The 966 – Episode #133
How Working Women are Changing Saudi Arabia with Dr. Jennifer Peck, Swarthmore College

Richard Wilson (00:00.95)
Hello, and welcome to you Dr. Peck. Allow me to thank you for joining us. This is your home office near Swarthmore. Allow me first to thank you for joining us. I've really felt like it's a little bit of a discovery to find out how deeply involved you are in this issue, women, the economy, labor, women's labor issues in Saudi Arabia.
Richard Wilson (00:28.982)
It's just been a revelation. So, thank you for coming on board. The way I discovered you was yours really and I want to congratulate you on your extraordinary publication of Foreign Affairs Magazine. And for our listeners, it was entitled Working Women are Changing Saudi Arabia. Subtext, reforms have made the economy more productive, families more resilient and Saudis more tolerant. And as you dive into this, you have, in fact, contributed to numerous research papers, other publications.

Dr. Jennifer Peck (00:33.033)
Thanks for having me.

Richard Wilson (00:58.998)
on the topic of Saudi labor force with specific attention paid to women and how they are accessing and impacting the kingdom's workforce. You also, we may get to it, have a couple, at least works in progress on this subject and they look extremely interesting. But to kick it off, we touched on this a little bit when we talked earlier in the week. I am truly curious as to what motivated you to develop such expertise in this area. I know there's a good story here.

Dr. Jennifer Peck (01:29.193)
Thanks, thanks. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be on the podcast. So yes, so I actually was born in Saudi Arabia. I was born in Dhahran and grew up on the Aramco compound through the 90s. So, I, you know, as a kid, yes, but Aramco, I'm one of the expats that I talk about in my work. Yes, but so growing up in the...

Dr. Jennifer Peck (01:53.961)
in Aramco, but also just in the Eastern province in the 90s, we saw tons of changes over that period. No seeing more Saudis at Aramco, but also in the private sector in general. And I kind of grew up in this and always wanted to study Saudi Arabia. So, as I got more interested in economics, I would think about coming back and studying Saudi Arabia through that lens.

And when I was then in graduate school at MIT, there was this great partnership between MIT and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, where they were working on this integrated labor market model for policymakers. And so, I got involved with that project and then stayed on as a postdoc in that project and also worked with different policymakers through Harvard. The Harvard Kennedy School had a nice collaboration between the Evidence for Policy Design Group and the Saudi Ministry of Labor. So, I worked on that project. That project launched a whole bunch of great empirical research in the kingdom. And I was really fortunate to be involved with that and get started on some of this data work that we've been doing more recently on the Saudi economy.
Richard Wilson (03:07.222)
Well, all to our benefit. I mean, this is again, this article is fascinating and a lot of work you've done is really, really sharp and to the point. Let's talk a little bit about your foreign affairs article and in it, you refer to several historical timeframes that have impacted women's participation in the Saudi workforce. Specifically, you referenced the 60s, the 80s, Arab Spring in 2010, 11, its aftermath, and then Vision 2030 since 2016. Can you give us a little historical background on how women's participation in the labor force has evolved? And also, if you would, because you did it so well in the article, sort of expand out as to some of the social and cultural and economic forces that were impacting this participation in the workforce.
Dr. Jennifer Peck (04:00.297)
Sure. Well, so you see this kind of tremendous increase in women's employment starting in 2011. And I think people tend to look at that and think, you know, what changed right at that moment to make all of this happen all of a sudden? But really, as you said, the story starts much earlier. So, when you look back as early as 1959 with King Saud's speech, where he made this formal commitment of the Saudi government to women's education,
That was a commitment that was a big change at the time, but that was really borne out by a sustained investment in women's education in the kingdom over the decades following his announcement. So formal schooling, public formal schooling became widely available in the 1960s for women. And then tertiary education also was correspondingly expanded as these girls kind of went up through the school system. There were then colleges and universities there to accept them and to continue their education. So, you have places like what's now Princess Nora University, educating women at the college and university level. There was King Saud University, King Abdulaziz University accepted to women and had their women's campuses. And then you have places like Ifat University, which is terrific, which started later in the 90s. So really excellent and often public free education available to women around the country.
And the kingdom had spent significant resources in kind of building this group of highly educated, really talented women who are mostly not working. So, over that period, it looks like not a lot is happening from the employment side. Women tended to work in medicine and education and some in other public sector jobs, but really the employment rate was quite low.

