A recent study revealed that “the average labor-force participation rate for women in the Middle East and North Africa region is remarkably low, ” pointing out that this rate stands at just 25.4% —far below the average for men, which is 77.1%, across the region.
The study, titled “Trade And Women in the Labor Market: How Different Is MENA from Other Regions?” pointed out that women in the Middle East and North Africa tend to work predominantly in paid work (wage and salaried workers).
The report published by the Policy Center for the New South, which included countries from the region such as Morocco, revealed that three-quarters of employed women in the Middle East and North Africa are wage and salaried workers.
This reflects a high level of wage employment, significantly higher than the rate for women in sub-Saharan Africa (20.7%) and about 15 percentage points above the proportion of women in paid jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean (59.3 %).
The study also noted that “despite the differences between countries, “employed women in the Middle East and North Africa tend to work in the formal sector. This generally includes paid jobs in the formal economy, which can offer more stable income and some social protections.”
The same source found that “trade openness may have contributed to widening the gender gap in the labor force and reducing paid employment opportunities for women in the Middle East and North Africa. Consequently, this may have intensified gender inequality in the region’s job market.”
These negative effects of trade openness on female labor-force participation and wage employment, according to the study, could be “due to a shift from female labor-intensive industries to male capital-intensive sectors in MENA countries and seem consistent with findings in recent studies.”
It also stressed that “these findings raise concerns about the potentially adverse impacts that further structural change and trade-induced sectoral shifts may have on women’s labor-market outcomes.”
The findings also revealed that “tertiary education and income do not have the expected effects on female labor-force participation and wage employment.”
“It is generally expected that increased female tertiary education is associated with higher employment of skilled female workers and encourages more women to participate in the labor force, especially as trade openness increases,” reads the findings.
The report acknowledged that “while tertiary education in the MENA region has a positive effect on female labor-force participation, it does not affect female (or male) wage employment.”
A possible explanation according to the same source is that “increased tertiary education may have led many women to raise their reservation wage (a supply-side factor), thus reducing the likelihood of them participating in wage employment, and eventually causing some women to leave the labor force.”
It said that “this could explain the paradox of increased education not translating into higher labor-force participation.”
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