Abstract
Oman encounters high unemployment among its own citizens, predominantly among women and youth, while its economy still strongly relies on imported labour force. To reduce dependence on foreign labour and at the same time tackle unemployment the government introduced a policy for nationalization of the labour force – Omanization, which
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is a part of a wider agenda for diversification and privatization of Omani economy to overcome the reliance on oil revenues. Omani government has set targets that determine to what extent should different sectors be Omanized and increases the targets on a yearly basis; furthermore it also included a target that women’s share in the total workforce should increase, stipulating that female labour participation is one of the important elements in utilizing national human resources and acknowledging that Omani women have been under-represented in the workforce, especially taking into account their high educational attainment in the last two decades. As Omanization has often been presented as an example of best practice among the Gulf states it was interesting to explore which are the distinctive elements that make it effective (or ineffective) and what could be done to improve its gender component.
The thesis focuses on how Omanization is implemented on the work floor and which implications it has for female employees. The surveying has been narrowed down to three professions from the public as well as the private sector, which to a large extend rely on female labour force, have different characteristics and social statuses and are in various stages of the Omanization process. Teaching seems to be the most prestigious among the three and also least disputed one in terms of traditional barriers, nursing has a lesser degree of prestige and sometimes involves work situations that would not be appropriate for an Omani woman; sales profession enjoys the lowest reputation among the three and is deemed as mostly unsuitable for Omani women. Consequently Omanization among teachers is almost completed in the public sector and to some degree present also in private educational institutions, whereas nursing and sales personnel are still in the process of being omanized.
The policy in practice takes different and more complex shapes that those envisaged by the government are, depending on the more subtle characteristics the profession itself and social as well as personal perception of the post/function one is occupying. The broader question debated in this thesis is, whether the current format of the labour nationalization policy is suitable and sufficient to bring more Omani women into the workforce. To determine this, the thesis will try to shed light on how Omanization has changed the Omani labour market and what wanted (as well as unwanted) results it has achieved.
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