Gender in MENA Societies

In the post-colonial era, many of those living in rural areas of the Middle East and North Africa have and continued to move to urban areas in pursuit of employment. While more women are in the labor force nowadays than in decades past (R&W), those women who are willing and able to work are in competition with men for available jobs. With regard to states' choices in health and education spending, MENA states' failure to aggressively promote policies that decrease fertility rates may be part of the reason for the massive percentage number of Middle Easterners under age 20 (R&W) , the physical cost of which is born by women. If curriculum is gendered as Sonbol asserts, then women are being handicapped during formative educational years. Additionally, women in countries such as Jordan cannot work without the authorization of a male guardian. Even if they can work, they are discouraged from taking jobs that are dangerous or involve night work (Sonbol). Perhaps this is part of the explanation for why their labor-force participation rate is lowest for any region of the world (R&W). As of 2000, women have entered the labor force at an increasing rate. This is encouraging; however, it will also exert greater pressure on current labor markets in addition to the growing population of young unemployed males and on future labor markets given the fact that half of the region's population is under 20 years old (R&W).

I'm not entirely familiar with gender issues in Europe so I'll limit my discussion on this subject to women in the United States. Given a general lack of gender-specific schooling options in the U.S. I would find it difficult to assert that the state's choices in educational spending affect American women the way that they affect some women in the Middle East and North Africa. In at least one respect - the subsidization of oral contraceptives through the Affordable Healthcare Act - the United States' choices in health spending have increased women's access to health care in recent years relative to the efforts made by governments in MENA nations that I am aware of. Additionally, the American does not classify women as the property of their male relatives as the Jordanian legal system does with its female citizens; however, that is not to say that American women don't also face non-legal pressures regarding their dual roles as potential employees and mothers. For example, last year Google announced a new employee benefit allowing women to have their eggs frozen at the company's expense. While a free medical procedure may seem on its face to be a thoughtful and progressive offer, some speculate that this is Google's way of encouraging female employees to delay motherhood in favor of devoting as much time as possible to the company. Shaming and violence toward  girls and women based on actual or alleged sexual promiscuity exists in both regions. Women in both MENA countries and the U.S. are confronted with challenges stemming from institutions' perception of what it means to be a woman, albeit on somewhat different levels given their respective dominant cultural values.

With respect to political representation, Tunisia's new constitution does contain articles that support the ethical treatment of women and children. Tunisia has a higher rate of women represented in its parliament than the U.S. does in Congress - a gap which may continue to grow given Article 45 of the new Tunisian constitution's stated goal to "achieve the principle of parity between men and women in elected councils." According to the article posted by Prof. Hardig, Tunisia's higher parliamentary representation of women relative to the region's other legislatures may have something to do with a parity clause first utilized in the 2011 elections that required equal representation of men and women on the electoral list - a policy that I am not aware exists in other MENA countries. Meherzia Labidi, vice-president of the assembly from the governing Islamist Ennahda party's assertion that women "survived despotism and dictatorship due to female resistance, while the men were in exile or in prison" is a difficult one to quantify when searching for an explanation of women's relatively high representation. It may be that women's participation in political spheres is more widely accepted in Tunisia than in other MENA nations. Tunisian women gained the right to vote nearly 60 years ago and also have the right to an abortion, indicating that the Tunisian government, if not the Tunisian people, has endorsed the inclusion of women in decision-making more quickly and extensively than some of its neighbors.