Report recognises Arab women as ‘drivers of growth’

The social status of women in the UAE is improving with percentage of women in workforce hitting 12%, while Egypt has around 34%, a report released on Tuesday said. These figures indicate the role of women in economic development.

Booz & Company, a management consultancy firm, developed the Third Billion Index, which ranks 128 countries based on how they empower women as economic agents. The Index is a complex database of indicators women’s economic and social status and their potential for economic participation. Data is compiled by the World Economic Forum or the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The index divides women’s economic potential into two separate clusters: first, measures a government and other entities that consider the economic potential of women, such as women’s level of preparation for joining the workforce, the country’s access-to-work policies and entrepreneurial support, while the second centres on a set of observable aspects of women’s contribution to the national economy. This set comprises of inclusion in the workforce, the degree of advancement in the national economy and equal pay for equal work in practice.

Major findings

The results of the index lead to several revelations about government practices and women’s economic progress. The data shows a very strong correlation between index scores and beneficial outcomes. Around 128 countries are clustered into five broad categories:  “on the path to success,” “taking the right steps,” “forging their own path,” “average,” and  “at the starting gate.”

Developed countries are categorised “on the path to success,” while some countries which have introduced the right set of policies are categorised “as taking the right steps.” Most of the Arab states in the index are said to be at the starting gate.

The relationship indicates that positive steps taken by countries intended to economically empower women. In truth, all countries need unique requirements and input policies to create a solution that can best address women’s needs. However, Booz & Company’s research found several common challenges that women face in these countries.

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

Three countries from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are also featured in the Third Billion Index – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In terms of the categories of this report, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are all “at the starting gate”.

More Arab females join women’s rights movement to demand equality

More Arab women are joining a women’s rights movement group to demand change and equality.
While revolutions swept through some Arab countries and toppled dictators in all of Tunisia and Egypt, women were still mistreated by both the revolutionists who promised fundamental change as well as regime supporters.

Four females hailing from different Arab states used Facebook to start the “Uprising of Women in the Arab World” movement on October 1, 2011 to lift oppression and break silence and fear endured by Arab women.

Diala Haidar, one of the founders of the woman movement, further defined the movement’s objective and that’s to bring awareness to the region about women rights violations.

Haidar told Al Arabiya that the movement is on to prove “women’s rights are equal to that of human rights, and human rights violations are not something to be silenced about.”

The movement which started in Lebanon soon spread to other neighboring Arab countries such as Syria, Morocco, Egypt with Palestine having the highest number of women recruits.

“We were frustrated to see women protesters were being physically abused or harassed by both the followers of the regime and the revolutionaries,” said Yalda Younes, another founder of the movement. “Not only women’s rights were still not a priority on the list of the revolutionaries, but they were even regressing.”
Since the mark of its first anniversary, the group launched their first campaign urging women from all around the world to upload their photos holding different messages in Arabic to show their support and solidarity to Arab women.

“We decided to launch a campaign that would put faces to our demands,” Younes said.

The movement, which was started by four women, who came together from different parts of the Arab world: Haidar and Younes from Lebanon, Sally Zohney from Egypt, and Farah Barqawi from Palestine, was able to recruit people from different backgrounds, age, gender and religions.

“This shows that in many Arab countries we suffer from the same problems and those problems are rooted in a similar culture independent from political regimes,” she added.

Haidar also pointed to the cultural and social similarity shared among Arabs.

“There is a dictator in every household, whether it’s a father, brother, husband or even a son,” she said, adding “women are still looked down at.”

Mouse in fist, Arab women of the web make their war cry

(ANSAmed) - ROME - They are called Yasmina and Nur, Dalia and Asthma, Hana and Zadra, and they are putting their faces forward. These are some of the thousands of women who are joining a campaign in ever increasing numbers launched on the web October 1 called, ''The uprising of women in the Arab world,'' to promote equality and equal dignity in Arab countries, Middle East Online reports.

