*I was selected to present my research at the national conference sponsored by the Association of the Middle East and North Africa, see my poster here!
Abstract: While Jordan boasted a staggering 97% female literacy rate in 2012, it nonetheless maintains one of the lowest women’s participation in the workforce in the world, reserving the 179th place of 181 respective countries (World Bank, The Global Economy). I approach this puzzle through outlining the prevailing symptoms of this issue and, furthermore, discern the question of what and how reform and activism is being utilized to reverse this issue. I argue that while cultural and institutional impediments impact women’s low employment in Jordan, structural reform is paramount and necessary to long-term goals in advancing women’s opportunities in the labor force and beyond. This paper focuses on the factors and actors that hinder female job-seekers from finding, applying to, and maintaining jobs through examining the challenges activists in this issue encounter and measures taken to support, and further empower, women in and entering the workforce. While previous scholarship focuses on either cultural or structural barriers to women’s employment, I expand on this literature by analyzing the role of activism to ultimately provide alternative approaches to mitigate this issue (Al Maaitah 101-122; Azzam et al; Hijab; Kawar 56-65; Miles 413-426; Moghadam 110-146; Mujahid 114; Norris and Inglehart 235-263; Peebles et al. 18-23). This paper uses a Jordanian non-profit organization called Sadaqa to identify the factors and actors that negatively impact women’s employment, on one hand, and attempts to improve women’s working conditions.
In an interview with Equal Times, a news medium funded by the International Union Confederation (ITUC) and the International Labor Organization (ILO), job-seeker Dina Saad recounts attending a job fair in Jordan’s busy capital Amman (Vidal). She was not expecting to find that 80% of the job seekers were young women like herself. Saad and her counterparts held undergraduate and post-graduate degrees, obtainments not uncommon among Jordanian women. Jordan boasted a 97% adult literacy rate for females in 2012, where women outperform men in almost all subjects, age groups, and education levels (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Queen Rania Foundation). The Jordanian workforce is constituted of 14% women and 87% men.[1] 23% of this 14% women are unemployed while only 13% of those 87% men are unemployed (World Bank). More puzzling is the percentage of both unemployed sexes with higher education seeking jobs. 78% of the 23% unemployed women have a bachelor’s degree or higher; compared to only 26% of the 13% unemployed men (Department of Statistics Amman). These numbers suggest an uneven distribution of opportunities—while the education gap between both sexes is significantly big, it is primarily men who secure jobs in the labor force. It is, thus, puzzling that Jordan maintains one of the highest rates of education for women among the greater Middle Eastern and North African region (MENA), yet has one of the lowest rates for female employment in the world, reserving the 179th place of 181 countries in women’s workforce participation—the rate is only lower in war-torn Syria (11.8%) and Yemen (6%) (World Bank, The Global Economy). This is the puzzle with which this paper is concerned: why is women’s unemployment rate high despite them having high levels of education? I approach this question through outlining the prevailing symptoms of its subject matter and, furthermore, explore what and how reforms and activism are being utilized to reverse this issue.
This paper focuses on the factors and actors that hinder women job-seekers from finding, applying to, and maintaining jobs through examining the challenges activists in this issue encounter and measures taken to support, and further empower, women in and entering the workforce. Sadaqa, a prominent activist group addressing and contesting these challenges, will be used as the case study for this paper. Sadaqa is a non-profit organization founded in 2011 by working mothers with a mission to create a supportive working environment for working women, mothers, and families. The organization challenges the problem of women’s unemployment by 1) conducting and citing relevant research, 2) educating women and men on established laws, 3) cooperating with and confronting companies that do and do not hire women respectively, and 4) appealing to governmental and nonprofits to implement reform and promote services. Sadaqa is, thus, a representative active organization that acts strategically to pursue reforms in the workforce. Additionally, the organization focuses on three prime symptoms of this issue: lack of daycares, lack of transportation, and unequal pay—all of which, Sadaqa argues, are structural, and not necessarily cultural, shortcoming in need of assessment by, particularly, the Jordanian government (Vidal). This latter argument is what this paper examines—with Sadaqa’s objectives, achievements, and obstacles—to ultimately contribute to the larger literature surrounding women’s underrepresentation in the workforce in Jordan. While the majority of literature focuses on cultural obstacles, I argue and emphasize that structural changes are necessary to achieve and maintain long-term goals to advancing women’s opportunities in the labor force and beyond. This paper is divided into two sections: first, a literature review portion examining both previous scholarship’s contributions and, largely, shortcomings; and second, local and governmental organizations’ activism and contributions toward women’s low employment in Jordan. My study provides a theoretical framework for understanding the factors and actors that keep women out of the labor force in primarily institutional and social context of Jordan and examines how representative organizations like Sadaqa are addressing the issue of women’s underemployment in Jordan. To demonstrate this, I organize this paper in two sections: first, a literature review portion examining both previous scholarship’s contributions and, largely, shortcomings; and second, a detailed account on Sadaqa’s work and activism targeting the Jordanian government to reverse the issue of women’s unemployment.
