International Journal of

ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES

EISSN: 2313-3724, Print ISSN: 2313-626X

Frequency: 12

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 Volume 12, Issue 7 (July 2025), Pages: 118-125

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 Original Research Paper

Foreign direct investment, trade openness, and the gender unemployment gap in Saudi Arabia: An empirical ARDL approach

 Author(s): 

 Khaled Mejdi 1, *, Omer Habtoor 1, Mohsin Alhamadani 2, Dema Abadi 1, Rema Othman 1

 Affiliation(s):

  1Applied College of Rafha, Northern Border University, Rafha, Saudi Arabia
  2Faculty of Business Administration of Arar, Northern Border University, Arar, Saudi Arabia

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 * Corresponding Author. 

   Corresponding author's ORCID profile:  https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5311-4742

 Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2025.07.011

 Abstract

This study is one of the few that examines how foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade openness affect female and male unemployment rates in Saudi Arabia. The analysis uses the gender unemployment gap index (GGI) and applies an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model along with the Bounds test to explore these relationships. The results show three main findings: First, FDI has a positive and significant effect on the unemployment gap between women and men, suggesting that women have not benefited from FDI inflows during this period. Second, both short-run and long-run estimates show that trade openness has a negative and significant impact on female unemployment, meaning that increasing international trade reduces unemployment among women, while it may lead to higher unemployment among men. Third, the results indicate that women have not benefited from public investment or oil revenues, as their unemployment rate tends to increase with these economic factors.

 © 2025 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords

 Foreign direct investment, Trade openness, Gender unemployment gap, Female unemployment, Public investment

 Article history

 Received 28 October 2024, Received in revised form 22 April 2025, Accepted 12 June 2025

 Acknowledgment

No Acknowledgment. 

 Compliance with ethical standards

 Conflict of interest: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

 Citation:

 Mejdi K, Habtoor O, Alhamadani M, Abadi D, and Othman R (2025). Foreign direct investment, trade openness, and the gender unemployment gap in Saudi Arabia: An empirical ARDL approach. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 12(7): 118-125

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 Figures

  Fig. 1  Fig. 2

 Tables

  Table 1  Table 2  Table 3  Table 4  Table 5  Table 6  Table 7 

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