‘We’ve woken up’: attitudes change as Saudi Arabia kick-starts job market

‘We’ve woken up’: attitudes change as Saudi Arabia kick-starts job market

After Munira completed Islamic studies at a university in Riyadh, she moved back to her parents home in Zulfi, a small town in Saudi Arabia’s conservative heartland where the labour market catered “only for men”.

For several years, she sat idle, keen to return to the capital and get a job, but stymied by her parents, who, like many conservative Saudis of the elder generation, could not comprehend their daughter wanting to leave the family nest and search for employment.

“I told them they have to let me go, I cannot sit all my life like this,” Munira said. “The first time [I told them] they said ‘No, why? We can give you money’. I said ‘I don’t want to spend my life like this, I’m not looking for marriage yet, I need more experience in life’.”

But her parents finally relented and today, Munira, 28, works in a men’s clothes store in the capital and shares an apartment with her sister.

She is one of the growing number of women working in the conservative kingdom, a trend that has helped change the face of retail outlets in the capital’s ubiquitous malls and delivered one tangible success of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious