Women's Place Should Be in the Workforce

The following apology was printed in the Observer's For the Record column, Sunday November 2 2003

In the article below we misattributed remarks about Middle Eastern women's education and aspirations to Liz Cheney, daughter of the US Vice-President and head of the Middle East Partnership Initiative. Although quotes from Ms Cheney appeared in the story, these particular remarks were made by Nadereh Chamlou, co-author of a new World Bank report on gender disparities. Apologies.



Black gold may be the engine of Saudi Arabia's economy, but the black burqa is the totem of its society. The all-over covering for women, a requirement of the Wahhabi school of Islam practiced in the kingdom, has become synonymous with their subjugation.

But winds of change blowing through the Middle East are reaching the kingdom. And economics and demographics may drive the change in the absence of domestic political pressures. Put simply, Saudi clerics may not want women to drive or to join the workforce, but pretty soon it is going to be an economic imperative.

Even the US, which since 1945 has tolerated the Saudi system as the price for oil security, now says it is placing women's empowerment at the heart of its strategy for the region. As Liz Cheney, daughter of the US Vice-President and head of the Middle East Partnership Initiative, said recently: 'Saudi Arabia has got to open up economically and politically and has got to allow its women greater freedoms if it wants to succeed. Women need to have an equal opportunity at success. Countries that oppress 50 per cent of their population are not going to be able to advance economically, politically or educationally,' she told the Middle East Economic Digest.

The story in the region, however, is far more complicated than the stereotypes. Saudi Arabia is one end of a spectrum. Dubai and Lebanon are at the other in terms of working women. But contrary to popular perception, the Middle East/North Africa region scores highly on international comparisons of female education.

Nadereh Chamlou, the co-author of a new World Bank report on how gender disparities affect economic performance in the region, says: 'On the good side, the region has invested significantly, perhaps more than any other region in the world, in education and health in general, but the biggest beneficiaries have been actually women. Women's literacy has gone up tremendously and fertility has gone down tremendously, and these are two important factors in women's participation in the labor force,' she says.

The World Bank found that female literacy has risen from 16.6 per cent in 1970 to about 52 per cent in 2000. In the same period, the average years of schooling for girls increased from just six months to about four and a half years. 'This is significant growth and tremendous progress,' says Chamlou.

In countries such as Iran, and even Saudi Arabia, women form the majority of the university population. But this educational performance does not translate into the labour market.

'Women remain a largely untapped resource in the region, making up 49 per cent of the population and in some countries as much as 63 per cent of university students, but only 32 per cent of the labor force,' says the World Bank's report.

The report outlines a variety of reasons, some cultural, some religious. But the key motivation for change is likely to be economic. A dearth of women workers is the main reason for the region having the highest dependency ratio - the number of non-workers supported by workers - in the world. In the past that was smoothed over by large public sectors paid for by oil. The theory goes that in a diversified economy, more dependent on human capital, it will become increasingly untenable to waste the talents of a huge swath of the population. The World Bank calculates that per capita GDP growth could have been 0.7 per cent higher had there been fewer barriers to women working.

'One out of every three people in the region is a woman under 30,' says Cheney. 'Now she has been brought up in an education system in which she is more and more at par with her male counterparts, she is going to be wanting access to similar kinds of opportunities, and similar kinds of rewards. So I think that, when you look at the demographics of the region, the forces building up make it more and more a necessity for women to work.'

Women's groups cite a history of businesswomen dating back centuries. 'Saudi Arabia will do it at its own pace. The US can't instruct them or any other government about the pace they should go,' says Cheney.

But one Saudi businessman warned that progress could be glacial. 'You should think of Saudi as a kind of giant Vatican City. Only then can you begin to understand its conservatism'.