The “education” of women from an early age in Saudi Arabia to place themselves apart from men other than husbands and close family members is now having to confront the reality that almost 60% of University graduates are women, but women only make up 15.2% of the workforce (World Bank 2011-15).
In response to this imbalance, there is a current move by women themselves to press for women-only sections in government offices to “protect their modesty” and for the creation of women-only business parks where they can be free from any suspicions by family members associated with male contact on a day-to-day basis. The “unsuitability” of mixed workplaces to women, and unavailability of jobs in rural areas, has led to a government plan to create over 50,000 part-time outsourced jobs over the next two years so that women can work at home.
The perpetuation of gender inequality in Saudi Arabia is mainly due to there being no legal basis that gives women equal rights to men – and any rights they have are subject to Sharia law that places women as minors, or inferiors to men. The Saudi government ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in the year 2000, but with the general proviso that it is under no obligation to observe terms of the treaty that contradict Islamic law.
Gender segregation is by no means an exclusive feature of the Saudi Arabian economy, but exists (in different forms) across the majority of economies in the world. In their book “Separate but not equal”(Hegewisch et al) the authors found that in the USA there was “a move towards more integrated occupations in the 1970s and 1980s”, but that since then “progress has completely stalled”. In fact, 26% of workers in the USA are in occupations that are 90% single-sex, from truck drivers to registered nurses. Even in the legal profession the latest ABA figures (May 2016) reveal that in spite of virtually equal gender representation in US law schools, women only make up 24% of general counsel in Fortune 500 companies.