So, before 2010, women's employment had hovered around like 10 or 15 % in the kingdom. It hadn't really broken through that barrier in any of those decades since women started to get educated in the kingdom.
Richard Wilson (06:01.366)
And almost exclusively, not exclusively, but largely in the public sector. And you mentioned in your article a lot of them ended up being teachers.
Dr. Jennifer Peck (06:13.001)
Yes, yes, so that was, you know, teaching is a great profession, especially in the kingdom, right? It's, you know, really rewarding and it's got good hours, good pay, highly respected. Women could also work in gender segregated environments. So, there's kind of no concern about whether it would be appropriate and how they would be treated. It was kind of a very comfortable setting. Also, schools have great childcare usually. And so, it was a place where you could be a mom and raise your kids, but also use your education to contribute to Saudi society.
Richard Wilson (06:50.166)
Right? But you, so you have an interesting dynamic that where you have a, you're educating women, and you have a lot of capable, smart women who are moving on. You said later in the 80s, you know, there's a push to get more advanced degrees. And then, and I'll jump ahead a little bit, but King Abdullah scholarships were established in 05, I believe, which was, and you can elaborate, but that was an extraordinary initiative where they sent hundreds of thousands of young Saudis, men and women, the majority to the US, but to the UK, Australia, everywhere, to seek further education and to really broaden those horizons, which contributed even more to this demographic of highly educated Saudi women.

Dr. Jennifer Peck (07:45.353)
Absolutely. Yes, and you have women coming back with degrees in all kinds of things, even stuff that wasn't available in the kingdom at the time, coming back with master's degrees with PhDs, and they're kind of back and ready to work.
Richard Wilson (07:57.59)
And you point, you put your finger on the Arab Spring, 2010, 2011. It's sort of a watershed moment.
Dr. Jennifer Peck (08:05.545)
Yes, it was interesting, right? So, the upshot of all of this is that then, you know, you've built this group of women who are super well -educated, very talented, ready to work in some sense. And then you have these 2011 era reforms, which really opened up the private sector to Saudis. And there's this huge population of talented, educated women who are ready to rush into these jobs.

And when firms went to look for Saudis, this is who they found. They were looking to hire Saudis and they opened their doors and it's these ladies who are ready to go. So, the employment rate has tripled even as the population has grown over the period, which has really just really been remarkable.
Richard Wilson (08:50.678)
The employment rate for women has tripled. Well, this is interesting and, you know, in 2011 also. So, the Saudis, you know, Arab Spring was an eye opener for a lot of governments in the region and Saudi Arabia managed it pretty well. It had means and it, you know, it proactively took steps. But it recognized that the model of, you know, super majority of people employed in the public sector isn't sustainable. So, they looked around and this is when Nitaqat was introduced as well in 2011. Nitaqat, I believe, is a rough translation, is essentially Saudization. And a real focus on moving jobs that were currently filled by expats or third country nationals to become filled by Saudis. You made a really interesting observation in your article when Nitiqat opened, and they put out sort of feelers didn't some enormous number of women immediately apply?
Dr. Jennifer Peck (10:01.513)
Yeah, so it was really fascinating. So, in 2011, the government kind of looks at their high unemployment rate and is feeling a little bit anxious about that and is looking at what's happening in other countries in the region. And so had these two big reforms really. So, there was Nitaqat, which imposes these color bands on firms where they have to, as you said, have to nationalize their workforce to some level. And then there's also the Hafez program. So, this was unemployment assistance. So, these were really the two flagship policies, NITICOT, which forced firms to go out and look to hire Saudis, and then Hafez, which was unemployment assistance and job search assistance. And so, they launched these at about the same time. Hafez, I think, unexpectedly attracted tons and tons of women into the program. So, you know, some looking for the financial benefit, but also others who said let's see what there is in terms of the stop search assistance. So, Hafez had a lot of women join. And at the same time, Nitaqat kind of opened the doors at these firms for Saudi women to work there too. So it was, I think really the two programs at the same time had this really fascinating effect of like drawing women into the labor force and having them start looking for work at the same time that firms were looking for them.

Richard Wilson (11:27.414)
And it speaks to your point where these things, you know, female employment in Saudi Arabia didn't happen in 2016 when Vision 20 was, 30 was launched. And, you know, the foundations and the groundwork and movement towards this, a lot of, and if you can expand on this in terms of Vision 2030, there was resistance though, within the system. So, you know, a private sector, what were some of the initial reactions to private sector companies in terms of hiring women.
It's sort of like, I envision a lot of, you know, penguins at the side of an iceberg, like who's going to be the first to jump in.

