Women’s Economic Empowerment in The KSA Through Vocational Training - Personality Skills - Cultural Factors

Abstract

Women’s economic participation is seen to have been gradually increasing over the past decades as they play an important and major role in the global workforce. Saudi Arabia has recently joined the trend by loosening some of its legislative rules and cultural norms. This research aims to assess economic participation of Saudi women as part of the workforce and as entrepreneurs by assessing several factors that might hinder their progress. The study examined vocational training and its effectiveness to foster entrepreneurial attitudes, personal skills and their relation to performance excellence, and lastly into cultural factors and their impact on women’s economic participation. In order to do so, a mixed methods research methodology was adopted utilizing a quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) data collection instruments to generate findings. SPSS, thematic, and a comparative analysis were relied upon to analyse the primary and secondary data. The findings revealed that vocational training lacks a comprehensive approach that covers multiple fields of interest while presenting accessibility challenges. While Saudi women possessed critical skills in areas such as negotiation, problem-solving, and goal setting, networking skills have been absent due to cultural constraints hence hindering their ability to expand their operational scope. Finally, it was found that Saudi culture, and in particular community culture, restricts the ability of women to thrive as entrepreneurs. However, a positive trend was observed which encompasses Saudi families showing increased acceptance of their female members to participate in business ownership.