Bahrain: ‘Bahraini women must accept first job that comes their way’

MANAMA — Bahrain government yesterday urged women to accept jobs being offered to them as 90 per cent of university graduate jobseekers are females.

The Acting Chief Executive of the Labour Fund (authority to tackle unemployment) Abdulellah Al Qassimi, said: "Females should get into the workplace even if the first job offered to them is something they are over-qualified for. Once they are in, they can prove that they are the best and get better chances."

He said that analysis of how men and women were utilising new opportunities for business development and training that the Fund was introducing into Bahrain's workplace had shown that women were quick to grab training and educational routes but were slower to strike out on their own as business owners.

Al Qassimi believes in delivering equal opportunities to both genders and did not specifically tailor programmes for women alone. However, he said, statistics reveal that Bahraini women are cautiously emerging out of the traditional 'caregiver' careers of teaching and nursing to explore 'male' domains in finance and aviation.

Over the past year, the Labour Fund has initiated courses for Bahrainis in eight key areas that offer career growth and whether it is traditionally ‘women's choice’ areas like nursing, HR management and retail industry or newer arenas like IT development and aeronautical engineering, a total of 516 women have enrolled for the programmes.

Analysis shows that nursing is still a top favourite with 294 of the 346 students in Labour Fund-supported nursing courses at the College of Health Sciences and the Royal College of Surgeons — Ireland being Bahraini women. Information Technology (66 per cent), Accountancy (60 per cent) and HR management (53 per cent) are the other preferred 'hot careers' for Bahraini women if enrolment in LF-supported courses are analysed for women's preference.

-- Khaleej Times