Posted by Politics Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia’s thriving startup scene driven by women
March 16, 2024
A flourishing entrepreneur scene has transformed the Saudi business world. Startups contribute to the nation’s branding efforts and aim to tackle unemployment, as it aims to move away from a dependence on oil revenue.
Saudi Arabia’s thriving startup scene is driven by women and powered in part by Vision 2030, an initiative introduced by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
It’s now almost impossible to imagine the Saudi economy without the thriving startup scene and its female entrepreneurs.
Less than a decade ago, the situation was largely different.
“There was literally no ecosystem for startup companies,” Maha Shirah, one of the first female Saudi entrepreneurs in Riyadh, told DW.
For women, starting a business was particularly tough.
In 2014, when Shirah opened the country’s first workspace for women, laws still restricted the participation of women in many industries.
Ten years on, the Saudi Ministry of Commerce has published a comprehensive list of workspaces for women, and the local startup landscape is not only thriving but is driven by women across all industries.
“When it comes to laws affecting women’s decisions to work, laws affecting women’s pay, constraints on women starting and running a business, and laws affecting the size of a woman’s pension, Saudi Arabia gets a perfect score of 100,” the recent World Bank report Women, Business and the Law 2024 concluded.
The 2021-2022 Women’s Report for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also stated that 95% of Saudi women listed entrepreneur as a good career choice.
Although current statistics on female labor force participation and female entrepreneurs have yet to be published, the trend is apparent.
“Between 2017 and 2021, the Saudi female labor force participation rate doubled from 17.4% to 35.6%, comfortably exceeding the ‘Vision 2030’ target of raising it to 30%,” Tim Callen, a visiting fellow at the Washington-based think tank Arab Gulf States Institute, wrote in January 2024.
There is no doubt that Vision 2030 — a socioeconomic set of reforms introduced in January 2016 by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — has been the key driver of this process.
Part and parcel of the overhaul is the inclusion of women in the workforce, tackling the pressing issue of unemployment, pushing for diversification from oil revenues and opening the country for tourists.
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