A report that 30 Saudi women were working as maids in Qatar has set off a firestorm in Saudi Arabia. Saudi women are, apparently, just too good to do that kind of work for non-Saudis! It’s just too shameful, don’t you see…

Saudi Gazette/Okaz have a couple of pieces on the issue. In the first, the writer notes how working as a housemaid is, of course, honorable work, but not honorable enough for Saudi women. It brings shame on the country. And well it might. If the best jobs open to Saudi women are as domestic workers, then that indeed says something shameful about Saudi Arabia, not the women taking the jobs nor the jobs themselves.

Rather than issuing a new law forbidding Saudi women to work as maids abroad—the writer’s preference—perhaps the country could actually open up job opportunities and enforce existing laws that permit women to work in Saudi jobs.

Saudi housemaids abroad
Issa Al-Halyan

THE report in Al-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.
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Saudi Gazette runs a report on the issue. It notes that there is no Saudi law prohibiting Saudi women from working abroad. Nor is there a law that prohibits them from working as housemaids (though there are special restrictions on working conditions). It quotes a recruiter in Doha saying that Saudi women bring a level of ‘safety’ about them that is seen as lacking in more distant recruits, notably the absence of ‘witchcraft’ and ‘black magic’.

I doubt that there are many Saudi girls growing up with the dream of becoming maids in a foreign country. Economic contingency, the lack of available jobs in Saudi Arabia, the lack of sufficient education to take what jobs are available all add up to good reasons to take jobs that pay a salary, no matter who is paying it and no matter that the work is less than glamorous.

Stop ‘our women’ working abroad!

JEDDAH – Al-Riyadh Arabic newspaper reported on Jan. 20 that the Ministry of Labor had denied any knowledge of 30 Saudi women working as housemaids in Qatar following widespread reports in the press and on the Internet.

The newspaper quoted a “ministry source” as saying that Saudi women in Gulf countries required no licensing from the ministry to work.

“We do not stop any Saudi citizen working in neighboring countries, and regarding these reports we have no knowledge of them and the Ministry of Labor has never issued any decision permitting Saudi women to work as maids in people’s homes,” the source said.

Weekend sources silent

According to Al-Riyadh, the reports that circulated over the two days prior to its article were “not confirmed by any official source”, and its own attempts to contact officials at the ministries of Labor and Social Affairs in Qatar were frustrated “because it was the weekend”.

The reports, Al-Riyadh said, concerned Saudi women working in Doha for approximately $400 per month, “slightly more than the wages of Asian house workers”, and that the women were aged between 20 and 45 years.

Al-Riyadh said the reports quoted a Qatari recruiting agency as saying that 30 unqualified Saudi women had passed a series of interviews and “intense training”, and that a further “100 women” were awaiting interview.

The agency source added that “fear of Asian workers practicing magic might increase the demand for employees from the Gulf”.
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To add a little fillip of absurdity to the story, Arab News reported yesterday that it’s not even clear that any Saudi women are actually working as maids in Qatar. So, is this just a bit of mischievous nose-tweaking by Qatari media?