Literature Review
Majority of the established literature regarding this paradox maintains that the essential barriers to women’s participation in the workforce are either cultural (e.g. religion) that fundamentally and directly prevents women from seeking opportunities beyond the academic field (Al Maaitah 101-122; Azzam et al; Kawar 56-65; Miles 413-426; Mujahid 114; Norris and Inglehart 235-263). In contrast, there is scarcity in scholarship that addresses structural barriers (e.g. state laws), where the Jordanian government is a prime actor in preserving and reproducing the current gender disparities (Hijab; Moghadam 110-146; Peebles et al. 18-23; Stockemer and Byrne 804-821). Works that address structural barriers are largely produced in the 20th century compared to the ones that address cultural impediments mainly published in early 21st century—a time where concepts such as “Islamic culture” were coined (Inglehart and Norris). Interestingly, 20th– century literature had a mixture of both cultural and structural barriers (Hijab, Moghadam, and Peebles) which were quickly outnumbered by culture-blaming scholarships (Al Maaitah, Kawar, Miles, Mujahid). Miles, for example, attributes the constraints to women’s participation in the labor force to the “gender system,” particularly focusing on “the interplay between the larger cultural and family-level factors that shape the gender system and those associated with the state and employers in a changing economy” (414). She cites the rapid increase in women’s participation in the public sector of the workforce in the mid-1970s and early-1990s, which was supported by changes in state policies as Jordan faced significant manpower shortages. This was done by aiming to reduce the “reproductive and productive work for mothers by increasing maternity leave, increasing pay levels during maternity leave, and requiring institutions that employed a minimum number of women to provide a day-care center” (Miles 414). However, while this brought positive results for the country, like reduced import labor and increased family income, there was also reduced “economic activity within the home” (Hijab 113). When the Jordanian economy’s need for manpower disappeared, women integration into the workforce decreased (Hijab 114). By 1985, there was almost “an official policy,” while implicit and not explicit, that was circulated in government centers to discourage women from working, and especially encourage married women to remain in the house; “public and private sector employers ‘would know what to do’ without a government directive: in case a man and a woman applied who had equal qualifications, the man would be given priority” (Hijab 114). While Kawar, like Miles, argues that cultural factors have serious effects on women’s unemployment, Miles observes that such cultural factors directly influence structural adjustments (57-59; 415). For example, overcome by large debt and high male unemployment, the Jordanian government sought to obstruct women from entering the labor force to allow more opportunity for, traditionally, the breadwinner (Miles 415) In contrast, the aforementioned history of the expansion rates of women’s employment in the late 1900s allowed scholars to argue that structural policies (e.g. unequal pay and no childcare provisions) are paramount in obstructing women’s opportunities in the workforce (Moghadam 110-146; Peebles et al. 18-23; Stockemer and Byrne 804-821). In a study prepared under the supervision of Al-Manar Project of the National Center for Human Resources Development in Jordan (NCHRD), Peebles and others detail the institutional obstacles women encounter in the private sphere (18-23). The study finds that some of the laws initially intended to protect women in the labor force have “actually had an adverse impact on women’s economic participation” (18). Article 68 of the 1996 Labour Code, which forbids the firing of pregnant women after the sixth month of pregnancy, and Article 72 (also 1996), which requires employers with a minimum of 20 women employees with at least 10 children under the age of 4 to establish a nursery and hire a qualified childcare worker, are only two of many laws that result in employers rather discriminating against women (19, see table 1). Employers recognize that such articles, among others, are stark indications of women’s marital responsibilities, which perpetuate the conceptions that women will not be committed to or productive toward their jobs. While literature on Jordanian women in the workforce is largely concerned with cultural impediments, multiple works outline major structural barriers with which Sadaqa primarily identifies. Sadaqa has focused on cooperating with governmental and other organizations to address and reverse the issue of women’s underemployment. Sadaqa has worked with state organizations to even demand amendment of previously established laws like Article 72. It also partnered with corporations to increase transportation services and has been mobilizing to promote equal pay for work of equal value. All such will be examined in this paper to not only outline the obstacles women job-seekers encounter, but also to demonstrate specified practicable actions to mitigate the issue of women’s unemployment in Jordan.
