Egypt, Cairo October 24,25 2015 Gender Equality in the MENA Region

1. The Empowerment of Women within the Household
starts with their Empowerment in the Market
(Gender Equality in the Workplace Requires Men to be Equal in the Home)
Zafiris Tzannatos
Presented at the Conference
GENDER EQUALITY IN THE MENA REGION
CAIRO MARRIOTT HOTEL – EUGENIE BALL ROOM
OCTOBER 24-25, 2015

2. Three propositions

3. 1. Arab women are a formidable productive force today that cannot be ignored anymore;
more than 30% of all Arab women who have been in the labor force since 1950
joined the labor force on or after 2000
2. History tells us that countries moved ahead by making difficult choices affecting:
production and costs (on labor demand side eg maternity policies)
reproduction (on the labor supply side eg divorce, family planning)
institutions (equality laws and regulations in the private sphere and public sphere)
3. For gender equality in the market
“men will need to be equal in the home”

4. Do we have the right facts?
Aristotle in Historia Animalium (treatises 1-10 of the Kitāb al-Hayawān) said that women have fewer teeth than men –
taken to imply inferiority (he did not bother to check his wife's mouth)
1. In MENA, one-in-five women above 15
are in the labor force
2. Female youth unemployment rate is
more than double that for men
3. F/M literacy rate is only 75%
4. In the GCC fewer than 20% of national
women work (population weighted
average)
1. In the 22 Arab states, one-in-three
women 15-64 who are not students are
in the labor force
2. There 150 unemployed men for 100
unemployed women
3. Overall near gender parity among the
young, and in some countries female
enrolments exceed male enrolments
4. In the GCC more than 30% of national
women work (country average)

5. THE POWER OF PARITY:
HOW ADVANCING WOMEN’S EQUALITY CAN ADD $12 TRILLION TO GLOBAL GROWTH
McKinsey, 2015 Sept
• We consider a “full-potential” scenario in which women participate in the
economy identically to men, and find that it would add up to $28 trillion, or
26 percent, to annual global GDP in 2025 compared with a business-as-usual
scenario.
• We also analyzed an alternative “best-in-region” scenario in which countries
match the rate of improvement of the best-performing country in their region.
This would add as much as $12 trillion in annual 2025 GDP.

6. Cuberes and Teignier (2012)
(GDP loss from low FLFPR excl. talent losses)

7. Another way to look at the effects of gender inequality is to ask “What would happen is
existing female and male workers were sharing jobs equally and were paid equally”?
Effects of Eliminating Gender Differences in Pay and Employment not only on GDP
but also on women’s wages and men’s wages
Region
Increase in
Female Wages
Decrease in
Male Wages
Output (GDP)
gains (%)
(1) (2) (3)
Nordic 9 -4 2
North EU/AUS/NZ 18 -6 3
South Europe 28 -5 5
East Asia, High Income 38 -6 6
East Europe 19 -5 4
LAC 18 -3 3
Country average 22 -5 4
Notes: Nordic = Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden; North EU/AUS/NZ: Australia, Belgium France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, UK; South Europe = Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal, Gibraltar; East Asia High Income:
Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan; East Europe = Lithuania, Croatia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Georgia; LAC = Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico.
Sources: See Tzannatos (2008)

8. What does history tell us?

9. What we see in Arab countries today
was not unknown in OECD countries, even after World War II
• Gender division of household duties was acute
• Female labor force participation was low
• Women were crowed in certain jobs, even prohibited from working in
others
• Societal norms, often blended with religious beliefs, were also gender
specific
• Family law, taxation law, social protection, pensions, inheritance etc
gender biased

10. Selective examples on gender equality from Britain
• (The Book of Prices, 1769, used till mid 19th century) “No woman or girl to be employed in any kind of work except such
works as are herein fixed at 5 ½d (old pennies) …. provided always that in case of war every manufacturer shall be at
liberty to employ women or girls in any sort of work without any restraint whatsoever”.
• (Women and the Pension System, 1909) “It is true that in some cases the man may be a bachelor and that the woman may
have members of her family dependent upon her but these are not the normal or prevalent cases and cannot be taken into
account in fixing rates of remuneration. There is work for which each sex is specifically suited and women should get 30-
35% less than a man’s wage and men a family wage”
• (Atkin War Committee, 1918 – in recognition of women’s contribution to the world effort) “The House accepted without
division equal pay in all branches of the Civil service and under all local authorities”
• (Prime Minister, 1920) The Nation cannot afford it”
• (World War II – also in recognition of women’s contribution to the world effort) “The Government accepts the general
principle that there should be no differences in payment for the same work with respect to sex”
• (Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1947) “This principle cannot apply at the present time”
• In the 1950s the marriage bar was abolished whereby women had to resign from public office when married
(incompatibility of work and motherhood).

