19 September 2011
BEIRUT: Women in the Middle East and North Africa face multiple barriers to employment, putting their job participation rates at 26 percent, or half the world’s average, a World Bank Development report released Monday said.
MENA women also suffer from “a lack of voice,” with shortages of women in decision-making bodies that surpass global standards.
Women occupy 10 percent of a MENA parliament on average, according to the report. Global averages of female parliamentary participation stand at around 20 percent.
The World Bank lists its MENA bloc as Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, the West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen.
The 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development calls on countries to use “smart economics” to advance gender equality, creating better opportunities for women and girls by overcoming gender differentiation in markets and institutions.
This, in turn, will significantly enhance economic efficiency. Eliminating barriers that prevent women from working in certain occupations has increased labor productivity by up to 25 percent across a range of countries, the report said.
“Conservative social norms and legal restrictions on mobility” were found to be the main reasons for poor female participation in the MENA.
Women in several Middle Eastern countries must receive permission from a male guardian – a father, brother or husband – in order to travel.
In Saudi Arabia, where women’s mobility is likely the most restricted, women must receive permission from a guardian before taking a job.
Still, MENA governments have made some important strides toward gender equality, said the report.
“Rapid progress” in improving women’s education and longevity has been observed. There’s also been a striking drop in fertility levels.
There are now more women than men in universities of the MENA, according to Sudhir Shetty, Co-director of the World Bank’s 2012 World Development Report.
It took 30 years for fertility rates in Iran to drop from seven children per female to two children per female. Fertility rates in Morocco fell by a similar amount in 11 years. It took the United States more than 100 years to achieve that demographic shift, which development pundits consider to a major component of economic progress.
Disproportionate female mortality, an ailment various parts of the developing world suffer from, is not a MENA problem, states the report.
But gender gaps persist in the MENA. Growth, which characterizes the majority of the region’s economies, necessarily improves female living conditions, opening new opportunities for women’s employment. But it takes more active policy planning to close the gap.
The report advocates affirmative action, at least until women’s participation reaches “the critical threshold” of thirty percent.
It also calls for “active labor market policies,” or the provision of training, placement, and other kinds of support to facilitate women’s entry or re-entry into the workforce.
Women’s networks should be created in order to intervene against discrimination carried out by employment networks dominated by males, such as in farming and manual work.
The report lists the Jordan New Opportunities for Women program as an example of this. It worked to facilitate women’s entry into the country’s job market, where only 17 percent are women between 20 and 45 years old, by subsidizing firms to hire young female graduates. It also has a training program to “find and succeed in employment.”
“A large proportion” of employed women work in the government sector, said the World Bank’s lead economist in the MENA Tara Vishwanath.
This is mostly due to shorter working hours and reasonable pay that typifies work in that sector – this complements the MENA women’s predominant occupation as a care-giver.
Copyright The Daily Star 2011.