There are two ways through which my paper departs from previous scholarship: I not only move away from categorizing this problem as solely cultural or solely structural, but I am interested in offering alternative approaches to this puzzle. While cultural and structural arguments provide a useful framework to scrutinize symptoms of women’s underemployment, scholarship maintaining these rationalizations disregard engagements with and activism for this cause by both local and governmental organizations. As presented below, I also argue against reductionist arguments that trace women’s underrepresentation in the workforce to “Islamic culture,” as advanced by scholars like Norris and Inglehart (235-263). With all such, I consider Sadaqa to be a feminist group with “a goal, a target for social change, a purpose informing activism”[2] (Ferree 6). With a concentration on Sadaqa, I study the organization’s mission, work, and achievements to determine both the setbacks women job-seekers encounter and the effective ways Sadaqa employed to challenge the paradox of women’s unemployment. In the next section, I explore the three symptoms that Sadaqa combats: lack of daycares, lack of transportation, and finally unequal or unfair pay. I examine the consequences of each specific issue while citing historical and statistical evidence, the positive results were such issues to be mitigated, and lastly how Sadaqa has mobilized to spread awareness about each problem and, simultaneously, reverse it.
Structural Reform: More Daycares, Accessible Transportation, and Equal Pay
While primarily mobilizing for structural change, Sadaqa’s members recognize that not only are Jordanian women and men unaware of constitutional laws placed forth to advance women’s rights, they are also uneducated about the potentiality of economic growth that would result if a larger percentage of women participated in the labor market (Sadaqa). The organization, thus, advocates for women, 47% of the Jordanian population, to contribute to Jordan’s economy as it will increase gender equality as well as result in economic and financial prosperity (World Bank). Steering away from cultural, emancipatory, and religious reform, Sadaqa neither aims to publicly call for a cultural redefining, a Quranic reinterpretation, or activism within the religion of Islam (Norris and Inglehart 235-263; “Executive Summary of AHDR1-24;” Barlas 15-38; Mir-Hosseini 629-645). Instead Randa Naffa, one of the co-founders of Sadaqa argues that such conclusions, particularly the cultural one, are lacking and assert that structural changes are necessary to reverse the gender gap in the workforce. “Decision-makers,” Naffa says, “like to blame culture, but this is their way of not taking responsibility for the law and structural barriers” (Vidal). “If there are traditional gender roles that discourage women from entering the workforce,” Naffa adds, “what is the government doing to [reverse this]?” (Vidal). Previously adopted laws and policies are not definitely enforced, often overlooked, or even avoided altogether. Article 72, for example, has largely been neglected by both companies, who employ at least twenty women and must therefore comply, and the government who passed this policy initially claiming to “give [women] assistance with childcare” (The Economic Advancement of Women in Jordan 42). This suggests that the Jordanian government, if left unattended, can overlook certain laws. Without the activism of organizations like Sadaqa, who have appealed to governmental committees, particularly regarding Article 72, legal matter can be overlooked. When the government recognizes consistent mobility regarding an issue, it is more likely to work with activist groups, like Sadaqa, to pursue laws and policies and, importantly, enforce them. This means that the separation between state and civil society undermines women’s rights. Were Sadaqa to have worked within its local realm, it would not have achieved its accomplishments thus far. This is to argue that locals targeting the government—bottom-up—and government, in turn, implementing reforms—top-down—is critical to achieving long-term goals in the context of Jordan.
