A job advertisement in Saudi Arabia offering 30 roles for female train drivers has received 28,000 applicants, according to the Spanish-owned train company, Renfe.
The jobs were clearly appealing to women, with Renfe saying that successful applicants will be given a year of paid training before taking on the duty of operating bullet trains between Mecca and Medina — a 450km journey that takes just over 4 hours.
The company said their application process, which requires applicants to undertake an online assessment of academic background and English language skills, has cut down the number of candidates to roughly half.
Commentators believe the explosive number of applicants demonstrates the demand from women hoping to work in the Muslim country, which receives frequent criticism from international bodies for its lack of gender equality.
It was only less than 4 years ago when laws changed to allow women to drive. Until 2019, when women entered restaurants, they had to use separate entrances or sit behind plastic partitions that separated them from men they weren’t related to.
Within Renfe’s Public Employment Offer, which also announced the Madrid-based company was looking to recruit just under 1,000 new employees in their company, Renfe said it wanted to create opportunities for women in Saudi Arabia.
Currently, it employs 80 male train drivers in Saudi Arabia – a country of more than 35 million.
Until recently, Saudi women had employment opportunities confined to industries such as teaching and medical aid, since strict gender segregation rules restricted them from working in other areas of society.
Since Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman came into power in 2017, he has been pushing to open the kingdom by diversifying the country’s economy and relaxing many gender-based rules.
In the last five years alone, female participation in the workforce has almost doubled, with more women assuming the jobs that historically only men and migrant workers could access.
“In a relatively short time span of just two years, the labor force participation rate of Saudi women increased from 20 percent in late 2018 to 33 percent by the end of 2020,” the Brookings Institute declared last April.
“That is to say that the share of Saudi women in the labor market expanded by an incredible 64 percent in just two years.”
Director of Social and Family Affairs at Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Maha Akeel, insists the gender pay gap is still something that needs to be addressed within the country.
“Recent research by a Saudi nonprofit organisation dedicated to the empowerment of women, found gender gaps not only in workforce participation but also in career development and compensation, with Saudi women earning just SR57 ($21) for every SR100 ($37) earned by Saudi men, even after adjusting for differences in education levels and experience,” she wrote in August last year.
“This means that on average, Saudi men earn 43 percent more than women with similar education and experience. Overall, Saudi women have higher levels of education compared with Saudi men, but the men have more work experience.”