Riyadh newspaper's economy supplement on Jan. 20 that some 30 Saudi women are working as housemaids in Qatar is news that cannot be left to pass without comment. There is no shame in honorable work, but for Saudi women to be working abroad and as “housemaids” for relatively large wages is unacceptable and brings shame on all of us. It is also a noticeable development in women's issues with implications that require pause for thought. To begin with, there are fundamental flaws in what's accessible to women in the labor market which have not been dealt with for a long time, this being an example of one of them, and things will only get worse if we bear in mind that the total female contribution to the workforce is no more than 11.5 percent, the lowest in the world, and perhaps even more tragically the unemployment rate in female university graduates is 76 percent, seven times greater than that of males! Whatever the justification, we must not accept the idea that our women work as housemaids in other countries for a host of national considerations. The first reason is that our country is fine, and things have not reached the level where our women need to work as housemaids in any country at all. Secondly, we have plenty of opportunities for noble work from which women have been barred, such as saleswomen in women's markets which is more honorable work with less “gender-mixing” than working in other people's houses. Thirdly, there are some Arab countries with modest incomes that have barred women from working as housemaids in Gulf countries having once been their greatest suppliers, for social and political reasons. Now that things have come to this, the Ministry of Labor should urgently bring in a law banning Saudi women from working as “housemaids” abroad so that we can address our own issues domestically. The ministry should also consider setting up a High Commission for Women, headed by the King and with members from all conflicting sides of issues concerning women.
