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.

Photographs: Tanya Habjouqa

AMMAN – With less than a week to go before the Jordanian parliamentary elections, women’s groups in Jordan have been busy supporting female candidates and calling on women voters to head to the polls and vote for their peers next Tuesday.

“In the West, we’re used to thinking that ‘all good things go together’. But increased rights for women is not necessarily the same as democratisation. Several countries have discovered that doing something for ‘the poor Muslim woman’ makes sense,” tells Julie Pruzan-Jørgensen.

We approach our landing into Cairo in the midst of a sandstorm. For half an hour, my plane circles in an orange-brown haze. All the people in the plane are silent.

Being a typical international flight - Austrian Air from Vienna to Cairo - we are quite a mixed bunch.

“When you look at the reports that are published each year about gender, the first thing that is always mentioned is the low level of participation by women within the Jordanian labour market. Women are always criticised for not working, despite being so well educated – and men are criticised for not allowing the women to work,” tells 26-year-old Jordanian feminist, Hiba Kandalaft.

“If we want to maintain our competitive edge, we need to be aware of diversity in a broad perspective so as to be able to tap the full potential of talent.

It is hardly a secret that men dominate the public sphere in most parts of the world, also in the Arab world.  The past generation, however, women have gained ground as their access to education and jobs has grown. This accumulated talent, however, is not reflected in for instance media exposure and business leadership.