Translate page with Google

Story Publication logo January 11, 2014

A Look at Working Women in Saudi Arabia

Author:
A Saudi employee helps a customer at a dress shop in Al Faisaliah Mall. Image by Kate Brooks. Saudi Arabia, 2013.
English

An emerging class of female retail workers is raising new questions about the direction of the Saudi...

author #1 image author #2 image
Multiple Authors
SECTIONS
Media file: zoepf_saudiwomen0004.jpg
Saudi Arabia has one of the world’s lowest rates of female participation in the labor force. It was a mere eighteen per cent in 2011, according to the World Bank. Image by Kate Brooks. Saudi Arabia, 2013.

In Saudi Arabia, there have long been a group of elite women who have been able to work in specific jobs — as doctors or teachers. But retail was closed off to them, until a 2011 decree from King Abdullah, allowing women to work in lingerie shops.

Pulitzer Center grantee Katherine Zoepf visited Saudi Arabia to understand what it means to have women in the Saudi workforce. It's the subject of her recent article in The New Yorker, "Shopgirls: The Art Of Selling Lingerie."

She joins Here & Now's Meghna Chakrabarti to discuss what she learned.

RELATED CONTENT

RELATED TOPICS

Three women grouped together: an elderly woman smiling, a transwoman with her arms folded, and a woman holding her headscarf with a baby strapped to her back.

Topic

Gender Equality

Gender Equality
teal halftone illustration of praying hands

Topic

Religion

Religion
teal halftone illustration of a construction worker holding a helmet under their arm

Topic

Labor Rights

Labor Rights

Support our work

Your support ensures great journalism and education on underreported and systemic global issues