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Women's economic participation in Mashreq countries remains low
21-1-2019
Participants in the Mashreq Conference on Women’s Economic Empowerment held on January 19th as part of the Arab Economic and Social Development Summit in Beirut, voiced their concern about the low level of economic engagement of women in the region, namely in Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. The closing “Beirut Declaration” statement however, praised the accomplishments achieved in above countries in the past few years, in terms of women’s access to health and education. To recall, the conference, organized by the World Bank, the League of Arab States and the governments of Lebanon and Canada, with representation of the Iraqi and Jordanian governments, aims to support stakeholders in addressing restrictions to women’s participation and enhancing their access to economic prospects. In this respect, the Lebanese government pledged to work to achieve the following: raise the rate of women’s participation by 5% in the workforce in the next five years, improve the legal framework to the end of promoting women’s economic contribution in the private and public sectors, increase the rate of female recruitment in the private sector, facilitate the access of women to entrepreneurship, increase the number of women-led and owned SMEs, implement a comprehensive awareness campaign to highlight the importance of gender equality and finally, change the prevalent attitude towards women and their participation in all areas. During the conference, NCLW president, Claudine Aoun Rukuz, stated that increasing the contribution of women to economic integration necessitates the creation of a protective environment sustained by revision of the laws that influence this participation in the public and private sectors. These include the laws on sexual harassment, protection of women and family members from domestic violence, end of child marriage, as well as the labor and social security bills. Prime Minister Saad Hariri for his part, saw that the shy representation or absence of women in the Arab labor market means the absence of half of society, and hence, a definite loss or deficit in GDP, growth, productivity and competition. (Al Mustaqbal, Al Diyar, January 21, 2019)
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