Saudi Arabia's Female Leaders Show Narrowing Gender Gap Brings Economic Benefits - Bloomberg
Maryam Albassam grew up in a Saudi Arabia where women weren’t allowed to drive, couldn’t get their own passports, and weren’t able to travel without a man’s permission.
At the age of six, her father — a retired Saudi soldier turned business owner — took her to his work meetings, but said she’d have to get used to being the only girl at the table. When she got her first job in 2013, the economy was still controlled by men.
But in 2018, there were some winds of change. Saudi Arabia became the world’s last country to permit female motorists. It later announced reforms allowing women to set up businesses without male consent, hold a job while being pregnant and travel independently. In four years, the female labor participation rate nearly doubled to about 37%. Today Albassam scouts for deals for Silicon Valley venture capital firm Graphene Ventures as a principal in Riyadh and other women like her are climbing the ranks of business and finance — trading stocks, forging mergers and running companies.
“We are becoming more open and moving toward a different place of exposure,” Albassam said.
Rare interviews with almost a dozen senior female leaders in Saudi Arabia show a dramatic about turn in a country that had few women workers a decade ago. Some who had never spoken publicly before agreed to interviews on the record because they were keen to highlight the advances. Others asked not to be named because they didn’t want to discuss their lives publicly, but even they were deeply optimistic about the prospects for local women in the workplace.
Challenges still abound. As recently as this year Amnesty International said a female activist had been jailed. Meanwhile, the gains for Saudi women have been uneven. Those outside the financial capital of Riyadh and from families that aren’t as progressive or well off typically have far fewer opportunities.
Around the world, economists have highlighted the financial benefits of narrowing the gender gap in the workplace, a goal that’s eluded even developed nations. In the US — where gender has been in sharp focus amid Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed election bid — the percentage of women in the workforce lags its pre-pandemic rate rate of 58%, according to the US Chamber of Commerce.
Few places reveal the benefits of boosting gender equality more than oil-rich Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s largest economy with annual GDP of $1.1 trillion. Progress for women has by itself already boosted the country’s GDP by about 12%, according to Capital Economics. S&P Global Inc. predicts bringing more women to the labor force could help add $39 billion to the economy in the next decade and drive the growth of new sectors like finance.
While Saudi Arabia has shown staggering growth in its female labor participation rate in recent years, the country still lags economies in the US, China and the United Arab Emirates. Even so, many Saudi women who remember an earlier time feel there are more opportunities than ever before to make their mark. The percentage of females in senior and middle management positions in Saudi Arabia stood near 44% in the first quarter, the government said.
