Women Leadership in Saudi Arabia

Question :

I have an essay assignment about women leadership in Saudi Arabia ?

Answer :

How are women leading in Saudi Arabia (challenges)?

Leadership is the ability to lead a group of people to achieve a common goal of the organization. It plays a very vital role in the success of the organization because it helps the organization to achieve its goals and objectives effectively and efficiently (Bolman & Deal, 2017). The importance of leadership has also increased in light of contemporary developments such as globalization as well as several global competitions imposed by WTO (World Trade Organization) and GATT (The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). These organizations have made borders open to international companies and hence companies can conduct business across the globe. Thus, the role of leadership is very important to lead an organization in such contemporary development and achieve the goals and objectives of the organization. There are several factors that affect the performance and productivity of leadership such as organizational environment, staff characteristics political as well as economic factors, demographics, organizational culture, and technology (Mendenhall et al., 2017). In such contemporary development, factors like capabilities and behavior of leaders are important to make them successful. Apart from these factors, culture, society, education, skills, experience, and knowledge are also very important to make a leader successful. 

It is also important to consider that there is a gender gap in leadership. Women are not considered as effective leaders as their male counterparts. It is believed that women are not able to handle top-level positions within an organization because they are not emotionally stable (Qadir, 2019). There are several other factors that are used to describe their inability to work on the top position in an organization. Thus, this paper illuminates the challenges faced in recruiting women to work in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

There is a general perception in the world that people in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia take a narrow view of the role or place of women in society. The social norms in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia do not allow women to work in an organization as per the general perception of the world towards the culture of Saudi Arabia (Topal, 2019).  However, there is increasing global awareness that the empowerment of women is enjoying a strong rise as more women are entering into the corporate world and working at a higher level in the organization effectively and efficiently due to their higher level of education. Education, skills, experience, and knowledge is significantly linked with a positive environment such as society and culture that lead women to get success in leadership. The success of women leadership in Saudi has significantly encountered societal constraints and bicultural constraints that stand against the success of women leaders in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Hodges, 2017). 

Women have faced a lot of challenges in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia due to their cultural or traditional culture. Saudi Arabia has traditional or tribal cultural like many traditional cultures in different countries. So, women in Saudi Arabia have a restricted will. They are strictly bound by social and cultural norms. In the past, the people of Saudi Arabia believed that a girl was a source of misery and burden (Alghamdi, 2018). The history of Saudi Arabia also shows that some baby girls were buried alive because of the thought and perception of the people that women bring shame and poverty to families. 

Al-Fassi a historian from Saudi Arabia has highlighted the origin of women's rights in Arab using evidence from the ancient Arabian Kingdom of Nabataea. According to him, Arab women in Nabataea had independent legal personalities. Al-Fassi has also highlighted that women lost many of their rights due to ancient Greek as well as Roman law. But with the passage of time, the participation of women in many sectors started increasing despite the limitations imposed by sex segregation. The number of working women in Saudi Arabia is increasing along with the kind of places they work (Alkhaled & Berglund, 2018). In the early 1990s, women were employed in banks, including banks exclusively for women, inutility and computer operations, in television and radio programming, and some ministries. They worked as clerical assistants, journalists, teachers, and administrators in girls' schools, university professors, and social workers. In medicine, women served as doctors, pharmacists, and, more recently, as nurses and occupied leadership positions in those fields. 

By the 1990s, women in Saudi Arabia have proved themselves competent in such a developing and dynamic business environment. They have achieved a significant position in employment and leadership that was perceived as men's work (Abalkhail, 2017). Women have also proved themselves in the field of education. In the field of education, they are being more successful than their male counterpart. As the number of female graduates started increasing at a rate faster than male graduates and as the level of education increased, the opportunity for women to get jobs and leadership positions also increased (Rather, 2016). They became aware of their rights and started raising their voice for their rights. Even after showing their competency in the business world, politics, education, etc. they faced a major challenge from people with conservative views as the conservative view advocates for the complete separation of women from men in public life. But the emergence of liberal views helped women to get or achieved what they deserve. The liberal values have transformed the separation value into modesty value that allows an expansion of opportunities for women in every sector of the economy. 

The role of government in empowering women and making them able to work in the field of their interest is very important. The effort of the government for the same purpose is appreciable. The government has taken every possible step to increase the role of women in public life, education, leadership, work, politics, etc. Due to the effort of the government, the role of women in every sector of the economy has improved significantly; however, the progress is still very slow and there is a need for more reforms in the social norms, government initiatives, and cultural policies (Alghofaily, 2019). As the culture of Saudi Arabia will support and encourage women to assume leading positions, the women of the country will start achieving more success as a leader and in different fields. 

The opportunity for women to take the position of leadership in an organization is increasing because of the globalization. Due to globalization workforce diversity has significantly improved which has paved the way for women to take higher responsibility within an organization (Ghose & Narendran, 2017). However, challenges for women to assume higher responsibility have not been reduced. They face the following challenges in society in the way of assuming higher responsibility. The cultural constraint is one of the major challenges. The cultural and social norms restrict women to get out of home and achieve what they want to achieve. Most of the women do not get a chance to get enrolled in colleges and universities for higher education. Apart from this, men do not consider women equally competent and hence according to them, women cannot handle a higher position effectively (Naseem & Dhruva, 2017). People consider disrespectful when women go out of the house and work. Such narrow views have affected the progress of women. Moreover, in developing countries there is a negative impression of female leadership however there are several examples of great female leaders who have transformed the way of work.

There is a significant gender inequality in Saudi Arabia that is hampering the progress of women in the country. The country has witnessed the importance of women empowerment but still, there is a need to focus on empowering women and pave the way for them so that they can feel independent and achieve what they deserve to achieve (Russell, 2019). 

Women in the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

From the initiatives of the government of the country, it can be seen that the government is focused on women empowerment so that their role can be improved in society. Open culture is one of the significant measures that can lead to an improvement in the role of women in society. The government of Saudi in late September 2011 declared that women will vote and participate in the 2015 local election (Jamal, 2016). In the year 2013, Saudi Arabia got its first female trainee lawyer named Arwa al-Hujaili, a first female lawyer who was granted an official license from the ministry of justice named Bayan Alzahran, and the first female police officer named Ayat Bakhreeba. Apart from this, Saudi Arabia got the first women dean of the public university. Lubna Olayan, a businesswoman of Saudi Arabia has been named as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine as well as Forbes magazine (Al-Sudairy, 2017). The culture of the country is changing rapidly and now men are considering women competent to work in the corporate world. Women are getting the same respect as men are in every sector of the economy. Women are supporting modernity however the number of women supporting modernity is very low (Fadaak & Roberts, 2016). So, society needs reform on a large scale to support women's empowerment for the overall growth and development of the country.

Conclusion

Women's empowerment is necessary for overall growth and development of the country. But women have not realized their rights even in the 21st century. They have been dominated by their male counterparts in every possible manner. The culture and society of Saudi Arabia have not focused on women empowerment, however, now the government is focusing on it and a major change can be seen in the culture of the country where people are supportive women in work, education, politics, etc.

References

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