Chronic. Researchers from the American think tank Brookings Institution did not understand this at first. Nayib Rivera, Johannes Koettl and Sofia Gomez Tamayo discovered, not without amazement, that the participation rate of women in the very conservative Saudi Arabia had jumped 64% in just two years. A phenomenon of a magnitude rarely observed elsewhere in the world: between 2018 and 2020, the participation rate of Saudi women, that is to say those who work or are looking for a job, increased from 19 , 7% to 33%.
In the hotel and catering sector, they now represent 40% of the working population. This feminization movement was still unimaginable a few years ago: it was only in 2012 that women were allowed for the first time to work elsewhere than in offices out of sight, in stores. And not just any: only in lingerie and cosmetics stores.
With the launch in 2016 of Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman’s economic and social reform plan, the place of women in Saudi society is changing rapidly. Restrictions on employment at night or in the industrial sector are relaxed, and more of them are studied. Since women are allowed to drive, for example, it is easier for them to get a job, as researchers at the Brookings Institution write in their article, published in March. But this policy only partially explains the spectacular feminization of the working population.
Unique case in the world
In mid-May, other researchers from the same club believe they have found a more plausible explanation. This would be one of the – unexpected – consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many migrants have indeed left the country in the first half of 2020, leaving their posts vacant. And when the Saudi economy picked up, in the third quarter of 2020, businesses turned to Saudi women to replace Indian, Filipino or Pakistani migrants. They are more likely to replace them than the Saudis, because “They accept more easily to work for low wages”, write Jumana Alaref and Johannes Koettl in an article published on May 19.
If, in the kingdom, the salary of women is on average 2.2 times higher than that of migrants, it remains lower than that of men. The feminization of the Saudi workforce is therefore a trompe-l’oeil success: it hides significant wage inequalities. The Saudi case remains unique in the world, however. In the other countries of the planet, many female jobs, concentrated in the informal sector or more precarious, have in fact been destroyed in recent months. It remains to be seen whether Saudi women will keep their jobs and will not be replaced by migrants, once the pandemic is over and freedom of movement is restored.
You have 28.11% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
