The Arab world has very ambitious economic plans, and to get anywhere
close to where they want to be, they will need to use every part of their
population to the full. This means that women have to play a full and
active part at every level and become completely economically
empowered. They have got to be in the workforce, working at all
levels including from top to bottom, otherwise the Arab world will fail to
meet its own expectations. And the scale of the challenge is huge: economic
projections show that the Arab world expects to create over 100 million new
jobs in the next 12 years, although the region's total population is only
300 million, made up of roughly 150 million men and 150 million women, many
of whom are already working. The mathematics of finding 100 million new
jobs makes quite clear that women will have to take a major part in the
workforce.
This powerful economic imperative coincides happily with the natural search
for social justice and full equality for all members of society. The struggle
to ensure that women are able to have equal opportunity to contribute to
society and to the economy matches the region's economic requirements.
Particularly since the women's campaign now focuses on seeking economic
empowerment and full education for women as the way to achieve lasting
progress.
The struggle for greater participation by women has been going on for a
long time in the Arab world, with active women's rights movements underway
in the late 1800s and early 1900s in some Mediterranean Arab countries. In
the Gulf, economic development came much later, leading to the present
transformation of society. As a result, Gulf women have had to work hard to
change very traditional social structures, and also to change the way that
some interpretations of Islam have operated in defining their role as being
in the home with the family.
In the UAE this effort has had the full support of the government, and at
an Arab business women's conference this week we were reminded that there
are laws against discrimination in the UAE, and that women and men are
legally equal. In addition, there has been active encouragement by the
country's leaders to help women take their full place in the workforce,
starting from the UAE's founding president, Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al
Nahyan, and running throughout the government.
Yet despite this strong support, Gulf women are still not properly
represented in the work place. This is in part due to the huge distance
that they have had to travel. The UN Human Development Report in 2002 said
that half of the population of Arab women were illiterate, and that income
growth for women was very low, and that applied to the Gulf as to other
Arab states. In a following report in 2005 the UN came back to the
status of women, noting that between 1990 and 2003 women's share of
economic activity had gone up by 19 per cent in the Arab world, compared to
3 per cent in the rest of the world. This was an indication both that
things are getting better, but also of the very low starting point women
came from. Even now, less than one third of Arab women are in the
workforce, and such a failure to use the human resources available will
curb Arab development and prosperity.
So what is holding women back? With the governments of the Arab world working
to encourage their full participation, with the laws in place to stop overt
discrimination, and with economic success forcing change, and with a very
large percentage of Arab women getting good education allowing them to seek
fuller jobs, why are women still not in the workforce in the numbers that
they might be?
Pace of change
One answer lies in the sheer pace of change. In the UAE, it is only now
that the first generation is coming into the work place in which the
majority of young people have gone through secondary education, and many
have gone to college. This did not happen before, but the new generation
has naturally led to the totally new phenomenon of most young women seeking
employment, has they have been led to expect.
But while they have their ambitions, their families come from an older
generation and may not share them. While many fathers and mothers have
managed to take pride in their children's achievements at college, some
more conservative parents fail to take the same pride when they go on to
seek a job, and are privately shocked. But this is not just from the
parents. Many young men may have studied in the same courses and have
similar training to their women counterparts, but when they get engaged and
married, they seek to build a more traditional family environment with
their wives staying at home. There are thousands of young UAE women who
graduate and come into the work place, and then leave after a few years.
Although many of these are leaving to raise a family and may come back to
work later, others may be seeking a quiet life at home by accommodating
their husband's wishes.
However, with the right laws in place to ensure equality, strong government
encouragement to come to work, and growing economic independence as more
women earn their own salaries and manage their own investments, there is
very strong pressure on all parts of society to keep on developing,
including the husbands!