WUNRN
The Gulf
Cooperation Council is a political and economic union of the Arab
states constituting the Arabian Peninsula, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.
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GULF
COOPERATION COUNCIL CONSIDERS ADVANTAGES
OF HOME-WORKING PROFESSIONAL GULF WOMEN
Gulf Times - 19 August, 2011
An
additional 2mn highly qualified women could join the GCC (Gulf Cooperation
Council) workforce to potentially contribute up to $ 363bn or 30% of the
region’s economy, if home-working is implemented, according to Oxford Strategic
Consulting (OSC) report.
Finding that 58% of the region’s workforce consists of expatriates, the report
said the GCC governments have the ability to reduce this dependency, which is
detrimental in the long term, by establishing a new trend of home-working to
bring qualified females into professional roles.
“Providing more jobs for the GCC nationals has been an underlying goal in
governments’ visions for the future and home-working can be successfully
integrated into GCC economies, resulting in socio-economic benefits through
increased employment of national women, and paving the way for sustainable
growth and gender parity in line with current government strategies”, said
Chris Rowley, director of the Centre for Research on Asian Management, Cass
Business School, London.
As in other countries where home-working is popular, women often find that
home-working offers a solution to the problematic balance of work and family
commitments – especially as Qatar is a market where alternatives to full-time
positions, such as job-share and part-time hours, are uncommon.
According to the report, by working from home these qualified women would be
afforded a greater flexibility to take care of family commitments, and
therefore able to participate in the national workforce and utilise their
university educations.
“Qatar would benefit and prosper by the implementation of home-working as it
would provide a perfect opportunity to narrow the gap between the level of
female graduates and the number of those actually entering the labour market,”
it said.
The OSC conducted a survey of 50 public and private sector companies across the
GCC to assess attitudes to home-working for professional women wherein it found
53% of the respondents felt that the two major perceived obstacles to
home-working for qualified women in the GCC were concerns over
commitment/responsibility to independently work and management style.
In initial surveys on the potential success of implementing a company that
offers home-working services employing female GCC nationals, 85% of respondents
indicated that they were open to the idea of using such a service.
The report said the cost of setting up an employee at home is normally cheaper
than the cost of expanding current office space and installing new equipment to
allow in-house employees to do the same job.
Many women who could potentially work from home will already have access to
computers and phone lines, which leaves training as the main cost of
introducing such an initiative, it said, adding those companies’ surveyed
identified roles in call centres, human resource advice, recruitment and
translation that could be outsourced to women working from home.
All of these services require minimal training and are generally roles that
require individual rather than group work, making them ideal for out sourcing
to qualified home-working female professionals, the report said.