The world celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8 to recognize women’s achievements, their essential role in the world, and supporting gender equality. The day marks public respect and appreciation of women for their economic, political, and social achievements.
On International Women’s Day, Asharq Al-Awsat monitored reform steps taken by Saudi Arabia to support and empower women in all crucial areas in the Kingdom. Saudi reforms have worked to involve women in the developmental programs of the national transformation plan, Vision 2030.
Since the launch of Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia has seen development in various fields. Its 12 programs aim to promote Islamic values, develop and diversify the economy, increase employment rates, enable social responsibility, and achieve many other goals that will manifest a developmental shift in the Kingdom.
Vision 2030 programs have also been keen to increase the participation of women in the labor market.
From this point of view, Saudi women’s steps towards empowerment have accelerated thanks to the issuance of many decisions, legislation and regulations that enhance their position in society. This has allowed women to become effective partners in national development in all fields.
Legislation and reforms have been adopted over the past years to include women more in advancing development due to their essential role in contributing effectively through leadership and administrative positions.
The Saudi government has been keen on placing qualified women in high positions in several fields.
The Saudi Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development has launched a women’s empowerment initiative. This scheme has helped increase women’s participation across all government sectors and expanded work opportunities for women in the Kingdom.
Today, Saudi women hold senior structural leadership positions in government agencies.
The National Platform for Saudi Women Leaders (Qiyadyat) is an interactive national platform that contains a database of women’s national leaders to facilitate rapid access to female leaders in the public sector, private sector institutions, and civil society institutions.
Moreover, the platform serves as a tool that enables agencies to communicate and nominate women leaders to leadership positions, boards of directors, or official delegations in international forums based on smart search criteria.
The ministry also launched the Women’s Empowerment Agency. It seeks to create initiatives and projects that support the empowerment of women and people with disabilities in the Saudi workplace and work to implement them in order to achieve the goal of increasing women’s participation in the labor market in order to achieve justice in equal opportunities in the labor market.
The Kingdom launched the leadership training for women to develop training and orientation programs that aim to improve the skills of working women and increase the percentage of women employed in leadership positions. The initiative trained over 500 working women across the Kingdom, which were divided into two categories including leaders and managers.
As for working mothers, the ministry worked on establishing daycare centers at the workplace in an initiative for creating an attractive and stimulating work environment for working women. It also looks to create investment and job opportunities at these centers.
The Ministry of Trade has taken a number of measures and programs to empower women in society and their participation in various aspects of economic life, with the aim of increasing their presence in economic and development activities in order to enhance sustainable development, and achieve the Vision 2030.
Woman can start a business easily after removing the requirement for guardian approval and equality in procedures between men and women.
These measures led to the Kingdom’s progress in a number of indicators related to women, most notably the index of women’s share in the labor market (out of the total workforce) to reach 31.8%, exceeding the 2020 target of 27.6%.
In the World Bank’s 2021 Women, Business and the Law Index, Saudi Arabia scored 80 out of 100, well ahead of the global average.