Dr. Jennifer Peck (12:02.953)
Yeah, absolutely. And we've done a lot of work on this, which has been really interesting. So, one thing that really jumps out from the Nitaqat period data is that a lot of firms going into 2011 had never hired women at all. They had maybe a few Saudi men, mostly expatriate men working in these private sector jobs. And so, they didn't have a ladies' room. They didn't have any of the kind of infrastructure physical homes or organizational infrastructure to hire women at all. And so then when they, when Nitaqat pushes them to start looking to hire Saudis and they find all of these ladies who are looking for work, I think a lot of firms were caught a little bit flat footed by this. So, we had a lot of firms start hiring women for the first time in response to the Nitaqat quotas in the...

very small fraction of firms before Nitaqat, but by 2015, two thirds had started hiring women, which was really a big, big change. To me, almost bigger than the change in the number of women in the workforce was the number of firms that were kind of open to employing women, which reflects a change in opportunity that women are seeing around the kingdom. But so, firms, you know, start hiring women, they have to invest in the physical.
Dr. Jennifer Peck (13:30.633)
workspace. They had at the time requirements for like separate entrances for men and women for separate break rooms, certainly separate bathrooms, a lot of kind of physical investments that needed to be made, but all kinds of other things too. So, things like expanding your hiring networks to be able to recruit the kind of women that are in the space that you're trying to hire in, you know, changing organizational structures so that reporting structures are feasible with gender integration constraints and things like that.

Richard Wilson (14:05.974)
What were some of the attitudes of the male population to this change? I know you've dug into and done some interesting research on that.
Dr. Jennifer Peck (14:43.657)
So, we've seen men's reactions, male managers and men who are working at these firms talking about what it's like to now have female coworkers and reports. I think there's a sense that that's still evolving, and people are still finding ways to make that work.

Dr. Jennifer Peck (14:43.657)
you see different attitudes in some of the interviews people talked about, you know, needing to protect women and needing to make sure that they're sort of fully secure coming into the workforce. Others are kind of more open to experimentation, like trying different models and seeing what works. And so, lots of different approaches that have kind of borne out in different ways in different types of firms.

Richard Wilson (15:07.67)
So, bring us up through Vision 2030, which was launched in April 2016. The ban on women driving was lifted in 2018. And there's been just a whole raft of regulatory reforms, many of them designed to make access to the workforce on the part of women much easier and to legislate equality insofar as, you know, and so far, as much as possible. Can you talk a little bit about some of the transformations that have occurred with Vision 2030?

Dr. Jennifer Peck (15:47.881)
Yes, so you're absolutely right. So, there have been lots of reforms that have affected women, especially since Vision 2030 was launched. So, the lift of the driving ban in 2018 gets a lot of attention. It made women certainly more mobile. I think probably it's even more important for its kind of agenda setting significance. So, it's very, very visible, you know, even though women didn't all get driver's licenses and cars right away. It still kind of showed this big visible commitment from leadership to moving in this direction, which I think was super important. The guardianship system was also completely overhauled in 2019. And this eliminated a lot of the guardianship requirements and clarified for firms that they could not require guardians’ permission for women to work, which was again, really important. It was something that firms were kind of confused about whether they needed permission to hire a woman. And this sort of made it clear that, you know, you don't need permission and in fact, you can't require it, which again, sort of had practical implications, but also kind of showed the priorities of leadership in a real clear way to firms. There were also a bunch of other kinds of really practical labor reforms in 2019, I think, in response to the large growth in women's employment. So, this was, they eliminated some restrictions on what types of industries women could work in. They allowed night shift work, provided pregnancy related discrimination protections, criminalized sexual harassment. And like you said, mandated equal pay and benefits. This has been, so I keep saying that everything was incredible, and everything was amazing, but it really was. The World Bank kind of follows these types of regulations in countries all over the world. And Saudi Arabia from 2019 to now has experienced one of the largest increases in those types of protections and supports that any country has seen in the past 50 years. So really, it's not just me who thinks that this is remarkable. It's everybody.
Richard Wilson (17:54.646)
And, and by the way, the Saudi leadership loves those benchmarks, you know, things like the metrics at the World Bank. I mean, they're very proud of that. And yes, yeah. And a lot of division 2030, you know, milestones are sort of linked to these metrics and those important benchmarks. So, it is interesting. Two episodes ago, the topic was how Saudi sports participation topic of the 966 episode was how growing Saudi sports participates and impacting Saudi fashion and then specifically sportswear and athletes. So, the reason I bring this up is because as part of the Vision 2030 metrics they put out benchmarks. We want to hit X by 2030. And, you know, one of them for sports participation was 40 percent of the population. They've already surpassed 48 percent. Same thing with women's employment. What are the numbers there?

