JEDDAH – Women constitute just 22 percent of those who work in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Serena Romano, a consultant for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), said in a study on the economic rights of women in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia that was presented in Rome recently. The average is 27 percent in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. North Africa and the Middle East have the lowest rate of female participation in the workforce in the world, whereas the highest is in the Far East and the Pacific, where 70 percent of women work, she said. The Sub-Sahara – thanks to farming – has a rate on par with the European Union of 64 percent, whereas in Italy, just 46 percent of women work. The figures are based on data from the OECD, the World Bank, the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees and the International Labor Organization (ILO). The presentation coincided with the visit of seven Libyan women entrepreneurs, organized by the Pari o Dispari, an association promoting diversity and gender parity, with the backing of the Italian energy giant ENI and the Italian foreign ministry. Romano said an increase in female employment and entrepreneurship could significantly boost economic growth in underdeveloped countries. The GDP of Egypt would rise 34 percent by 2020 if Egyptian women, who currently have a work participation rate of 24 percent, reached parity with Egyptian men, a report in The Economist magazine said. All five countries in the study guarantee women - at least legally – all of their economic rights, from the possibility to hold a job or own property or take out a loan to launching a business. “The problem is that the right to sign a contract conforms badly to the obligation to obey the husband,” Romano noted. The real possibility of women working outside the home or starting a business collides with limits like these, she said. Then there is the problem of the legislative system in the five countries on certain questions like equal pay with men, which is not formally guaranteed in Tunisia, sexual discrimination, which is not banned in Egypt and Jordan, defense against gender harassment at work, which is only enforced in Morocco, and the right to initiate legal cases, which women don't entirely enjoy in Egypt and Jordan. Contradictions arise too with respect to the CEDAW treaty - the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. All five of the countries in question have ratified the treaty - as did Saudi Arabia, among others. Morocco lifted reservations in 2011. “Customary … law will often regulate personal status law and can have a decisive impact on women's economic rights and their capacity to develop their business or pursue their career. But equality can only be one,” Romano said. – Agencies
