Saudi Arabia
Abeer Mishkhas
It’s official: Women may work in any job that “suits their nature,” said Abeer Mishkhas in Riyadh’s Web-based Arab View. That, at least, is the promise of a new labor law, passed just last week. The problem is, nobody is quite sure what it means. Women already have “limited choices” for jobs in this country, of course. The most ambitious can choose only from teaching or medicine. Will their options now be curtailed even more, as certain fields are defined as being against the female “nature”? And what about men’s nature? In Saudi Arabia, “no woman would work as a construction worker” or a street cleaner. But—“and this is important—no Saudi man would either.” It seems, then, that we should define just what each sex’s nature is. “Maybe then we could start to understand what our men and women can and cannot do.” And who knows? “Maybe then men will give up certain jobs—and women will take them.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
October 19 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's editorial cartoons include Pete Hegseth and the press, an absence of government, and George Washington crossing the Delaware
-
A little-visited Indian Ocean archipelagoThe Week Recommends The paradise of the Union of the Comoros features beautiful beaches, colourful coral reefs and lush forests
-
AI: is the bubble about to burst?In the Spotlight Stock market ever-more reliant on tech stocks whose value relies on assumptions of continued growth and easy financing
