
“It is not happening in as many numbers as we would like, but it is happening,” said Labor Minister Adel M. Fakeih. “Women are working in the banking sector, in manufacturing, in training and development, human resources, in consulting.”
Fakeih said his department was trying to create jobs that allow women to work from home so they can still manage children and household responsibilities.
“We want to open a whole new world for women, and at the same time will be in tune with our culture with how we’d like our families to continue to be,” he said. “We don’t want necessarily to copy a Western lifestyle.”
Fakeih noted that some women don’t have a “sense of urgency” to work, because under Islamic sharia law, men are required to be financially responsible for women. Even if a woman earns far more money than her husband, he is required to pay for her needs, Fakeih said.
“She can decide not to spend any of her money,” he said. “She can just keep her money to go to Hawaii or something. That’s the law.”
A sense of urgency is lacking in many things in our country.
* shame on WaPo for not providing a single-page view of stories on their site
AFP:
Saudi Arabia will build a massive Islamic center complete with a university and a mosque in Afghanistan, an Afghan minister said Monday, describing the project as “grand and unique”.
Estimated to cost up to $100 million, the center on a hilltop in central Kabul will house up to 5,000 students, Dayi-Ul Haq Abed, the acting Hajj and religious affairs minister told AFP.
Um, why are we spending 100 million dollars in Afghanistan when the official unemployment rate is above 10.5 percent? (via SQ) ♦
Abdul Rahman al-Rashed on Saudi unemployment:
The problem has been caused by a number of reasons: The first is poor education that does not qualify young people for field work. The second is the tremendous increase in population that makes about 60 percent of them under the age of 30. The third reason is the government’s mismanagement of its resources and poor future planning. This is easy to prove given the fact that there are about six million foreign workers and tens of thousands of its citizens are without jobs.
Al-Rashed, at the end of article, quotes his previous self where he says that the Saudi government is lucky because they have ample resources to tackle the problem. What he doesn’t say is that they are failing to put these resources to good use. ♦
Abeer Allam reports for the Financial Times:
For Saudi women the challenges of finding a job are unique. Strict social mores inspired by an austere interpretation of Islam dictate total gender separation in public. Women are required to wear an all-encompassing black robe, or abaya, and most cover their faces.
For the majority of the conservative population, working in a mixed place or where women could be dealing with men carries a social stigma.
Moreover, a ban on women driving and inadequate public transport mean working women have to spend a big chunk of their income on drivers or rely on male relatives.
Sabria Jawhar:
The other day I was at the bank and struck up a conversation with a teller in her mid-20s. She had spent much of her life outside Saudi Arabia, living in Europe and later the United States. Her English was fluent and accentless. She expressed doubts, though, about her future. She instinctively felt society’s pressure to get married when she was not only unprepared, but also unwilling to marry a man who might stifle the independent life she led for so many years.
Making a home and becoming a mother did not frighten her, but leading a conventional Saudi mother’s life did. I don’t mean this to diminish motherhood, which is the bedrock of Saudi society. But the worldly view the bank teller has of life does not fit into the traditions and customs that older Saudi women embrace.
As Jawhar correctly notes later in her article, men perception of that changing role of women in society is lagging behind. In a country where male guardianship rules still apply, this is a serious problem. ♦
The number of Saudi women working at the private sector more than doubled during the past twelve months, Minister of Labor Adel Fakieh said Tuesday, according to al-Riyadh daily. Speaking at a women employment forum in Riyadh, Fakieh said there are 1.5 million Saudi nationals looking for work, 80 percent of them are women. Based on information drawn from the ministry’s unemployment benefits program Hafiz, 40 percent of the women looking for work have a college degree, he said. ♦
A new mockumentary by filmmaker Bader al-Homoud is making the rounds on the Saudi interwebs. The film is called Karwa, and it tackles the issue of unemployment, featuring some familiar faces who worked with him previously on another mockumentary about the lack of housing. The film, which runs for 29 minutes and 36 seconds, is available on YouTube with English subtitles and is embedded below.
As with al-Homouds’s previous work, the reception of the film on Twitter seems generally positive. The director, who dedicated the film to “he whose job is searching for a job,” said he was “very very proud of your reaction to the film.”
#فيلم_كروة فخور جدا جدا بتفاعلكم الكبير مع الفيلم لاعدمناكم :)
— بدر الحمود (@BaderAlHomoud) September 24, 2012
Lawyer Bandar al-Nugaithan was one of the few who did not like the film. “I am afraid of the tremendously negative message the film is sending to the youth who are about to enter the job market,” he said. “The situation is not this bad!”
شخصياً لم يعجبني #فيلم_كروة. وأخاف من الرسالة السلبية الهائلة التي يبثها الفلم لشبابنا المقبلين على سوق العمل. الوضع ليس بهذا السوء!
— بندر النقيثان (@SaudiLawyer) September 24, 2012
So how bad is the situation? A recent study by the Kuwait-based Gulf Investment Corporation (GIC) said the unemployment in the country exceeds 10.5 percent. Numbers are even higher among 19 to 25 year-olds, reaching 30 percent unemployment.
I heard that Adel Fakieh, the current labor minister, is big on studies. As soon as he started in his position two years ago, he hired major international consulting firms like PwC to conduct studies on the Saudi jobs market, to analyze it and come up with the best solutions to tackle the chronic unemployment issues among the country‘s young population. His main challenge was, and remains, how to get more Saudis to work in the private sector, long dominated by expat workers.
That's why he launched Nitaqat program, which, according to him, has been a great success so far, creating 380,000 job opportunities so far. Now based on MOL‘s studies, Fakieh predicts that 43 percent of private sector companies face closure if they fail to comply with the Nitaqat program requirements for Saudization.
Powerful words by the minister. Except that the lead story in Arab News on Tuesday screamed: “King‘s plan help 299,000 Saudis get civil service jobs.” How does MOL plan to convince young Saudis to take private sector jobs when the government keeps hiring hundreds of thousands of people like that? It is not as if the government is bloated or anything.
