Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals ...

Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals
Labor-force participation and income
The main problem facing the region is that the improvements that have
been reached on women’s education and health have not yet found expression
in improved opportunities for employment, income, and labour-force
participation of women (UNDP / AFESD 2002, 28); Weiss 2004b, 8 f.;
World Bank 2004 f.).
The average labor-force participation rate of women in the MENA countries
is lower than the respective rate of all other world regions, and it is
also far below the level that would be expected in view of the literacy
rates, life expectancy, and fertility rates of women in the region. Figure 6
clearly illustrates this. According to these data, the labor-force participation
rate of women in sub-Saharan Africa is roughly as low as in the
MENA region. However, the diagram shows only the proportion of
women working outside agriculture. In sub-Saharan Africa, a larger percentage
of women (and men) are employed in the agricultural sector. As a
consequence, on the whole, the labor-force participation of women in the
MENA region is roughly 30 %, while the corresponding figures for Latin
America (45 %), sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe and Central Asia
(60 %), and the Pacific region (75 %) are far higher (ESCWA 2005; World
Bank 2004 f.).
Figure 6 furthermore shows that the employment chances of women in the
MENA region have even deteriorated since 1990. Only in Algeria, Oman,
and Bahrain has the percentage of women among all nonagricultural
workers risen, while it has declined in Yemen (from 9 to 7 %), Jordan
(from 23 to 21 %), Saudi Arabia (from 19 to 14 %), and Morocco (from
37 to 27 %). The same is probably true for Kuwait and Mauritania, where
the labor-force participation rate of women has declined markedly since
1990 (see Table A5, Annex).
Moreover, on average women engaged in gainful employment in the
MENA region earn lower incomes than men (Salehi-Isfahani 2000; World
Bank 2004 f.). Palestinian women are in a relatively good position in this
regard; on average they earn 73 % of their male colleagues. At the same
time, the situation in Saudi Arabia and Oman is especially bad, with
women earning wages and salaries that amount not even to one quarter of
the average earnings of men (see Figure 7 and Table Table A5, Annex).
German Development Institute 59