More women secure senior positions in UAE, Egypt, as MENA region struggles with gender gap

• Published date: 14 March 2024
• Author: THE MEDIA LINE
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

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As International Women's Day marked its 49th anniversary last week, many countries in the region were still showing little to no progress compared to 2022.

"I consider myself a self-made entrepreneur who has faced many challenges along the way," Alawadhi tells The Media Line, "from family and peers' judgment of my social media activities promoting the brands I work with to online hate for my 'nontraditional' appearance as an Emirati woman on platforms like Instagram and TikTok."

According to the 2023 edition of the Global Gender Gap Report, the MENA region remains the furthest away from gender parity compared to other regions, with a 62.6% parity score. This represents a 0.9 percentage-point decline in parity since 2022. This decline was an expected outcome of the post-pandemic crisis that affected the workforce. Gender parity across key indicators was slipping, indicating a large-scale disruption of economic opportunities for women worldwide in labor-market participation and overall well-being, as noted by the World Economic Forum in 2022.

The MENA region achieves 95.9% parity on the Educational Attainment subindex, with Israel being the only country to have full parity. Concerning political empowerment, three countries have made progress in 2023: Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait. Only Tunisia, Bahrain, and Morocco have cabinets in which more than 20% of the ministers are women, while Saudi Arabia and Lebanon still maintain all-male cabinets. Apart from Tunisia and Israel, no country in the region has had a female head of government in the last 50 years.

Economic opportunities for women

In terms of economic participation and opportunity, the gender gap has closed by 44%, with both the UAE and Egypt seeing increases in the share of women in senior officer positions and technical roles.

The Egyptian government, in collaboration with the National Council for Women, has adopted the Women's Vision 2030. This initiative aims to expand partnerships to achieve a national strategy for empowering Egyptian women by 2030, in alignment with Egypt's constitution, the country's Vision 2030, and the Global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Constitutionally mandated gender quotas in Egypt guarantee that women will hold at least 25% of the seats on local councils and in the lower house of parliament, while 10% of seats in the Senate are set aside for women. Women are underrepresented on company boards of...