Gulf women deserve support

Workplaces must make structural changes to help women balance their family and career

The Etihad Contact Centre in Al Ain provides flexible working hours for its female employees. Sarah Dea / The National

Anew book, Game Changers: How Women in the Arab World Are Changing the Rules and Shaping the Future, highlights the low percentage of working women in the GCC compared to the rest of the world. The three authors found that only 26 per cent of working age women join the workforce – half the global average – and as few as 5 per cent of leadership roles in the Gulf are held by women.

While percentages may vary from place to place, the book notes that the GCC states share many factors that contribute to the situation, including family and childcare pressures, lack of economic necessity to work and lack of flexibility in working hours. To bring the participation rate up to the global average, much more must be done to encourage women to join the workforce and stay in it.

Naturally, family and childcare pressures are the main reasons that many women don’t work or leave the workforce as soon as they have children. This issue isn’t specific to our region. What makes it a bigger issue here is the tremendous amount of social pressure on women to stay home and take full-time care of their children. For cultural and traditional reasons, there is often little sense of shared responsibility between a husband and wife when it comes to domestic work. Those women who don’t have a full-time nanny are left with little choice but to stay at home.

It has to be made easier for women to balance their family and career responsibilities. Policies must be enacted to not only attract more women to the workforce but also to retain those who already have jobs. However, this is unlikely to happen without structural changes in the working condition. Employers must be encouraged to create more part-time positions, offer flexible working hours or the possibility of job-sharing, allow longer periods of maternity leave and provide workplace crèches.

Women are as capable as men, and are often better educated: they just need the opportunity to climb the career ladder. The time for talk about this issue is over; these changes should be implemented now.