Moving Beyond Gender Roles: Women and the Workplace in Saudi Arabia

By Marwa Istanbuli

SCAD alumna, Marwa Istanbuli (M.A., interior design, 2017), born and raised in Saudi Arabia, relocated to the U.S. for her graduate studies and a better opportunity at a professional path. She joined the hospitality studio at Gensler in San Francisco, where she currently works as a technical designer. With a primary interest in human centered design, she challenges the status quo by integrating research in sociology and social psychology into the practice of design. Having experienced gendered spaces first hand, Marwa examined the issue through her thesis work at SCAD. The following article is a brief adaptation of the full research and is intended to raise awareness to the issue at hand.

A typical life trajectory might look like: Go to school, graduate, and then start working. It’s a straightforward plan, right? Not if you’re a woman living under a patriarchal ideology.

In Saudi Arabia, 78.3 percent of non-working women are university graduates actively trying to join the workforce. Women pursuing work in Saudi Arabia have been facing obstacles for years, including lack of opportunities, intolerant behaviors, male supremacy, and an ineffective political system (Alattas, 2016). In recent years, there has been an attempt to encourage women in Saudi Arabia to venture beyond their socially accepted domestic roles and enter the workforce. This begs the question: Can women succeed and thrive in workplace environments originally allocated for men and their needs?

Theorists and scholars from varied disciplines (Crosby, 1982; Fox & Hesse Biber, 1984; Kanter, 1993) have challenged the documented inaccurate portrayal of women workers’ realities, while identifying themes that more accurately characterize women’s values and experiences associated with work. When exploring women and work one must address: (a) the fluid nature of boundaries between personal life and work life; (b) the importance of the relational aspects at work; © issues of power and hierarchy at work; (d) the role of work in developing women’s sense of self and personal identity, and (e) the degree to which women’s work experience is colored by discrimination and sexism (Grossman & Chester, 2013).

I had the opportunity to interview a number of female employees, both Saudi nationals and expats, working in mixed gender environments. The employees expressed three overarching concerns: 1) the lack of flexibility, both in the physical setting and more importantly in the work schedule; 2) the evident hierarchical divide within the workplace, emphasized by private offices; and 3) the absence of a sense of control and equal opportunity at self-development. Notably, the concerns identified by the female employees interviewed reflect what research findings presented decades ago.

While companies in Saudi Arabia recognize that most existing workplace environments fail to support women’s unique needs, they hesitate to take action, deeming meeting those needs as “costly.” Instead, companies find it more cost-effective to continue to only hire men (Alattas, 2016).

For Saudi Arabia to move forward and capitalize on its female workforce, organizations and designers alike need to adopt an awareness of the basic necessities that drive women’s choices and everyday experiences within the workplace. As women enter the workforce globally in greater numbers, there is a need for designers and planners to explore human experiences as manifested in “male” and “female” identities as part of the phases of programming, action, construction, and evaluation (Pavlic et. al, 1995), instead of addressing these roles as last minute additions or considerations.

For any change to be effective, it needs to be supported by the society as a whole. In other words, the attitudes of men, women, and organizations alike need to adapt and embrace women’s changing roles, as defined by women themselves.

References

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Alattas, H. E. (2016). Fertility and female labor supply in Saudi Arabia: The case of Jeddah

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Fox, M. F., & Hesse-Biber, S. N. (1984). Women at Work. McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages.

Grossman, H. Y., & Chester, N. L. (2013). The Experience and Meaning of Work in Women’s Lives. London, England: Psychology Press.

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