IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jda/journl/vol.51year2017issue1pp431-441.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Dichotomy Between the Saudi Women's Education and Economic Participation

Author

Listed:
  • Rita O. Koyame-Marsh

Abstract

This paper examines three key aspects of the Saudi labor market concerning the education of Saudi women and their participation in the economic activities of the country. The first aspect examined is the current condition of human capital development in Saudi Arabia as it applies to Saudi Women. The second aspect discussed is the status of Saudi females' labor participation rate in relation to their education level. The third aspect concerns changes in females' labor participation rate compared to the targets set in the Ministry of Economy and Planning's eighth and ninth five-year development plans. This is a theoretical study conducted using data provided by the Saudi Ministry of Higher Education, the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency and the Saudi Central Department of Statistics and Information. The paper demonstrates that more and more Saudi females are enrolling and graduating from colleges and universities than the amount of jobs available for them. About 68 percent of Saudi women with a post-secondary degree were unemployed in 2015 and excluded from productive activities. Such a dichotomy between females' education level and the rate of their economic participation is challenging for the Saudi Ministry of Labor. The latter has instituted several women-oriented labor laws aimed at promoting female employment. However, as of 2015, the Saudi female unemployment rate remained high at 33.8 percent and their labor participation rate low at 17.3 percent. Saudi females' labor force participation rate missed its expected target by 64.1 percent during the eighth DP while exceeding target by 168.1 percent during the ninth DP, increasing to 17.6 percent at the end of 2014. Unfortunately, this increase was accompanied by a rise in the unemployment rate. The findings of this study indicate that the Saudi Ministry of Labor still has more to do, policy wise, if more Saudi women are to become active participants of the labor market and the economy. The Saudi Ministry of Labor must make an effort to curb the unemployment of educated Saudi Women by putting in place policies that make more positions available for them when they graduate from College. JEL Classifications: I2, J400, J480

Suggested Citation

  • Rita O. Koyame-Marsh, 2017. "The Dichotomy Between the Saudi Women's Education and Economic Participation," Journal of Developing Areas, Tennessee State University, College of Business, vol. 51(1), pages 431-441, January-M.
    • Handle: RePEc:jda:journl:vol.51:year:2017:issue1:pp:431-441
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/654417
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Amal A. Basaffar & Linda S. Niehm & Robert Bosselman, 2018. "Saudi Arabian Women In Entrepreneurship: Challenges, Opportunities And Potential," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 23(02), pages 1-20, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Education; Unemployment; labor markets; women workers; Saudi Arabia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jda:journl:vol.51:year:2017:issue1:pp:431-441. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Abu N.M. Wahid (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cbtnsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.