Discrimination of women

Wasted talent

The Arab world is undoubtedly a patriarchal society, with labour markets that continue to be male-dominated. Although Palestinian women are better educated than men, their job opportunities are poorer. The greatest obstacles women face in working life are cultural ones.


By Viola Raheb

According to the United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report of 2005, the situation for women in the Arab world has changed substantially in recent decades. But as far as working life is concerned, improvement has been limited. From 1990 to 2003, women’s share in economic activity increased by 19 % in the Arab region, which was a sharper rise than in any other region in the world. Nonetheless, Arab women’s economic participation remained the lowest in the world, with just a third of women aged over 15 in gainful employment. The Arab world may burnish its image in the international community by talking up the rise in female economic involvement. In reality, however, the prospects for women remain modest.

In many Arab countries, women are less educated than men. Certainly, women have made great progress in recent years and achieved a better standard of education: female literacy rose from just 35 % in 1990 to nearly 50 % in 2000. Over the same period, how­ever, male literacy improved, from 63.5 % to 71 %.

The figures clearly document the inequality of opportunity for men and women across the Arab world. But huge differences also exist between one Arab country and another – in terms of education, employment, legislation and cultural environment. So it makes sense to single out a country for closer scrutiny. The focus here is on Palestine where I come from.

Few opportunities for educated women

Education paves the way for change and is held in high regard by Palestinians, so Palestinian women tend to be well educated. In the academic year 2010/2011, girls accounted for around half of all students enrolled at Palestinian schools, making up 49.5 % of the primary school population and 54.2 % of secondary school students. Last year’s statistics show an even stronger female presence in higher education, where 57.2 % of students were young women. Among graduates, too, women form a clear majority – around 60 % in the academic year 2008/2009.

The figures reveal that the percentage of female students rises with the level of education. One of the reasons is that many men go abroad to study while women tend to stay at local universities. However, there is also marked difference in the subjects male and female students choose. Although Palestinian women have massively improved their levels of education in recent years, they still tend to focus on teaching, the humanities and social sciences, which are traditionally considered appropriate for women. This gender-based split is already evident in the courses chosen at secondary schools.

Development professionals like to emphasise the economic importance of women’s education. In Palestine, this does not necessarily apply. Although Palestinian women perform better at school and university, men outnumber them in working life by more than four to one. In 2010, 41 % of those over the age of 15 were in gainful employment across the Palestinian territories – 67 % of men and 15 % of women.

Paradoxically, unemployment among Palestinian women increases with the level of their education. In 2010, 36.3 % of women with more than 13 years of education were registered as unemployed; in the case of women with no education at all, the figure was just 1.5 %. A woman’s job opportunities are thus obviously diminished, not enhanced, by education and training.

Qualifications unused

As a result, many women with higher-education degrees accept jobs that are below their level of qualification. At the time of writing, female graduates in Gaza were digging wells for farmers in order to make ends meet. Talented young women file away their cer­tificates, and go to work in the fields at the crack of dawn. They know they have no chance of working as academics, but they can contribute to the household income as unskilled day-labourers.

Women who do manage to succeed in the job market work mostly in traditional female ­occupations like education (34.7 %), farming, forestry, hunting and fishing (20.5 %) and healthcare (9.4 %). But even in these areas, they tend to be in the more lowly positions. In healthcare, for instance, women account for more than half of the nursing staff, but only for around 14 % of the doctors.

Inequality is also reflected in pay. From the service sector to the public sector and private enterprise, men receive higher wages and salaries than their female colleagues with the same qualifications. This, of course, is not a specifically Arab or Palestinian problem. But in a country like Palestine, it means that households headed by women are particularly likely to be poor.

Women’s prospects in working life are really not rosy. Even so, Palestinian women have achieved great changes in recent years. For one thing, their efforts have helped influence legislation. Article 25 of the Palestinian Basic Law, the national constitution, includes a formal guarantee of equality in job opportunities for men and women. As we know from other countries, however, theory and practice are often worlds apart.

Women who enter the work force face some very fundamental cultural hurdles. To start with, society still tends to view work for women as just a financial necessity, whereas the majority of women see it as a chance for self-fulfilment. Other cultural barriers are not immediately apparent. They are subtle, insidious and disguised – and as my own personal experience has shown, they can sometimes be quite absurd (see box).

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