Case Study Help on Saudi female paramedics in the workplace
Theoretical framework of gendered organizational theory and glass ceiling: A case of Saudi female paramedics in the workplace
Abstract
The women workforce has been facing discriminations and disparities for many decades. Healthcare establishments in Saudi Arabia have a low female workforce, which is a representation of the whole country in general. Though a change has been seen in many western countries there is still a major gap in the employment ratio in the middle east especially The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is a dire need of female paramedic staff in the country this is where Saudi Vision 2030 steps in as it reflects on increasing the women empowerment and employment, which can be achieved by understanding the root cause of it. This research focuses on developing a theoretical framework of gendered organizational theory and glass ceiling on the Saudi female paramedics. The theoretical framework is developed with the literature of the previous studies and will assist in exploring the challenges that female paramedic staff face in the workplace and how to eradicate them by policy changes and providing equal opportunities to all genders. The framework developed focuses on the existence of the glass ceiling and analyze the gendered organizational theory in the industry and how it impacts female paramedic staff recruitment, education, retention, and satisfaction.
Keywords: gendered organizational theory, glass ceiling, female paramedic staff, the employment ratio, discriminations, disparities
Introduction
Over the last 50 years women have achieved significant gains by breaking gender barriers in career selection. Today, more young women choose careers in traditionally male-dominated fields such as engineering and technology, and the number of women running for political office is on the rise in countries and organisations around the world (Folke and Rickne, 2016). However, despite these gains gender inequality continues to be a critical issue in the workplace (Syed et al., 2018). Despite efforts to eradicate these disparities, gender inequality in wages, promotion, and gender-based discriminations still affect the female workforce.(Folke and Rickne, 2016). In the Australian labour industry, women are educated and actively participate in the workplace, nonetheless, unequal pay for men and women doing similar jobs dominates in most organisations. For example, according to the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency (2019), “Women earn on average $239.80 per week less than men”. In contrast, women in the Saudi Arabian labour force have increased educational attainment and strengthening attachment to the workforce but still earn less opportunities than men, which leads to women to applying for very narrowed domains of jobs, such as education and administration (Syed et al., 2018). Regardless of their academic qualifications, the number of women in executive positions is lower compared to men due to male dominance, and the ‘glass ceiling’ which known as any viable or invisible barriers that affected women in the top level of leadership (Wrigley, 2002), and reluctance to promote women citing challenged gender roles (Glass and Cook, 2016).
In the Kingdome of Saudi Arabia many factors are affected negatively to include Saudi women in the workforce, such as, parental issues, masculine, employer bias, discrimination, stereotyping, limited training and development and discriminatory organizational policies and practice (Al-Asfour et al., 2017). Another set of challenges that Saudi women faced in the workplace includes work-family balance, conservative cultural and religious factors, limited career advancement and lack of family support and concern for equal opportunity (Tlaiss, 2014). Paramedics advancements is one of the most important areas that need to increase the number of professions in both genders to deliver the emergency care to the patients. Training of female paramedics are began recently in many private collages and public universities (Alharthy et al., 2018). These colleges and universities graduated a large number of female paramedics, small number of them are working in public or private hospitals. Such as King Khalid University Hospital, King Fahad Medical City and King Abdullah University Hospital.
These hospitals have a policy to hire them as paramedics, some other hospitals employee them as a nurses or prefer female nurses. In Saudi Arabia the main prehospital setting is Saudi Red crescent Authority (SRCA), where they are responsible for providing basic and advanced life support for all patients in prehospital settings by Saudi and None Saudi male paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) (Al-Yousuf et al., 2002; Saudi Red Crescent Authority, 2019). Male paramedics and EMTs are more capable for these types of jobs due to their physical structure and durability in the face of heinous accidents, while women are capable in other positions such as pharmacology, radiology and laboratory.
Gender bias and discrimination are significant challenges in the workplace with women experiencing gender-based harassment, including gender bias (Nadler and Stockdale, 2012). Male dominance in the workplace especially in influential and powerful positions, gives them the power to harass female workers (Al-Ahmadi, 2011; Hennekam and Bennett, 2017). The ‘glass ceiling’ addresses the hidden barriers, which is gendered-biased, such as men being in better decision making positions (Purcell et al., 2010). There are many gender-related organizational factors contributing to glass ceiling barriers (Buckalew et al., 2012). Therefore, there is a need to examine the link between gendered organizational factors and the glass ceiling for developing countries context such as Saudi Arabia (I. Carvalho et al., 2019). The gender organizations theory incorporates these gender-based challenges experienced by women in the modern organisation to sensitize and recommend best approaches to addressing issues related to gender inequality, including prehospital healthcare services (Acker, 2012). Being motivated by this, this paper aims to identify an appropriate theoretical model that addresses gender inequality that would be applicable for Saudi female paramedics.
