WB-MENA gender equality report: Women’s economic participation is limited and job creation insufficient || Newspapers (Arabic)

The World Bank launched last week its new report entitled “Opening Doors: Gender Equality and Development in the Middle East and North Africa”,at an event jointly hosted by the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC in collaboration with the World Bank.  The report unveils that investment in human capital in the MENA region has not resulted in a higher economic or political participation for women.  According to the report, the percentage of women’s participation in the job market is half of average global rate.

The report which notes that gender equality would be a smart economic strategy for the region uses a combination of statistical and qualitative data to analyse challenges facing gender equality and subsequently highlighting priorities at the policy level to strengthen women’s participation in the region.  The report further notes that gender equality as a whole remains a major challenge in the region despite considerable gains made by women in education and health.

The challenges cited in the report are defined as being legal and cultural.  These, according to the report, result in excluding women from public life and from the job market and in curtailing their decision making abilities, their choices, mobility and access to opportunities. Other key factors are limited women’s skills and poor job opportunities created by the private sector.  However, the report adds that the main obstacle remains women’s difficulty in balancing work and family responsibilities.  Although this is a global phenomenon, yet, according to the report women in the MENA region face particular difficulties and have to make hard choices to the point that only one woman out of four is actually looking for work which is half the global average.  Unemployment rate amongst young women is estimated at 40% and the gender gap in employment rates between men and women has almost doubled during the last 25 years.  Should the trend remain as is, the report expects that some 50 million men and 140 million women will be unemployed by the year 2050.

The report further notes that employment creation trends in the private sector were lower then supply and thus unable to absorb the growing needs of job seekers. In such difficult circumstances, women are unable to compete equally with men and the real challenge would be to create a more diverse pool of work opportunities to absorb more men and women job seekers.  Even if this materializes, there is nevertheless a need for exerting more effort to boost economic and political participation of women namely reforming the social protection sector, abolishing gender discrimination in laws and bridging the gap in skills and capacities so as to meet the needs of the job market.

To read the whole report please click the following link: “Opening Doors: Gender Equality and Development in the Middle East and North Africa”

Source: Al-Akhbar 18 March 2013