Ever since activist Diala Haidar (Lebanese) and her companions Yalda Younese (Lebanese), Farah Barqawi (Palestinian) and Sally Zohney (Egyptian) created a Facebook page so that all concerned women could express their solidarity and shared values, a tumultuous torrent of consensus has almost overwhelmed the organizers. In just a few days, membership has swollen to almost 40,000 and continues to grow.
The impression is that the initiative and its members have been born of the fear that, now the Arab Spring is over, the new governments to emerge after the dictators were chased away could soon dissolve its content regarding democracy and equality that had filled city squares.

Women took to the streets of Cairo and Tunis, Beirut and Sanaa, in Gaza and Algiers together with their husbands, brothers and other male companions, and were often brutally beaten just like the men. The terror now is that an intractable, acid backlash against the female universe is taking place that, until now, did not have voice or weight.
If one looks at what continues to happen in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, one can understand these fears. Last month in Tunis, a young woman who was raped by two police saw herself accused of ''indecent behavior''.

In Egypt, the most fundamentalist fringes are proposing to insert in the new constitution norms like marriages for young girls, legalization of genital mutilation, and attacks on women's rights in work and education.
Thus the organizers have taken women from real squares to a virtual square, to express and demonstrate on the internet what they can not show in society, and answer why they support the ''The uprising of women in the Arab world''.

The endless list of ''I Like'' has filled up the site, with faces young and smiling women, women less young and sometimes wearing a veil, but all with eyes directed on who is watching them. They're not hiding, but putting their faces forward, loading up files, leaving their thoughts and opinions. The avalanche of posts - also from many men, one of whom hid his identity out of embarrassment - ask to give women voices and equality; they refuse impositions, like the veil, or to remain behind in the shadows. In Arabic, but also in English and French, the young women write, ''I refuse the idea of having to declare whether or not I am a virgin before getting married''; ''Enough with these men with stone-age mentalities''; ''Women are made to be loved, not used; to be cuddled, not abused; sexual violence must be punished, not excused''.

All this, Haidar affirms, gives hope because ''It reinforces the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW)''. She relies on one of the slogans of the campaign, ''We must continue the revolution to eliminate male chauvinism that transforms every man into a dictator over his wife, daughter, sister and even his mother''. (ANSAmed).

Discrimination against Arab women

Arab women need better transportation and day care and less child allowance

The rate of workforce participation among Arab women is only 28 percent, compared to 80 percent for nonreligious Jewish women. The barriers preventing Arab women from looking for work are many, but one of the main ones is their exclusion from the job market. That is what emerges from an analysis published this week by Prof. Eran Yashiv of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies, based on new unemployment data generated by changes in how the Central Bureau of Statistics conducts its employment survey.

Yashiv's analysis showed that unemployment in the Arab community is much higher than previously thought. Some 18 percent of Arab women and 11 percent of Arab men are unemployed. The unemployment rate for Arab men is twice that of Jewish men, and that of Arab women is three times that of Jewish women. All in all, Arabs account for 30 percent of Israel's unemployed - some 50 percent higher than their proportion in the general population.

It is not surprising that only 28 percent of Arab women even attempt to find work if 18 percent won't find it in any case. The low probability of finding a job creates a barrier that causes many women to give up in advance. The significance of the fact that so many women do not find work is that even women with high motivation aren't managing to integrate into the Israeli workforce.
It's possible the problem is related to the limited supply of jobs in the periphery, where most Arab towns are located. But it also seems to be related to the fact that employers are not overly happy to employ them. Or to put it more bluntly, the figures reveal the full extent of discrimination against Arabs in general, and Arab women in particular.

The large number of unemployed Arabs, and in particular of unemployed Arab women, should trouble every Israeli citizen. These harsh figures show that the state must act forcefully to combat discrimination against Arabs in the work place and to encourage companies to hire them. The government should start by setting an example: Today, only 8 percent of government employees are Arabs. That is even less than the goal the state set for itself - 10 percent - and well below their share in the population.

