Women's participation in the public sphere
Graphic Designer About Life After the Revolution
The 25 January was a pivotal day for Omneia Naguib. She was 22 years old and had up until then lived a reasonably normal life – at least as normal as it sounds when she tells about growing up in a middle-class home in a Cairo suburb with a stay-at-home mother and a father who goes out to work.
Qatari Career Women: Combating Social Traditions
To combat the predominant mindset contributing to the failure of women in the workforce, the Qatar Career Fair recently hosted its second lecture, The working women in Qatar: professional aspirations and social traditions.
More Qatari women have university degrees than men, yet female participation in the workforce is only 35 percent, well below the national percentages in developed countries.
Read more at Arabian Gazette.
London Conference Promotes Partnership Between G8 and Arab Businesswomen
A major two-day conference on 'Supporting open economies, inclusive growth - women's role in Arab countries' will be held at Lancaster House in central London on 25th and 26th June 2013, as part of the UK's presidency of the G8 Deauville Partnership with Arab Countries in Transition.
Read more at AME Info.
Algerian Women Get Down to Business
With its young population and access to free education up to the university level, Algeria seems to have no shortage of young female entrepreneurs. At the Algeria 2.0 conference - an event designed to encourage entrepreneurship - women participated in the Women's Start-up Weekend, developing their business ideas.
Read more at The National.
More Women on the Screen
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Egyptian Women and the ‘Gender Paradox’
Egyptian Women's Journey for Parliament
With the report 'She and Elections', Nazra for Feminist studies scrutinises 16 individual women's running for Parliament in Egypt in 2011. Nazra, a partner to KVINFO, aims at building an Egyptian feminist movement.
The report analyzes the social and political context in which these women had their electoral journey, and the different ways in which they dealt with their respective realities and challenges. It also covers the tools applied to support the women's candidatures, including Nazra’s so-called mentoring on the ground methodology.
Read the report at Nazra for Feminist Studies. Watch the 18 minutes video on the women's parliamentary journey.
Barriers Broken Down for Working Women
“The next big push for growth is going to come from the employment and the better utilisation of women in the workforce. This is true of female potential in any economy, but is especially important in these [MENA] economies because labour market participation rates [of women] are fairly low.”
The World Bank’s chief economist for the Middle East and North Africa, Ms Nadereh Chamlou, speaks about women’s participation in the workforce.
Read more at The National.
Strong Arab Women in Front against Sexism
The recent inclusion of three leading Arab personalities from the Gulf region in Forbes's 2010 Most Powerful Women List could very well challenge perceptions about the role women fill in a region passing through a period of profound socio-economic and cultural changes.
Read more at The National.
Arab Women to Claim New Position in Society
Arab women need to claim a new position in society. But how hard are we willing to work towards building a model in which women support women in the workplace, at home and beyond? When will we be able to release ourselves from self-imposed guilt if we go out there and be all that we can be?
Ms Rana Askoul, a Dubai-based writer and leadership development consultant, asks the questions and urges women in the MENA region to claim new roles together.
Read more at The National.