Women's Work in Saudi

Arab News:

"Saudi Businesswomen Seek Greater Participation:

In the first of three audience-participation polls, 55 percent said there are obstacles hindering the participation of women in development. According to Banany, these obstacles are related to tradition and culture, unsupportive families and husbands, lack of education and work experience and mixing between both sexes.

The second poll however showed that 79 percent believed having an agent is a proof of women’s inefficiency, while 21 said it is not related. The third poll asked if having an agent to do the women’s work is part of Shariah law, 85 percent voted no, yet 15 percent voted yes. (In Saudi Arabia, a women must have a male agent or representative to obtain the paperwork to start a business.)

“Doesn’t Saudi Arabia trust us enough to manage our own businesses without having to hire a manager who may misuse our trust, though we proved we could run more than one company in different fields?” one businesswoman asked.

A related story on the same conference:

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival. According to the 2006 report, Saudi Arabia ranked last in a group of 115 countries in terms of economic participation and opportunity and political empowerment.

Kind of hard to believe they are last. No, Yemen is last (115). Saudi Arabia is 114. Let's see, who else is in the cellar. Iran 108, Egypt 109, Benin 110 (missing data), Nepal 111, Pakistan, 112, Chad 113. Looks like a clump in one neighborhood.