Women Economic Empowerment in the Arab Region

In the area of global development issues, there has been a long-standing agenda concerning women’s rights and gender issues. While progress has been made on various fronts, gender inequality across the world remains to be addressed in its entirety, including in the Arab region. The Arab region continues to register one of the largest gender gaps, despite significant progress in educational achievement. Educational advancement has not trickled down to economic participation and opportunity, since women’s labour force participation in several countries in the region remains low compared to countries in other regions or to male labour force participation in Arab countries. These guidelines form a tool addressed to policymakers in the Arab States to support and scale up their efforts to advance care economy and policies and promote women’s economic participation. It also serves relevant non-governmental stakeholders to support the promotion and expansion of the care economy.