The past few months have seen a huge number of Saudi women join the kingdom's workforce.

According to Nawal Abdullah Al-Thabian, a top official of the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, around 600,000 Saudi women have already entered the country's job market.

The assistant director general of the ministry's Mecca branch revealed the record number during a lecture held at a conference titled Empowerment of Saudi Women in Light of the Kingdom's Vision 2030.

During her address, Al-Thabian explained how the female workforce "is not only productive but also creative despite the many obstacles and challenges that they experience."

The official added that the ministry recently initiated 68 schemes to facilitate employment opportunities for Saudi women.

These include schemes like the QARA program, which provides children daycare facilities at workplaces. Al-Thabian stated that 13,516 working women benefited from the scheme.

Other initiatives include ones focused on providing women with transportation. 

Contrary to popular belief, Saudi women haven't been joining the kingdom's public sector solely. They're being provided with different positions at the country's diverse private sector, too. 

Under Vision 2030, women unemployment rates have been dropping

With Vision 2030, more Saudi women are taking up jobs in new fields, such as flight attendants and taxi drivers

Launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the ever-transforming footprint aims at diversifying the economy beyond oil and increasing the percentage of Saudi women in the workforce.

With more women hired than ever before, Saudi Arabia's unemployment rate for females has seen significant drops. 

During the third quarter of 2018, the rates dropped to 30.9 percent among Saudi women, from 31.1 percent in the second quarter of 2018.

In recent months, the kingdom's General Directorate of Passports announced it will start recruiting women to work at airports and land border-crossing points. 

Even though there were only 140 job openings, over 107,000 women applied. Last year, Director General of Traffic Mohammed Al Bassami announced women will soon be joining the traffic police forces.

In October last year, the country created 80,000 jobs for Saudi women after it limited women's clothing stores' jobs to nationals only.

During that same month, Saudi officials announced that the Gulf state's Air Navigation Services Company (SANS) was planning to employ women as air traffic controllers for the first time in the country's history.

In August 2018, Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Civil Aviation issued local pilot licenses to five Saudi women for the first time ever.