Khaleej Times runs this Reuters story on how economic necessity is forcing Saudi society to re-evaluate its concerns about women in the workplace. As the aphorism has it, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. It can certainly be the mother of change and reform.

Economic fears move Saudi women into jobs

RIYADH - Economic necessity is forcing hardline clerics and conservative society in Saudi Arabia to accept the idea of women in the workplace, a government official said in an interview this weekend.

Faisal bin Muammar, head of a body promoting ‘national dialogue’, said high unemployment among Saudis and the reliance upon 7 million foreign workers was forcing the hand of opponents to women working in the desert country of 24 million people.

The debate — as demonstrated at a major forum last month of clerics, ministers and businesswomen — has now moved to whether women can work in the same office space as men, or if firms must provide segregated areas to allow women to work.

‘Most agreed to open a wide arena for women to get jobs, since girls now graduate more than boys from universities. We cannot go on having 7 million foreigners and our graduate women in their houses,’ bin Muammar told Reuters.

‘But how to establish it (is the issue), whether it is in separate or mixed places … We need to make rules for it, which clerics, families and social leaders need.’