Saudi Arabia has recently announced decisions allowing women to apply for jobs in air traffic control, the traffic police, and the military, and to positions as investigators at the public prosecutor’s office. These decisions are made in line with Saudi Vision 2030, to increase women’s participation in the workforce from 22 to 30 percent.
Run by a young, second-generation farmer, Kenaneya Farm is located in Abdali, in northern Kuwait.
Saudization, or the reservation of certain jobs and sectors for Saudi nationals, is part of the government’s effort to transform its private sector.
There is a paradox in women’s achievement across the Gulf states.
Labor markets in the Gulf Cooperation Council states are notoriously rigid: in their protection of nationals in public sector employment, in the preferential treatment of nationals in ownership structures of private firms, and in the tight regulation of foreign workers’ mobility.
This paper examines women’s integration in the labor force in the Gulf Arab states, paying special attention to differences in public and private sector employment, and national and migrant female labor participation.
There is a certain irony in the Arab Gulf states’ rising power across the Middle East and North Africa.
In 2011, the UAE dramatically reformed its kafala system by allowing migrant workers with expiring contracts to change employers without the initial sponsor’s permission.
In August, reports of workers, many of them construction laborers from India and the Philippines, laid off from their jobs without pay and without access to food or a way home, shocked citizens and residents of the Gulf and outsiders alike.
No matter who wins the White House in November, the United States may increasingly have to manage crosscutting divisions in the existing world order.
Learn MoreThrough its careful examination of the forces shaping the evolution of Gulf societies and the new generation of emerging leaders, AGSIW facilitates a richer understanding of the role the countries in this key geostrategic region can be expected to play in the 21st century.
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