Saudi women participation in the labor market grew between 2018 and 2021— from around 22% to almost 36%, with the help of government initiatives including the “Wusool” program, according to a new study by Uber Transport Company.
By late 2021, more than 120,000 women used Wusool to take more than 20 million trips to and from their workplace, and this was mostly through the Uber app, the study pointed out.
The Wusool program is an enhanced mobility partnership that was launched with the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) in Saudi Arabia in 2017 to make transport more accessible to women going to work.
The program proved to be highly successful in empowering working Saudi women.
Uber has announced the results of a recently-commissioned study that has been conducted by Roland Berger, a leading European consulting firm with global reach.The study revealed that the participation of women in the Saudi workforce in 2021 has exceeded 36%, ten years before achieving the Vision 2030 goal, which was aimed at increasing the participation of women in the labor market by 30%.
The Wusool Program has contributed to enhancing job stability for women, through which 88% of them have retained their jobs after benefiting from the program for a year.
Eighty percent of the women who previously relied on public transportation before the launch of the program agreed that the Wusool program has helped them and enabled them to find more and better job opportunities, while 21% of women said that the program contributed to enhancing their job security.
Forty nine percent of the participants confirmed that the main benefit of the program was that it helped them in saving money and being financially independent.
More than 120,000 women, by late 2021, used Wusool to take more than 20 million trips to and from their workplace, and mostly through the Uber app.
The study has also revealed that the number of women who benefited from the program increased from 300 to about 13,000 in only the first year of operation.
It is expected that by the end of 2022, the number of Wusool beneficiaries will reach more than 150,000.