Context of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was unified in 1932 by King Abdulaziz Bin Abdulrahman Al Saud (Mufti, 2000) and is considered the heart of the Islamic world since it holds the two holy mosques of Islam Mecca and Madina. Therefore, Islam is the official religion in the country and Al-Shraria which has been derived from the Qur’an and Sunnah (the narratives of the prophet Mohammad) is the official law, causing direct impact on the social structure of Saudi families. The fundamental obligation of each Muslim is to totally submit to God (Allah) and give obedience to his law, as stated in the Qur’an and Sunnah (Bjerke and Al‐Meer, 1993). In addition to that, Saudi Arabia is located in the Middle East and furthermost part of south
western Asia and is one of the largest countries in the region, occupying 2,218,000 square kilometres (general Authority for Statistics, 2015) with a population of 33,413,660 people, where females make up 42.4% (General Authority for Statistics (2018). According to the United Nations, projections expected the Saudi population to reach 40 million by 2025 (Mufti, 2000).
Health System in Saudi Arabia
The Ministry of Health (MOH) was created in 1950 and has the main responsibility for the healthcare system in Saudi Arabia (Al-Yousuf et al., 2002). Currently, the MOH oversees the finances, operations, and supervision of all healthcare sectors in the country (Almalki et al., 2011). The country is divided into 13 regions under the MOH, with a representative for each area (Ministry of Health, 2018), which has a number of challenges in the system, including a shortage of professionals, lack of resources, and shortage of male and female paramedics in the healthcare system (Alharthy et al., 2018; Almalki et al., 2011). Therefore, the MOH along with all other governmental hospitals, is responsible to provides 24-hour emergency care services, which cannot be achieved without relying on the Saudi Red Crescent Authority (SRCA). The SRCA is one of the most important area in the healthcare system in the country, especially in prehospital setting. It was established in 1963 and provides free Emergency Medical Services (EMS) across the country (Saudi Red Crescent Authority, 2019), such as medical and trauma cases. The SRCA provides prehospital services throughout the country via 454 stations distributed across the 13 administrative regions, and it is serviced by 5715 male Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and paramedics (General Authority for Statistics, 2018; Saudi Red Crescent Authority, 2019), where the employment of the Saudi female paramedics is still limited within hospitals settings only. This paper will contribute in the healthcare literature by identifying an appropriate theoretical model that addresses gender inequality that would be applicable for Saudi female paramedics.
Saudi female role in the country
While Saudi females have many roles and positions in the country, this often does not include leadership positions in healthcare organizations, hospitals or healthcare educations. They work as doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, and allied health personnel (Elsheikh et al., 2018; General Authority for Statistics, 2018). According to the General Authority for Statistics (2018), Saudi females occupied 18.6% of the general workforce in healthcare sectors and
36.9% of the total female healthcare providers including other nationalities. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia’s new vision 2030 stated that over 50% of Saudi university graduates are female and they will develop more opportunities for their talent and enable them to strength their future and contribute to the development of Saudi society and economy. The Saudi new vision 2030 aims to increase Saudi women’s empowerment and employment and to give them opportunities to contribute to development and rebirth of the country (Elsheikh et al., 2018). The Saudi vision also reports that female workers occupied 22% of all jobs in the country and the plan is to increase female empowerment and employment to 30% by 2030 (Vision 2030, 2019), a significant part of this inclusion will be in the healthcare sector. The most important goal of the Saudi government in this vision is to increase the number of women in the national workforce, including female paramedics in the EMS services after increased demands and developments for education in this area (Alharthy et al., 2018). Despite, Saudi female paramedics are urgently needed in the Saudi EMS filed, many visible or invisible challenges that need to address and solve to encourage and employee them in the first line of emergency medicine.
The glass ceiling
The glass ceiling is a concept that describes barriers for women and minorities in a workplace (Akpinar-Sposito, 2013). Western feminism sought to oppose this discriminatory concept of glass ceiling in the 1970s (Connell, 2006). All challenges of biases against women and minorities such as age, sex, cultural differences and organisational politics are faced to ensure equal growth opportunities in the workplace. There is a large amount of research on the ‘glass ceiling’, addressing the effects of the concept on women in a workplace. In 1986, The Wall Street Journal described the glass ceiling simply as an invisible barrier for females (Carli and Eagly, 2001). Women have already proven their ability to work at top levels, but the glass ceiling still blocks women from reaching top management levels (Scholarios and Taylor, 2011). Going beyond the workplace, Pingleton et al. (2016) argued that these invisible barriers also deprive society of potential leaders that could benefit the society as whole; men on the other hand have more opportunities to become leaders in the workplace and in turn the society. It has been debated that men also consider women to not be motivated enough to work as hard as their male colleagues and also to have habits that effect their work negatively (Stamarski and Son Hing, 2015), such as most of the married females having more family responsibilities, birth planning and child rearing which may affected negatively to their workforce.
