An Exploration of The Views of Mixed Gender Working in Saudi Private Sector: A Case Study of ABX Company

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to explore the views of mixed-gender working in the Saudi private sector. The key objectives of the research study are to explore the extent of mixed gender and obstacles that face women at the mixed workplace in the Saudi private sector. Various studies had been undertaken in the area of mixed-gender work in the workplace, no study has explored the extent of mixed gender and barriers facing women work at the workplace in Saudi Arabia, which is a research gap that the current study sought to address. This research study a qualitative study with an inductive approach designed on an exploratory case study to explore a new aspect. This research-based on conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with six participants who work in a Saudi private sector, as a source of primary data collection. The snowball sampling used as participants supplied the researcher with the name of other interviewees. The research questions were open-ended and have been created based on the literature review as secondary sources. It allowed the participants to provide insight on the exploration of the objectives, to seek answers for the research questions, and to generate rich and validated data. A cross-sectional analysis was used to answer the research questions. Findings of this study revealed several issues to the questions that were presented to the participants. The majority of the participants have agreed that the extent of mixed gender in the Saudi private sector are limited. Women prefer to isolate themselves from men in a section to work in at the mixed workplace, women are more concerned about their reputation at the mixed workplace, where they prefer to avoid the argument with men at the mixed workplace. Many obstacles that face genders in the mixed workplace were identified, such as inequality in payment, positions, and promotions, difficulty to equalize between family and work, men do not prefer to be bossed by women, and the control by men over the women's progress professional career, the opportunity of marriage for women who work in a mixed genders workplace is decreased, and the Saudi society still does not support women to work in the mixed workplace environment. Findings have supported the exploration of the views of mixed gender and have achieved the research’s objectives. It illustrated the extent of mixed gender, and obstacles face women at workplace in the Saudi private sector.