Sadaqa identifies three major impediments that it attempts to reform: enforcing and amending article 72, providing safe and affordable transportation, and advocating for equal pay for both men and women. The first objective is the central aim with which Sadaqa is concerned. Article 72 of Jordan’s Labor Law states:
The employer who employs a minimum of twenty female employees shall provide a suitable place under the custody of a qualified caregiver to care for the employees’ children of less than four years of age provided the number of children is not less than ten. (Shomali 2)
Four years into its launch, Sadaqa managed to raise awareness about Article 72 and has encouraged women to start demanding for this right. In a 2011 study conducted by the organization, Sadaqa demonstrated the numerous benefits daycares can have for both working mothers and employers. Working mothers will be able to “overcome social, psychological, [and physical] pressures associated with leaving their children behind,” and, furthermore, increases households’ income “as parents no longer need to take leave without pay or vacation time to care for their children” (3). Also tied with Sadaqa’s second objective, daycares minimize transportation expenses and “time spent outside the office and on the roads” (3). Moreover, daycares not only benefit working mothers and fathers, but also children as they “enhance [their] independence and emotional and social growth” (Shomali 3). Naffa and Tareq Abu Qaoud, Program manager at Better Work Jordan (BWJ)[3] affirm that establishing daycare facilities “will attract more women to work in the workforce,” helping them “retain their jobs, thus having a positive impact on the enterprise’s profitability, and the country’s economy at large” (Hazem 2016). In fact, Sadaqa’s study showed that companies could acquire up to $200,000 dollars a year by providing women with childcare services, and such number can only increase if more women were employed (Shomali 22). In 1981, the Ministry of Labour Force of Jordan conduced a survey on female students “to assess supply, and on employers, to asses demand for working women”[4] (Hijab 103). The intention here was to take measures to integrate more women into the workforce to assist Jordan’s fluctuating economy. The study found that social values or attitudes are not necessarily the obstacles to women’s work. Rather, technical factors “could be at work in [a] good many cases (lack of transportation, ignorance of available job opportunities, absence of child care facilities, etc.)” (qtd. in Hijab 103). In comparison, access to childcare facilities, and the lack thereof, largely has had similar results across borders. In a 1998 study on childcare costs to employment in the United States, Jean Kimmel shows that childcare costs can impede mothers’ labor force participation (287-299). This significantly suggests that structural impediments—lack of childcare centers services— negatively impacts women’s participation in the labor force, narrowing their overall opportunities. In response, Sadaqa has appealed to more than one-hundred companies that employed women and by 2018, with the help of the ILO and the Ministry of Labor of Jordan, has managed to convince 90% of them to establish daycares (Asfour, Vidal). Even with such progress, however, institutional obstacles prevail. 97% of companies in Jordan are classified as small or medium enterprises, and thus, are not required to comply to the law “thereby undercutting the goal of stimulating employment opportunities for women in Jordan” (Shomali 14). Additionally, the violation of the Article results in an insignificant fine of about $400-$500 allowing for leniency and, commonly, rejection of daycare services establishment. Sadaqa, however, is now mobilizing to amend the Article altogether arguing that childcare should be a gender-neutral responsibility appealing to the Jordanian Ministry of Labor. Naffa, thus, argues that Article 72 should be enforced according to the number of children an employee has, whether male or female. The intention is to make childcare facilities to be viewed as a right, “one that is affordable and accessible to all working parents” (Vidal).
The latter two objectives around which Sadaqa is mobilizing, access to transportation and promotion of equal pay, are more demanding, because constitutional provisions do not exist for them. Accessible and affordable transportation services are yet another obstacle that essentially deter women away from the workforce or ultimately prompt them to leave their jobs. A study conducted and published jointly by Sadaqa and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) argued that overall deficiencies on transportation infrastructure as well gender inequalities in the provision of transportation services “hinder economic growth and perpetuate the cycle of poverty” (Aloul et al. 3). The study found that 47% of the 497 sampled women had refused job offers due to complications with public transportation; this number had only increased from 40% in 2014 (Aloul et al. 4; Abu Moghli et al. 6). Most women use public transportation for work purposes, because they do not own cars. Additionally, most women walk at least fifteen minutes per stop to reach a bus or station and must wait another fifteen to thirty minutes at each stop. Significantly, most women experience harassment all the time or several times a month—stares, stalking, physical harassment—not only deterring them from their jobs, but also strengthening arguments against women’s participation in male-dominated spheres. Because transportation is unreliable, unsafe, time-consuming, and expensive—all while excluding transporting children to distant and expensive daycare centers—,it would simply be more affordable for women to remain home. In contribution, Sadaqa has partnered with corporations like Ma’an Nasel, a coalition of multiple organizations campaigning for better public transportations in Jordan, to provide better bus services in multiple provinces[5]. Nonetheless, Sadaqa initially and continually presents this transportation issue as a gendered one as it aims to “increase the number of women who access public transport and increase women’s economic participation, which in turn would contribute positively to both economic and social development” (“Study Finds”).
