Catching Up on Studies Not Employment
Choosing to study STEM does not bring women from the Middle East and North Africa countries the type of jobs their studies are preparing them for. In fact, there is an increasing gap between the number of women who are competent and access to qualified jo
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Catching Up on Studies Not Employment
7.1 7.1.1
Middle East and North Africa1 Employability
In its 2015 global report, the ILO observes that in the Middle East and North Africa, the overall level of unemployment has risen to 11.6 %, and that youth unemployment rate is “remaining 3.7 higher than the adult rate”,2 thus remaining one of the highest. In that context women experience similar difficulties, access to employment is more difficult. This situation is worsened by strong religious and cultural barriers which prevent women to enter the labour market. As a matter of fact, female participation rate to the labour market remains extremely low; for the whole region, it is estimated to be of about 21.7 %, one of the lowest rate observed in the whole world. Complying with written and unwritten rules, women remain “invisible” on the labour market. Yet, as the number of graduated women increases, some improvements can be observed over the past years. This is demonstrated by Tunisia. Despite a complex environment, women labour force participation rate on the labour market has gained almost 10 points in the last decade (from 25 % in 2005 to 34 % in 2012), while that of all women access is of 26 %. A similar demonstration can be developed for Algeria where the important increase of graduated women is an element that has contributed to improve their labour force participation rate which has grown from 6.6 % in 2000 to 16.6 % in 2013 (see Fig. 7.1). When the detailed data is available, it appears that tertiary graduated women ability to enter the labour market is much higher. For instance, while all women 1 For purpose of analysis consistent with part I, countries included in the geographic analysis are Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. 2 Source: ILO (2015a).
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 C. Schmuck, Women in STEM Disciplines, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41658-8_7
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7 Catching Up on Studies Not Employment
100 90 80 70
60 50 40 30 20 10
NA
0 Algeria
Irak
Jordan
Lebanon Morocco LFMmen
Qatar
LFM women
Saudi Arabia
Tunisia
United Arab Emirates
Fig. 7.1 Labour force participation rate by gender and country in 2013. Source: Analysis of total labour force participation rate by gender 2013 or nearest year available, ILO, extraction August 2015
labour force participation rate is of 65 %, in Tunisia, it reaches 78 % for women holding the equivalent of a master and almost 88 % for those who have a PhD. In Qatar, 61 % of tertiary graduated women enter the labour market (which is 10 % higher than what is observed for all women). In Saudi Arabia where all women labour force participation rate is much closer to the regional average with 20 %, about 80 % of tertiary graduated women enter the labour market. However while access to the labour market has improved in most countries where the proportion of tertiary graduates has increased, access to employment hasn’t, except in a few countries. Overall unemployment levels reflect a wide
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