Dr. Jennifer Peck (18:55.881)
So, I think that was Vision 2030. I think they wanted 30 % women's labor force participation by 2030. And when they announced this, I remember being kind of skeptical. I was like, well, we'll see how it goes. But then blew past it in five years. So, it's above that now, which is incredible.
It's a country full of petroleum engineers, right? Everyone's very motivated by the numbers and the measurements.
Richard Wilson (19:29.206)
Well, so but it sort of brings us to the secondary effects of initiatives like Vision 2030. In other words, you set out in one direction, you accomplish certain things and they've made great headway, I think, in regulatory, legislative, judicial reform, not legislative, but judicial and regulatory reform. And they've made an environment to make real advances in certain sectors. And then that causes other consequences. And one of the really fascinating things about your article, and I'll just read it, is, quote, the unprecedented increase in the economic opportunities available to women across Saudi society appear to be driving a feedback loop. The more Saudi society embraces women in the workplace, the more the government is encouraged to pursue ambitious reforms. Can you build on that?
Dr. Jennifer Peck (20:23.817)
Yes, so I think that there's this really important dynamic happening between workers and firms and the government. You have these three kind of legs of the stool. And so, for example, you have these big reforms like Nitaqat and Hafez, which were the government responding to these high unemployment rates among Saudi citizens that then sort of unexpectedly drew in huge numbers of women into the workforce.
You know, increases their economic opportunity, you know, makes their families more financially resilient. it also makes businesses more productive by increasing their access to talent. They're now able to hire from this really talented pool that they had never accessed before. and then you have kind of business and civil society see these changes as evidence of the government's approval of change in this direction. And so then they feel more comfortable hiring more women and making these investments into being able to hire women and then also personally like supporting the careers of their wives and daughters, you know, they know that, you know, if I encourage my daughter to go get a degree in engineering, she's going to be able to find a job at a, at a Saudi firm. and so, girls then, you know, grow up seeing their mothers and their sisters taking these kinds of opportunities. they know that they'll be able to balance career with family and how that kind of

They have those mentors available to them in their family and social networks. And so, then they're kind of making their decisions about what kind of education to get and what sorts of careers to pursue, kind of seeing those models there. And this just all feeds back into itself, right? So, then they're looking for work and that sort of further builds this loop.

And at the same time, you have the ecosystem starting to kind of build up to support these developments. The government has seen women flooding into the labor force and has set goals to increase childcare support for women in the workforce, to expand access to kindergarten and pre -K across the kingdom. And a lot of these kind of
Dr. Jennifer Peck (22:40.681)
2018 -2019 era reforms I think are in response to kind of a real need of the private sector to have these regulations in place to support the employment that's already happening, but then it sort of keeps building on itself in this really exciting way.

Richard Wilson (22:56.758)
Just a quick because you have a unique perspective. You grew up in Saudi. You do deep research on Saudi Arabia. You've been paying attention to labor issues for a long time and with a particular angle of women in the labor market. How would you describe the pace of what's going on in Saudi Arabia in terms of Vision 2030 and just the changes?
Dr. Jennifer Peck (23:22.505)
Well, you can compare it to other places. You know, when you look historically at other countries that have made this transition, it's happened in Saudi Arabia over the course of 15 years, maybe. But in other places, similar changes took place over decades and decades. So really kind of a historical outlier in terms of the pace of change. I think people feel this on the ground in the kingdom, you know, you look around and think it's just unrecognizable from time to time. And even going back, you know, going back on research trips, it's like every time I go, it feels like a different place. And so, I think it has been really rapid.

Richard Wilson (24:06.902)
So given these changes and you've done a really, really wonderful job of sort of laying out the historical underpinnings, the 2010, 2011 stimulus, for lack of a better term, the Vision 2030, very concerted, committed plan to move in this direction. As you see them, what major issues remain to be resolved? What needs, what should be, what would you recommend that be addressed going forward?

