Saudi Arabia has lifted a ban that kept women from jobs in most fields in what analysts see as a way of fighting extremism and boosting the economy in the wake of the deadly terror attacks in the kingdom.
The Saudi cabinet, chaired by King Fahd, last week took a landmark decision allowing women to obtain commercial licences.
Previously women could only open a business in the name of male relative, and religious and social restrictions excluded them from all but a few professions such as teaching and nursing.
"This decision will certainly reduce social and economic pressures on men, who are no longer capable of meeting family needs due to a drop in personal income," said Nahed Taher, a senior economist at National Commercial Bank.
She told AFP that creating employment had become a way of fighting home-grown terrorism.
"It also has an important security aspect in fighting terrorists in the kingdom, as the solution to this problem is no longer of a purely security nature." Taher said 55 percent of university graduates in the oil-rich kingdom are females, but the overwhelming majority stayed at home because of the ban and a general lack of job opportunities.
According to official figures, only 5.5 percent out of some 4.7 million Saudi women of working age are employed.
The cabinet also ordered government ministries and bodies to create jobs for women, and asked the Chambers of Commerce and Industry to form a committee for women to help train and find jobs for them in the private sector.
It also decided that land will be allocated for the establishment of industrial projects to employ women, and said in future all positions in shops selling women's clothes and accessories would be reserved for Saudi women.
The head of the Jeddah-based Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies, Anwar Eshki, said the steps highlight the role the economy can play in fighting extremism.
"The cost of living has gone up and women must share the burden with their husbands. If this is not done, it will negatively affect the security situation. It will only breed further complications," Eshki said.
"We cannot separate terrorism from the economy ... The security solution is essential, but it is not the decisive one. The cabinet's decision is a response to this understanding," he told AFP.
The kingdom, the world's largest oil producer and exporter, has in the past year been jolted by a string of terrorist attacks which killed more than 85 people and have been blamed on Islamist extremists sympathetic to the al Qaeda network.
Two attacks last month on the petrochemical and oil centers of Yanbu and Al-Khobar raised concern in international markets, pushing crude prices to record highs early last week.
The unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia is estimated at more than 20 percent, though officials insist it is below 10 percent.
Liberals in Saudi Arabia hope to ease a range of restrictions on women that make them dependent on male relatives. Women here have be covered from head to toe in public and cannot mix with men other than relatives. They are also not allowed to drive or travel alone.