Members of Saudi Arabia’s advisory committee the Shura Council, Dr. Lateefa Al Shaalan and Dr. Moodhi Al Khalaf, have submitted a proposal for discussing ways on ensuring pay parity for men and women in the private sector.
While pay disparities and discrimination against women are both illegal in the Kingdom, Saudi Arabian women are paid 56 percent less than their male counterparts, the lowest in the GCC.
Al Shaalan and Al Khalaf pointed to last year’s Global Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum in which Saudi women occupied the 107th place in gender pay gap worldwide. Furthermore, Gulf Business recently reported that “the rate of unemployment among Saudi women was described as the highest in the world.”
According to Gulf News, the Shura members explained that the “gender pay gap is a blatant violation of the provision of the Ministry of Labour and Social Development, which stipulates the prevention of any wage discrimination between male and female employees holding similar positions or performing work of equal value.”
Al Shaalan and Al Khalaf also explained that the gender pay gap was a violation of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), conventions ratified by Saudi Arabia.
In early 2013, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah appointed 30 women to the previously all-male consultative Shura Council. According to BBC, the King’s two landmark decrees “reconstituted the council, which advises the government on new legislation, for a new four-year term - and stated that women should always hold at least a fifth of its 150 seats. The king took the decisions following consultations with religious leaders.”
Since then, the Kingdom has been working on improving the rights of women and encouraging them to have a more active role, in line with its Vision 2030 national strategy.