Dr. Jennifer Peck (24:40.233)
Yes, so I think that there's things that can be addressed and there's also things that just take time. There's some kind of growing pains and because change has been so rapid, it's just going to take some time for things to adjust. So, there's kind of on a lot of different dimensions too. So, there's one really nice study by some of my colleagues that shows that Saudi men themselves are really supportive of women working outside of the home, but they don't.

but their perception of what other people believe hasn't kind of come into line with what they themselves think. And so, this is just a process that takes time, right? So, this is just something where it takes time for people to kind of absorb information about new social norms and new kinds of consensus to emerge. So that's a really important dynamic and that's just something that'll take time as people kind of become more comfortable and more familiar with the new environment. There's also, as I said, there's the growing pains on the firm side. So, before Nitaqat, most firms didn't employ any women at all. And so, firms’ kind of figuring out models that work for employing female workers. It's something that's also going to take time. You have firms experimenting with different models of segregation or integration, mixed gender meetings or single gender meetings, things like that.

it's important for firms to find ways to do that that works for their firm and works for Saudi society. It's not something that can just kind of be imported from elsewhere or taken off the shelf, you know, like a workplace that would be comfortable in Malaysia is not going to be one that's comfortable in Riyadh. So, these have to be kind of homegrown. And that's also something that can take time. Those signals can be amplified by business groups and the government can amplify some of those models as well, but that's something that firms need to figure out for themselves in some way. And they've been doing an incredible work to do that over the years. There's also, so as firms have been experimenting with how to integrate women into their workplaces, women are also trying to figure out how they fit into the workforce. So, figuring out what industries work, what firms are good and what workplaces are comfortable, what jobs are productive and exciting, and also what working arrangements make sense for them. And you see that in women trying different things and passing that information through their networks. So, in Saudi, leadership can support this, of course by continuing, as they've done with Vision 2030, continuing to signal that women are an important part of the labor market. The agenda setting is just so important anywhere, but especially in Saudi Arabia, showing that the highest level of the government is on board with this and that they plan to continue in this direction is really valuable for firms. It gives them a sense that their investments are going to pay off and continue to be supported.

Yeah, I could go on and on.

Richard Wilson (27:59.062)
I know. Well, one of the things we try and do in the 966 is look at actual implementation. So, you just in a nutshell sort of theirs signaling from the government, there's regulatory reform, but then on the ground, there's cultural adaptation, there's practical application of the new regulations, the new opportunities, the new requirements. And they all move in the same lockstep. And as you say, some have a lag period, some require a lag period because as people get used to it. And I think that's really enlightening. So, let's talk a little bit. I know you've got a couple of works in progress and when we were talking earlier, we were getting a little wonky on the Nitaqat. But what are you working on now?

Dr. Jennifer Peck (28:47.497)
So, I have a few projects that we're working on that are kind of along these lines. So, we have, we've been looking at some mentoring programs for girls that are really interesting way for, to sort of formalize this, formalize these networks of professional women kind of feeding information to young women who are starting to make decisions about their careers and about their education. It's something that if that change had happened over a longer, period it would have happened more organically but since it's so quick it's useful to have to have these organizations like Al-Nakta and Riyadh you know trying to facilitate these types of mentoring interactions so we have a study on that to see how that changes girls aspirations and their and their plans for their futures.

Richard Wilson (29:34.998)
Before I'm going to jump in there before you really if I need to get you in touch with a couple of women, I don't need to do anything, but I mean, it might be worthwhile to get you in touch with because that's a constant refrain of young Saudi women in particular, but also women have been through professionally. That's right. Is a lack of mentors and the need for female mentors. But anyway, that's fascinating that you're doing a research project on that.

Dr. Jennifer Peck (30:03.049)
Yes, well, and I think programs like that are great, right? It sort of takes that challenge head on and tries to make these connections and build these networks for these girls, which is great.

Richard Wilson (30:11.894)
Yes. And is there something upcoming on Nitaqat or was I mistaken there?

Dr. Jennifer Peck (30:18.825)
So, we're also doing, yes, there's always something upcoming on Nitaqat. So, we also have research we're doing on the firm side with the Nitaqat program as well, sort of looking at more like medium term and longer-term effects of the quotas on firms. So, firms could respond to the quotas in different ways. So, as I said before, some of them responded by, they're like, we're going to get our act together and figure out how to employ Saudi women.
Dr. Jennifer Peck (30:45.321)
And so, a firm that made that decision and made that investment early on, how did they look different from a firm that didn't make that decision, right? That hired Saudi men or decrease their expatriate workforce instead. So, we're doing some research now to look at the kind of longer-term effects of those different decisions.

Richard Wilson (31:02.39)
Fascinating, fascinating. Dr. Jennifer Peck, this has been great fun for me. And I think it's going to be really interesting for our listeners. This has been, this is, you put your finger on a fascinating transformation within the larger transformation. And, you know, so much of what Saudi Arabia is trying to do in terms of its economy, its society, that sort of thing, is dependent on how well it integrates its female population.

So, this has been really enlightening. Thank you very much.

Dr. Jennifer Peck (31:35.561)
Thank you for having me. This is great.