UAE | General
Gender issues meeting focus on need for policy decisions
Quality research and sound policy decisions will help tackle gender and economic issues in the Middle East and North African region as the percentage of women in the workforce remains the lowest among the entire globe.
- By Siham Al Najami, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:50 November 16, 2008
Dubai: Quality research and sound policy decisions will help tackle gender and economic issues in the Middle East and North African region as the percentage of women in the workforce remains the lowest among the entire globe.
Although more and more women are taking up higher education in higher and lower income countries, they still occupy fewer positions in the work force. In the MENA region, the women occupy only 32 per cent of the labour force making it the lowest in the world.
In partnership with the Centre of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR) and the World Bank, the Dubai School of government (DSG) organised a two-day conference from yesterday on "Gender and economics in MENA: from theory to policy making." The conference discusses the challenges and opportunities of producing and disseminating research on gender and public policy in the Arab world.
According to Mustapha Nabli, regional chief economist and director of social and economic development in the World Bank's MENA region, the goal of this conference is to present the findings of the Gender Economics Research and Policy Analysis research papers on a variety of cross-cutting gender themes such as education, employment, health and poverty in the Middle East.
This will be followed by an exploration of how gender-sensitive research can be disseminated and more effectively integrated within teaching programmes and in policy-making processes.
"To put it bluntly, our potential has been limited by the lack of opportunity for women to participate fully in the development of society. While this situation may be widely known, what is less clear is the best way to positively affect gender quality in the MENA region," said Nabeel Al Yousuf, Executive President and vice-chair of the Board of Trustees of DSG.
Professor Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, said during a video conference that women education has significantly increased from 2000 as people realised the importance of knowledge and economies became more knowledge-based.
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