11. But then things changed including how statistics measured women’s work
that was previously low partly because of cultural reluctance to admit that women work
Working Farmers in Sweden, Various Censuses
1930 1945 1950 1960 1965
Female 751 151 5217 10387 58283
Male 221,777 212,594 195,764 135,263 104,823
% of farmers with working wives 0 0 3 8 56

12. But there was also real progress
• Today women stay in school more than men
• and perform better in exams
• More women work and work more years during their lives than before
• and gender pay gap narrowed (partly because of women getting more experience)
• Employment differentials have gone down
• and the glass ceiling has been broken here and there
• Women have a voice
• rate of complaint in the EU 60% higher than that of men’s
• Women work in safer jobs
• men 3 times more likely to have an accident at work
• Fertility and work are not longer mutually exclusive
• high fertility countries have higher rates of women’s participation

13. And more progress ….
In the UK
• Since 2010 there are more women university students than men
• Among those who have assets more than UKP 200,000: 448,100 women and 429,300 men
In Japan
• In 2007 divorces skyrocketed after women got the right to claim up to 50% of husband’s pension
• (in the years before that, divorces took a dive partly in anticipation of the above right)
In the US
• In 40% of heterosexual American marriages the wife earns more than her husband
• (these marriages are associated with higher rates of infidelity and divorce)
In 2014
• Pope Francis, who has said the Catholic church has "not yet come up with a profound theology of
womanhood," named five women, a record number, to the International Theological Commission.
• (King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia issued two royal decrees in 2014 stating that the Shura Council should
have 20 per cent female membership, meaning 30 women will sit on the 150-person council).

14. Now, women are found even in top positions (oh, well)
14

15. Still even in OECD, more can be done as only one-third of citizens are aware of
Laws Prohibiting Gender-based Discrimination when Hiring (% of respondents)

16. And statements like the ones below can still be made publicly, even
by those who seek election for the highest office in their country
• “If Hillary Clinton Can’t Satisfy her Husband what Makes her Think she
can Satisfy America?”
• “There was blood coming out of [Megyn Kelly’s] eyes, blood coming
out of her wherever”
• "Look at that face! Can you imagine [Carly Fiorina] the face of our
next president?!“Would anyone vote for that?

17. Summary: How did “OECD” get to where it is today
It took the best of half a century and many hard won cases in the areas of
• equal pay laws
• employment anti-discrimination laws
• indirect discrimination
• hiring, training, apprenticeships, promotions
• working conditions (e.g. for part-time workers, the self-employed, night work, health and safety)
• maternity, breastfeeding, paternal leave
• taxation (family or individual income)
• social security, pensions
• sexual harassment
• affirmative action
• family, divorce, custody
• equality campaigns
• and most importantly and often forgotten, who bears the burden of proof in the case of an issue

18. There has also been some progress in the Arab region

19. 19
MENA is not the region with the widest gender gap (%) in years of education – and
among young women in some countries female education exceeds than for men

20. MENA is not the region with the highest rates of child marriages
(and fertility rates have declined fast)

21. Young Arab women increasingly get
louder voice (at home) and exit options (to the market)
New York Times,13 October 2010: What Oman Can Teach Us:
• The stand-out young entrepreneurs in Oman today are mostly female: 9 of the 11 finalists in this year’s
Oman entrepreneurship contest were all-girl teams.
• It’s particularly striking how the role of women has been transformed. One 18-year-old university student,
Rihab Ahmed al-Rhabi, said (in fluent English) of her interest in entrepreneurship. She also said that her
grandmother who is illiterate, was married at age 9 and bore 10 children.
• As for Ms. Rhabi, she mentioned that she doesn’t want to bog herself down with a husband anytime soon.
Otherwise, what if her husband didn’t want her to study abroad? And when she does eventually marry,
she mused, one child would be about right.
In some countries in the Gulf, female outnumber males at universities by more than 2:1
• For these women, not a small number, one option is to marry down, another to stay “daughter”: 24% of
Qatari women (25-39) are single and, of the married, one-in three ends in divorce;
• Elsewhere in the Gulf, 35% of women are not married in Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE; 30 per cent in Saudi
Arabia and 10 per cent in Oman.
21

22. Worth noting: Equality does not necessarily mean absence of discrimination.
The F/M relative wage in a GCC country is 65%:
it should not be 100% but 108%-134%
22

23. The way forward

24. Two women’s view
SHERYL SANDBERG (2010) v. ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER (2015)
• Sandberg (Facebook COO) in her best selling book “LEAN IN” focuses on how young
women can climb into the C-suite in a traditional male world of corporate hierarchies.
• It is YOU.
• Slaughter (Dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs, policy-planning director for the US State Department) in her book
“UNFINISHED BUSINESS: WOMEN, MEN, WORK FAMILY” focuses on the structure of the
workplace
• It is the SYSTEM: “We often cannot control the fate of our career and family”;
“Caregivers have been squeezed out of the workforce [while] plenty of women have
leaned in for all they’re worth but still run up against insuperable obstacles”.
• What is need is better infrastructure for care at home, flexible and “results-driven”
work arrangements, subsidized on-site day care, no penalties for taking time off for
family, and electing more women to political office

25. Conclusions
Hope is not a strategy: Other countries moved ahead by
1. making difficult choices affecting production, reproduction and laws countering gender norms
2. implementing them consistently (equality is not an one off policy issue)
We need to understand the middle hypothesis:
1. women are not capable (conservatives and “chauvinists”)
2. women are not interested: do they value production and reproduction differently?
3. they are interested and capable but unable to break the glass-ceiling (leftists and “feminists”)
Two propositions:
1. Its mainly changes in production that change norms and family arrangements
2. For gender equality in the market, men will need to be equal in the home