Working Conditions for Women in Bahrain

If you are looking into moving abroad to Bahrain to live and work and you are a woman you might want to first familiarize your self with the working conditions for women in the country before you make the move. While women are allowed to work in Bahrain, and many do, it is an Arab country where men have traditionally been the only people that have worked outside of the home. Instead women were traditionally just the homemakers of the family. This has been slowing changing in Bahrain but the climate is not the same as what you would experience in Western Europe or the United States.

Due much in part of the influx of foreign women to the country, Bahrain is seeing more and more women working outside of the home. At first women were only seen working in either teaching or nursing but that is not the case any longer. These days you will find women in Bahrain working in other sectors too, such as finance, banking and the service industry. Granted a large majority of the women that are employed in the country are expatriate women. Most of the women that are working in Bahrain are doing so in the service sector, which consists of doctors, educators, hotel administrators, lawyers, and those in advertising, public relations and as flight attendants for major airline services.

Local women of Bahrain are also a part of the workforce. There is still some prejudice in the country though and there are some employers that simply do not hire women to work in the company. Women that are working in Bahrain typically are viewed as cheaper to employ than men, meaning that they are not paid a comparable wage to the men's salaries. While there are some women that hold positions of power in various organizations in Bahrain, there are not that many of them and they only do so with the support of the men in their family.

Women are usually safe in the workplace. There is no need to worry about sexual harassment as there are stiff punishments in Bahrain for that type of behavior. Women in the workplace may experience a lack of respect though as there has been a recent influx of prostitutes into the country which has resulted in all women in Bahrain being treated with less respect. Foreign women are also cautioned to not be overly friendly with Arab men in the workplace as it is usually misunderstood as being too flirtatious. It is important for foreign women working in Bahrain to remember that they are in a different culture and that societal norms are not the same as in the Western world.