DAMMAM — Three Shoura Council members have proposed appointment of a female deputy minister of labor and social development. A source said the Shoura Council members Latifah Al-Shalaan, Moudi Al-Khalaf and Assaf Abu Thanin have submitted the proposal. "The proposal will be reviewed over the next coming weeks. It includes separation of the administration and management of labor and social development. The Shoura members are proposing to appoint a female to head the administration and management of social development. The members emphasized that the appointed female must have a considerable authority within her capacity," said the source. He also said one of the objectives of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 is to increase women involvement in the workforce from 22 to 30 percent. "The Kingdom aims to appoint more women in leading positions. The Kingdom is ranked as one of the countries with the least number of women in leading and managerial positions. The proposal also included statistics showing that worldwide people working for social affairs are mostly women," said the source. The source also said 81.6 percent of the people working for social affairs are women in the United States and more than 75 percent of people working for social affairs in Britain, Canada and Australia are women. "Most of the people in leading and managerial positions in social affairs are women in other Arab and Gulf countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco and Libya. In these countries, the ministry of social affairs is run by a woman. Moreover, the former Bahraini and Tunisian ministers of social affairs were women as well," said the source. The source added that statistics prove that women are capable of running an effective managerial body in the field. "The ministry was split into two in the past, labor and social affairs. The two ministries were merged into one again under its current name as the Ministry of Labor and Social Development. Perhaps the best option is to have one ministry handling labor and social affairs but to have two separate administrations," said the source.
