Labour Minister hails Bahrain women’s strides

Manama:

The Kingdom of Bahrain is gearing up to celebrating the annual women’s day, which falls this year on Sunday (December1).

Labour and Social Development Minister Jameel bin Mohammed Ali Humaidan congratulated Her Royal Highness Princess Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al-Khalifa, Wife of His Majesty the King and Supreme Council for Women (SCW).

He also also extended congratulations to all the people of Bahrain on the annual celebration, being held this year under the theme “Woman in Higher Education and Future Sciences”, in recognition of Bahraini women’s academic and professional strides.

He paid tribute to His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa who is leading a wide-ranging development which contribute to promoting Bahraini women’ empowerment, supported by constitutional and legislative guarantees that bolster their rights and integrate their needs into the Government Action Plan (GAP) to ensure gender equal opportunities.

He lauded Bahraini women’s achievements in the sectors of higher education and future sciences, competently holding leading positions as university president or dean or becoming members of international centres.  

He commended the SCW initiative to launch a unified framework for family counseling and awareness enhancing services so as to strengthen family cohesion and achieve community stability, which represents a key pillar of the national women empowerment strategy.

Citing updated statistics, he said that the ministry has succeeded in enhancing the rate of Bahraini women working in the private sector from 25%, three years ago, to 40% in 2019.

Bahraini also make up 40% of the national workforce and more than 50% in the government sector, even reaching 80% in education and health services.

The ministry has also survey more than 5,000 Bahraini women who opted to work as part-timers, ever since the streamlined scheme was launched in the year 2015.

According to the ministry’s statistics, Bahraini women also make 50% of the overall newcomers who are employed for the first time in the private sector.

They also account for 70% of work opportunities which are provided by the ministry to female job-seekers through employment vacancy bank. The ministry has also trained over 6000 job-seekers from September 2017 to September 2019 – of whom 78% of job-seekers are females.