Saudi Arabia makes significant progress empowering women

The embassy of Saudi Arabia to China organized an event in Beijing on Tuesday to celebrate International Women's Day.

Ambassador Abdulrahman Ahmad Alharbi delivered a speech during the event. He stressed that the wise leadership is aware of the importance of encouraging and empowering all members of society in achieving the goals of the Kingdom's Vision 2030. As a result, Saudi Arabia has made significant progress in recent years empowering women in multiple aspects.

The government of the Kingdom has launched the Saudi Women's Empowerment Initiative within the framework of the Kingdom's general budget, which aims to increase the qualitative participation of women in the public and private sectors at all career levels through women's assumption of senior structural leadership positions.

Starting from this year's budget, the Kingdom will apply this approach in the general budget preparation process. The Kingdom has also developed the sectors that would enable Saudi women to obtain modern job opportunities in various fields, such as technology, information and communications, health and medicine, tourism, sports and entertainment, finance and economy, culture, art and heritage.

As a culmination of these efforts, the Saudi women's participation rate in the labor force has increased from 32.4 percent in the second quarter of 2021 to 35.6 percent in the same quarter of 2022. Furthermore, unemployment rates among Saudi women have decreased from 22.3 percent during the second quarter of 2021 to 19.3 percent during the same period in 2022. In addition, the economic participation rate of Saudi females has also increased from 17 percent in 2017 to 35.6 percent in 2021. Saudi women have also held senior leadership positions, such as deputy ministers, ambassadors and members of the Consultative Council, and they have also chaired many executive councils in the government and private sectors.