Gender earning discrimination in the workforce is also prevalent in Jordan. Jordan demonstrated “persistent commitment to gender equity and equal pay by ratifying the ILO’s Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111) in 1963, the Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100) in 1966, and the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, in 1992” (Alfarhan 563). Since 2010, Jordan has collaborated with the ILO to launch a National Steering Committee on Pay Equity (NSCPE) in 2012 “with representation from government, the JNCW, trade unions, professional associations, employers, civil society groups, women’s research centers and the media” (“Gender Pay Discrimination”). However, the country has yet to employ domestic legislation that does not discriminate against women in pay. In 2013, men working earned 41% more in the private sector and 28% more in the public sector than women (“Gender Pay Discrimination”). Both men and women seek jobs and prefer to work in the public or formal sector than the private sector even though the privatization of Jordan’s economy allowed for more opportunities (Peebles, et al 30; Miles 416). The number of women applicants to the public sector is significantly higher than that to the private, indicating that there is more pronounced gender bias in the private sector[6] (Peebles, et al 30). This is because the public sector, historically, had had “relatively more and better job opportunities and higher salaries for women, especially educated women, and provides employment protection and social security; labor legislation is easier to enforce in the public versus the private sector” (Miles 415). Soon in the late 1900s, However, Jordan’s expansion of the private sector resulted “in a decrease in public jobs, a change that disproportionately hurt women” (Miles 415). More men than women were recruited to the public sector, while reducing opportunities for women’s employment. The private sector is vastly characterized by division of labor based on sex, where jobs may be assumed too hazardous for women employees; “men tended to work in manufacturing, trade, construction or transportation, whereas the majority of women work in education or health care or in the finance industry” (Alfarhan 569). Married men enjoy better opportunities because they are perceived as the breadwinner and, are therefore, more likely to be employed. In contrast, married women are more than likely to be rejected from job applications because of and possible maternal responsibilities (Miles 416). In fact, men workers are largely married while women workers are mostly single (Alfarhan 568). All such discrepancies contribute to women’s unemployment in the workforce. Sadaqa, in response, has mobilized to resolve this gender gap by working with the ILO, the Ministry of labor, and National Committee for Pay Equity in Jordan (NCPE) in which Reem Aslan, a Jordanian consultant at the ILO, is a leading member “promoting the principle of equal pay for work of equal value” (Vidal). Adopting this latter statement, Sadaqa aim to position this request as, once more, a right and not necessarily a plea.
All three shortcomings recognized and challenged by Sadaqa are neither solely local or solely governmental issues. While the issue of women’s unemployment is at the center, it is surrounded by both structural and social obstacles. Significantly, these obstacles are not merely singular factors that can be improved individually and separately, but more importantly, are reinforcing of each other; all to ultimately create this gendered paradox. Because this issue is multi-faceted, multiple factors and actors are necessary to mitigate it. Hoodfar and Pazira, in their book Building Civil Societies: A Guide for Social and Political Activism, advance strategic, effective, and goal-oriented approaches to truelong-term change that necessarily incorporates the government for structural reform and civil society for deep-rooted social improvement:
Bringing about fundamental, structural social and polytan change demands careful, long-term planning. Often this required in-depth research to fully understand the issues in their specific contact, as well as the implications of change for all social groups. The next step is to communicate to the public both the criticisms of the existing situation and the positive impacts of change. At the same time, the groups/organizations/coalitions advocating change must lobby. appropriate offices and officials, government bodies, influential public personalities, and lawmakers. (Hoodfar and Pazira 43)
Such is the precise strategy that organizations like Sadaqa follow to progressively combat the issue of women’s unemployment. Sadaqa recognized women’s constitutional laws like Article 72, organized meetings and workshops to disseminate this knowledge, educated women, men, and companies, and reminded governmental municipals of such law. Then they appealed to national and even transnational institutions for state policy reforms, requested the Jordanian government for stronger reinforcement. Their local work included successfully convincing many companies Sadaqa reached out to, presented research from gendered perspective, joined coalitions to further provide services like transportation, promoted the equal pay for work of equal value, and is relentlessly mobilizing for law amendments and reforms to settle this issue—all to reach women’s economic equality in Jordan, an initial step to equality beyond the workforce. Such is what Hoodfar and Pazira phrase long-term structural reform. While civil society serves a role, structural changed (top-down reform) is necessary to uproot the system injustices altogether.