Arab women wage cyber ‘uprising’

DUBAI  - Taking their cue from the Arab Spring, cyber activists have embarked on a daring campaign urging women fight for equality. “The uprising of women in the Arab World” is the title of the Facebook page where the campaign was launched on October 1 to highlight “discrimination” against women in the Arab world. Within days, the number of “likes” that the page has attracted has increased from about 20,000 to almost 35,000. Some 500 people, mostly women but also a surprising number of men, have posted pictures with statements of support, some even challenging religious and traditional taboos. “We expected a response because we knew that women were holding out for a platform (to air their grievances)... but this response has been astonishing,” Diala Haidar, one of four organisers of the campaign, told AFP by telephone.The campaign began amid an outcry in Tunisia and Egypt, the first two countries to oust their long-serving autocrats in the Arab uprisings, over serious threats to women’s rights from newly installed Islamist rulers.In Tunisia, civil society groups were outraged after a woman who was raped by two policemen found herself last month facing a charge of indecency.In Egypt, activists were enraged over leaked proposed drafts of the new constitution suggesting a lower marriage age for women, legalising female circumcision and the use of Islamic jurisprudence in a way that could limit women’s rights to work and education.“Revolutions aim to achieve freedom, justice and dignity. These could not be fully achieved if women are to remain in the back seat,” said Haidar, a Lebanese physicist by profession.“There has been disappointment” over the sidelining of women in politics, she said, pointing out that “women were not standing idle during the revolts, when they faced bullets and got dragged on the streets” by security forces.Haidar kicked off the campaign along with fellow Lebanese Yalda Younes, Palestinian Farah Barqawi, and Egyptian Sally Zohney — active rights campaigners in their respective countries.Among the aims of the campaign is to stir debate “over the situation of women, mainly after the backlash they faced following the success of revolutions in (some) Arab Spring countries,” said a statement.The group asks supporters to write “I am with the uprising of women in the Arab world”, and why, on a paper or computer screen, to take a picture of themselves with the statement and post it on the Facebook page.Tamara Reem and Yousif Abbas are Palestinians who posed in a picture with written statements.Reem’s read: “I support the Arab women’s uprising because my virginity is my business,” while Abbas wrote that he supported the cause because a woman’s “virginity is her business.”Such declarations have not gone down well with some zealous visitors to the website who have plastered the page with insults, although this has failed to stem the flow of supporters.“I am with the uprising... because my body is mine and you don’t have the right to sexually harass me,” wrote Nihad Mohammed from Egypt. “No to rape. No to violence,” wrote Farah Joy from Tunisia.Fatimah from Lebanon carried a statement saying she backed the cause because her “honour and moral values cannot be represented by just a hymen”.Assil, a Palestinian, was more daring: “I’m sick and tired. I wish I had a penis so that I can go out whenever I want, just like my brother,” read her message.She was highlighting the restrictions imposed by traditional Arab families on the movement of their daughters for fear of committing acts that could tarnish a family’s honour.Sarah from Yemen highlighted the problem of child marriage and marital rape in her impoverished nation.Abdulkarim, a 16-year-old Saudi, ridiculed a law that makes younger male members of families responsible for adult women in the ultra-conservative kingdom.“According to law, I am the guardian for my widowed mother!” he wrote.Larissa from Lebanon wrote: “A Lebanese woman should have the right to pass her nationality to her children,” highlighting a dilemma for mothers married to foreigners in several Arab states.Based on Islamic jurisdiction, men get the upper hand in courts when it comes to divorce, child custody and inheritance.Social traditions relegate women to the level of second-class citizens, subjecting them to various restrictions depending on how patriarchal her society is.“Our aim is (the implementation of) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the CEDAW” or Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, said Haidar.Most Arab states that are CEDAW signatories have reservations on articles stipulating equal rights for women and men, mainly in matters related to marriage and nationality of children.“We have to continue the revolution to oust male chauvinism that turns every man into a dictator over his wife, daughter, sister, and even mother,” said a campaign statement.