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Women an untapped economic resource in MENA region: World Bank

“No country can raise the standard of living and improve the well-being of its people without the participation of half its population,” said Christian Poortman, the World Bank vice president for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Experience in other countries has shown over and over again that women are important actors in development. To hold them back is to hold back the potential for economic growth,” Poortman said.

The World Bank released on Wednesday a report on the role of women in the Middle East and North Africa. Titled Gender and Development in the Middle East and North Africa: Women in the Public Sphere, the report said women were being held back from the labor market by a combination of economic, social and political factors.

It urged policy changes to engage more women.

As countries in the region move toward private-sector growth, they will need to depend on a dynamic pool of skilled labor, said the report, which was released on the sidelines of an annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

“With labor force participation largely characterized by gender inequality, women remain a largely untapped resource in the region, thus preventing economies in the Middle East and North Africa from drawing on their best talents,” the report said.

While women make up half the 325 million people in those regions, and in some countries as many as 63 percent of university students, they comprise only 32 percent of the labor force, according to the report.

Calculations for a number of states in the region “show that if female participation rates reached their potential, per capital growth in Gross Domestic Product could have been 0.7 percent higher on average than the mere 1.9 percent during the last decade for these countries,” the report said.

Household earnings could rise as much as 25 percent if female participation in the labor force increased commensurate with education levels and age structure, the report said.

“For many families, this is a ticket to the middle class,” said Nadereh Chamlou, senior World Bank adviser and principal author of the report.

Gains in women’s health and education had not been matched by gains in employment. While the regional rate of female participation in the work force had increased rapidly from 23 percent in 1970 to 32 percent in 2000, it still ranked among the lowest in the world, the report said.

It added that in the MENA region, each employed person supports more than two non-working dependents, a burden double that of workers in east Asia.

A commonly held belief that greater female employment would result in greater unemployment for men was unfounded, the report said. It said experience showed that with better economic growth from female participation, there were greater employment opportunities for all.

Labor market regulations, conservative social norms and laws that favor men are to blame for women lagging behind in employment, the report said.

It called on policy makers to work toward granting equal constitutional rights to women and offer a supportive infrastructure that would include better childcare and transportation.

Policy makers also should pay attention to women’s education and reform labor laws to reflect the region’s new realities, the report said.