Conclusion
Posed by the paradox of the contradictory relationship between women’s high literacy rate and bottommost employment rate in Jordan, I examine the factors and actors that have negatively impacted and simultaneously attempted to improve this issue. I use Sadaqa as my case study and, through a thorough examination of their goals aided by historical and empirical context as well as comprehensive scholarship, I draw my following conclusions. Sadaqa has demonstrated consistent mobilization to advance women’s representation in the workforce and economic participation. Through understanding the issue at hand, educating men and women of its content, and lobbying national and international organizations, Sadaqa has made tremendous progress in their four years of operating. I move away from arguments that trace issues as such to sources often perceived to be static like culture, and particularly, Islamic culture. While my research builds on the literature available on structural reform in the context of Jordan, I depart from previous scholarship by offering practical strategies to improvement through analyzing an efficient organization, which lives and operates by its motto, “Toward a Women-Friendly Working Environment,” creating a supportive environment for working women, mothers, and families. (Sadaqa). I summarize Sadaqa’s goals into three: education, cooperation, and execution; all of which are, furthermore, applied to three elementary problems the organization challenges: lack of daycares, lack of transportation, and unequal pay. With much observation, I note that Sadaqa is a local group targeting the state—two actors depended upon one another to advance women’s rights. Thus, grass-root activism and structural reform is necessary to establish long-term improvements in the workforce and beyond.
[1] This is the participation rate based on gender, both employed and active-job seekers.
[2] In much of the scholarship and media surrounding Sadaqa, “a “feminist” identity is not necessarily mentioned. While Sadaqa did not publicly denounce this identity marker, I consider the organization to be a feminist group. In the following research I present, I demonstrate how Sadaqa does not only advocate for women’s rights but working individual and families equally. Sadaqa also deems childcare, one of its main concerns, a gender-neutral responsibility and that day care facilities should be installed bases on the number of children of both men and women employees.
[3] Better Work—a collaboration between the United Nation’s International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group—is a comprehensive programme bringing together all levels of the garment industry to improve working conditions and respect of labour rights for workers, and boost the competitiveness of apparel businesses (Better Work Jordan).
[4] The survey recorded the responses of 1 ,092 female students at the third preparatory level. Of the total, 86.3 percent planned to go on to academic secondary schools. When the field researchers explained that vocational apprenticeship programmes would guarantee jobs, the percentage who were interested in vocational training jumped to 75.9, leading the surveyors to conclude that there was greater need for career counselling and information about vocational training opportunities. 81 7 pe cent planned to seek a job when they completed their education. However, only 47.6 per cent said they planned to continue work after marriage (Hijab, 103).
[5] Ma’an Nasel: organization of joined forces between Taqaddam and Global Power Shift committed to addressing public transportation shortcomings in Jordan from a marginal issue to a national one while also providing transportation services in certain cities (Taqaddam and Global Power Shift).
[6] This is demonstrated through higher pay for women, job security, and generally a less discriminatory space. In 2004, the public sector recruited 60% men and 40% women, characterized by better pay and working conditions. In contrast, the private sector is largest influenced by the conception that men are the breadwinners, while women the caretakers. This leads to employers hiring men, especially married men, more than women, single or married—both are worse off (Peebles, et al 416-20).
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Feature Image Credits: By Emre Gencer is licensed under C.C.