The Ministry of Labor has said that “radical solutions” are required to tackle female unemployment, with official statistics showing a rise from 26.4 percent in 2008 to 28.4 percent in 2009. Al-Hayat Arabic daily cited a ministry statement released Tuesday as saying that the unemployment rate for Saudi women “exceeds global averages”. Mufrij Al-Haqbani from the Ministry of Planning and Economy told Al-Hayat that the rise in women's unemployment contributes to the rise of the general unemployment index. “Unfortunately job opportunities for women are still few, limited as they are to specific fields such as public and private education, which impedes economic growth,” Al-Haqbani said. He added, however, that the issue was “more social and cultural than purely economic”. “To address the problem the ministry is considering opening up job opportunities for women in online sales,” he said. “Such opportunities are still limited but they may increase in the future.” The ministry also moved Tuesday to deny press reports that over 1,000 female doctorate degree holders are unemployed. Saudi Gazette reported Hattab Al-Enizi, the spokesman for the ministry, as saying that the figures published in a study by Booz and Company, a global management consulting firm, contradict the ministry's own information. “According to the ministry's data on job seekers in recent years and the 2008 and 2009 labor force reports by the Central Department of Statistics and Information, no female holders of doctorate degrees have applied for jobs, and none of them are unemployed,” Al-Enizi said. Al-Enizi said that Booz and Company had since apologized. __
