Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has been working on loosening restrictions on women while improving laws regarding their rights in every aspect – from the job market to marital affairs. This week, in line with the wave of reforms aimed at opening up more sectors to women in the Kingdom, the country’s General Border Guard Directorate announced that it is accepting women for the post of “security inspection officer” along its borders.
The directorate explained in a statement that registration and applications for these vacant military posts will be received from June 24 to 30. Applicants must meet a number of requirements such as: being Saudi nationals who were born in the country; not having worked in, or been terminated from, any public or military sector; not having a criminal record; not being married to a non-Saudi; being between 25 and 35 years old; and holding of at least a high-school diploma or equivalent.
This announcement follows two other landmark moves made by the Kingdom earlier this year. In February, Saudi Arabia announced it would be recruiting women to its armed forces for the first time and, in the same month, the public prosecutor's office said it would begin recruiting women investigators. The decision to recruit more women in traditionally male-dominant sectors is one of many reforms under Vision 2030 that have been introduced in recent months in order to enhance women's rights.
In an interview earlier this year on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman expressed his views on where Saudi Arabia is aiming to reach as a country in the next 12 years – particularly how it is working on becoming a society where women would gain their right – saying that women are “absolutely” equal and that “[w]e are all human beings and there is no difference.”
