Advances in career development: Unveiling the voices of women academics in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Saudi Arabia has among the world's lowest rates of female workforce participation. For cultural reasons, women have been restricted in their work and careers. However, since 2016 the situation has changed with a major government initiative, Vision 2030, that encourages Saudi women to enter the workforce and pursue careers. The research presented here was motivated by a desire to understand how women navigate their careers and how Vision 2030 might affect this. The focus of the research, undertaken during this time of change, is Saudi academic women and their career experiences. General career development theories and literature on women’s careers are typically Western, emphasising individual and organisational factors with little regard for context, including culture, religion, and individual agency. The few studies of women’s careers in Arabic nations identify career barriers but tend to regard all Middle Eastern women as the same and fail to examine how women navigate these barriers. The aim of the research was to investigate how Saudi Arabian women academics exert their agency in traversing career barriers within the context of Islam, segregated workplaces, and a restrictive national culture. An exploratory, qualitative, multi-case study research design was employed to address the research aim. Semi-structured interviews were held with 30 academics from three public universities in different regions in Saudi Arabia. Interview transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis and organised into four composite narratives representing four hypothetical women academics at four different stages of their careers: early career; junior without a PhD; mid-career with overseas experience; and senior academic in a management position. Because of the inclusion of context, Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) (Lent & Brown, 1996; Lent et al., 1994) was used as a guiding theoretical framework. Through the four composite narratives, the women make a distinction between religion and culture, using their religion to resist cultural power imbalances, patriarchy, and unfair practices within their organisational cultures. These women exercised their agency in various ways to tackle career challenges and seize opportunities where they could. However, their agency is individual rather than collective as they lack support from colleagues, policies, and the organisational culture. Although the women actively resist male-dominated structures and negative sub-cultures, at times their behaviours inadvertently reinforce these problems by vii undermining the authority of female colleagues and perpetuating the cultural belief in male superiority. The research moves away from the typical Western portrayal of Muslim women as helpless victims, instead recognising them as individuals who exercise their own forms of agency within the structural and religious contexts of their lives and workplaces. Overall, the findings augur well for Saudi women being able to embrace and accelerate change. Importantly, apart from the novel use of composite narratives, the thesis contributes to three literatures: management theory generally exemplified through career development theory; specific contributions to extending factors in SCCT; and contributions to gender studies and Islamic feminism. Additionally, it offers practical implications for higher education, and university policymakers, and academic women leaders.