Saudization you say? What's that?

We’ve met many women at the school who identify themselves as something other than Saudi. In fact, most of them do! These students, faculty and staff seem to identify strongly with their foreign heritage, even if they haven’t lived or spent much time in their homeland. It makes the school feel very diverse. And in fact, the Saudi population as a whole is quite diverse: one fifth of the 26 million people living in Saudi Arabia are non-citizens. That means there are a lot of fathers (and a few mothers!) who move to the Kingdom with their families for a job. It also means, according to our hosts, that if Dad loses his job the whole family has to leave the Kingdom, even if the kids were born and raised here.

In Saudi Arabia (and perhaps other parts of the Middle East, I'm not sure), a father’s nationality determines his daughter’s nationality. I’m sure there are subtleties that I don’t understand, but basically if a woman’s father is a foreign national, then she is a national of that country as well, even if she was born in Saudi Arabia, even if her mother is Saudi. This law made for a few confusing conversations when I first arrived. “You’re Yemeni…so you’re originally from Yemen?…oh you’ve lived in the Kingdom your whole life…so you were born in Yemen?…oh you weren’t...Wait, what?”

One important consequence of this method for tracking citizenship is that it makes the already difficult task of finding a job even harder for many of Dar Al-Hekma’s grads. The Kingdom has a policy called “Saudization”, which requires that 75-80% of private companies’ employees be Saudi. The government implemented this policy to reduce the unemployment rate and address the growing number of Saudi college graduates. In practice, though, private companies haven’t reached that level of Saudi employment because foreign workers are willing to accept lower wages. As a result, the government is continually refining the policy, and just announced the most recent set of changes that include a “red”, “yellow”, “green” classification system. Green companies get incentives and government contracts; red ones are prohibited from renewing visas for their foreign employees.

For the “foreign” female graduates of Dar Al-Hekma—even second generation expats who were born in Saudi Arabia—Saudization is a significant roadblock to employment. I was really surprised when a finance student told me that she didn’t really see being a woman as a challenge; the challenge for her was not being Saudi. The students in the school are optimistic for the future, but they're also realistic. Some of them talk about getting jobs abroad, where they can get visas.

http://www.arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article388938.ece