Author: Ahlam Hameed R Alrashdi
Alrashdi, Ahlam Hameed R, 2021 The impact of women’s empowerment policies on the rate of Saudi women’s participation in the labour force from 2016- 2020, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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The marginalization of women remains one of the key issues facing modern society. The disempowerment of women and girls has been observable in social, political, economic, and health aspects. This paper discusses women's empowerment in Saudi Arabia, an Islamic country ranked among the top twenty economies in the world. Saudi women are facing a number of obstacles, including discrimination based on gender and a lack of employment opportunities. The aim of this thesis is to determine whether the Saudi government's plan for economic growth and social transformation (Saudi Vision 2030) empowered Saudi women by increasing their employment opportunities. The main focus is how is the empowerment of Saudi women expressed in Saudi Vision 2030 and determine the effect of women empowerment policies on the rate of participation of Saudi women in the labour force from the year of implement the Saudi Vision 2030 (2016) until the year 2020. The neoliberal feminist framework of empowerment was used to understand women's empowerment and its relationship to increasing employment opportunities for women. To achieve the aim of this thesis, the data from the Saudi labour market statistics related to the participation of Saudi women in the workforce were analysed and discussed. Based on available statistics, Saudi women have more jobs now than before 2016, which means that they are more empowered. The women's empowerment policies under the light of Saudi Vision 2030 showed positive progress in favour of women empowerment through the increasing of women's participation in the labour force from 19 per cent in 2016 to 33 per cent in 2020. Although these efforts are commendable, the other kinds of feminists' perspectives acknowledge that the neoliberal feminist approach has certain limitations. One of the limitations is that current empowerment initiatives don't pay enough attention to women's role in the family, resulting in a complex social issue. Further research to monitor and evaluate the impact of current empowerment initiatives on women's roles in the family would be helpful.
Keywords: Saudi*, Women*, empowerment*, Vision 2030.
Subject: Development Studies thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2021
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Professor Susanne Schech