Women, Work, and Economic Reform in the Middle East and North Africa 9781685858223

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Women, Work, and Economic Reform in the Middle East and North Africa

Women, Work, and Economic Reform in the Middle East and North Africa VALENTINE M . MOGHADAM

LYN NE RIENNER PUBLISHERS

B O U L D E R L O N D O N

Published in the United States of America by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 1998 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moghadam, Valentine M. Women, work, and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa / Valentine M. Moghadam. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55587-785-9 (he : alk. paper) 1. Women—Employment—Middle East. 2. Women—Employment—Africa, North. 3. Women—Africa, North—Social conditions. 4. Women— Middle East—Social conditions. I. Title. HD6981.9.M67 1997 331.4-0956—dc21 97-26798 CIP British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

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The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

Contents

List of Tables and Figures Preface

VII IX

Part 1 Introduction and Overview 1 The Political Economy of Women's Employment 2 Educating Women for a Globalizing Economy

3 27

Part 2 Case Studies of Economic Reforms and Working Women 3 Morocco and Tunisia: Export-Led Growth and Working Women 51 4 Turkey: From Housewife to Worker? 75 5 Egypt: "Yes, It Can Get Worse Than This"—Economic Reform and Women's Employment 99 6 Jordan and Syria: Gender Ideology and Political Economy 127 7 The Islamic Republic of Iran: The End of Ideology? Women's Employment Issues 153 8 Algeria: Economic Liberalization, Political Crisis, and Working Women 179 Part 3 Responses and Strategies 9 Structural Change and Women's Mobilization 10 Conclusions: Toward a New Gender Contract? List of Acronyms and Abbreviations References Index About the Book

v

199 223 237 239 255 259

Tables and Figures

Tables 1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 4.1 4.2 4.3

Women's Share in Major Occupational Groups, 1990, by Region Mean Years of Schooling, Age Twenty-Five and Above, Early 1990s, by Sex and Country Education Patterns and Expenditures of MENA Countries in Comparative Perspective Percentage of Teachers Who Are Women, by Level Taught, 1990 Number of Teachers by Gender, Iran Gender Comparisons in Education Percentage of Female Enrollment in Second-Level Vocational Education, 1980 and 1992 Percentage of Female Students, Third Level, 1992 Labor-Force Participation by Level of Education, Turkey, 1992 Infant Mortality Rates and Average Births per Woman by Education, Turkey, 1988 Sociodemographic Indicators, Tunisia and Morocco, 1990s Female Urban Population by Type of Activity, Morocco Distribution of the Tunisian Female Labor Force Economically Active Female Population by Industry, Tunisia, 1984 and 1989, and Morocco, 1982 and 1991 Economically Active Population by Employment Status, Tunisia Distribution of Total Labor Force by Worker Status and Gender, 1960-1990 Participation of Women in Manufacturing, Turkey, in Comparative Perspective Gender Differences in Earnings by Educational Level and Occupation, Turkey, 1987 vii

11 33 37 38 41 43 44 44 45 46 54 64 64 66 67 81 87 90

viii 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6

TABLES AND FIGURES Male and Female Incomes in Different Sectors, Turkish Lira, Early 1990s Percentage of Persons Employed in Usual Occupation and Unemployment Rate by Main Occupational Groups Economically Active Female Population by Occupation, Egypt, 1986 and 1989 Economically Active Female Population by Industry, Egypt, 1986 and 1989 Wages in Manufacturing, Egypt, 1 9 8 5 - 1 9 8 7 Unemployment, Egypt, 1 9 8 9 - 1 9 9 1 Social Indicators, Jordan and Syria, 1993 Labor-Force Participation, Jordan, 1990s Sectoral Distribution of the Labor Force by Sex, Jordan Distribution of Job-Seeking Women by Educational Attainment, Jordan, 1991 Economically Active Population, Syria, 1981, 1984, and 1991 Distribution of Economically Active Population by Industry and Sex, Syria, 1981 and 1991 Students, University Graduates, and Academic Staff by Sex, University, and Faculty, Syria, 1993/94 Unemployment Rates in Syria by Sex, 1 9 7 9 - 1 9 9 1 Economically Active Population by Industry, Status, and Sex, Iran, 1976 and 1986 Rural and Urban Iranian Women Seeking Employment, 1986 and 1991 Population, Economic Activity, Employment Status, and Unemployment, Iran, 1991 Social Indicators, Algeria, 1993 Structure of Employment by Occupational Group and Sex, Algeria Unemployment in Algeria Evolution of Female Economic Activity, Algeria, 1977-1992 Employed Population by Educational Level and Sex, Algeria Evolution of Female Economic Activity, by Economic Sector, Algeria

90 92 114 115 116 118 128 131 132 138 143 144 145 147 156 167 168 182 183 183 189 190 191

Figure 4.1

Women's Labor-Force Participation Rate, Turkey, October 1992

79

Preface

This book has been several years in the making, but concerted work on it began in 1994, when I was a senior researcher at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), a research and training center of the United Nations University (UNU) in Helsinki, Finland. In 1994 and 1995 I traveled in Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan, among other developing countries, to research women's employment issues. Primary data were obtained through extensive interviews with officials of government agencies, donor agencies, and NGOs; with business owners and enterprise managers; with women workers and professionals; and with economists, sociologists, and legal experts, from whom I also obtained articles and documents. I conducted interviews and observations during visits to factories, businesses, and other workplaces. In addition to gathering secondary sources published in the countries I visited, I obtained official publications to supplement the international statistical sources I used. I had employed a similar research methodology during visits to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in the fall of 1990. I first presented my contrasting scenarios about how economic liberalization might affect women in the Middle East and North Africa in an issue of the Wider Angle, the UNU/WIDER newsletter. At a preparatory conference of the Arab region in the year prior to the Beijing Conference of September 1995, I suggested to my collaborator, Nabil Khoury of the International Labour Office—with whom I had just edited a book on women, education, and development in the Arab region—that we organize a workshop on structural adjustment and women's employment in the Middle East and North Africa. The workshop was held in Nicosia in November 1995 with the support of the government of Cyprus. Some of the chapters of this book were written for conferences, and two have been published in somewhat different forms. A version of the chapter on Egypt was written for Coopers & Lybrand, for whom I had gone on a mission to Egypt as part of a USAID-funded project in JanuaryFebruary 1995. I prepared another version for a UNU/WIDER publication intended for the Beijing Conference. I first wrote the chapter on Morocco and Tunisia for the Nicosia workshop. The chapter on Iran was first prepared ix

X

PREFACE

for the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in 1994, and a different version was published in Iranian Studies in 1995. A version of the chapter on structural change and women's mobilization was first prepared for a conference on "Women Organized in Groups in the Middle East," held at Oxford University's Center for Cross-Cultural Research on Women in June 1995. The chapter on Turkey was first prepared for the MESA conference of 1995 and subsequently expanded and updated during additional research travel in September-October 1996. The chapters on the political economy of women's employment, on educating women for a globalizing economy, on Jordan and Syria, and on Algeria were written during 1996-1997, as was the concluding chapter. In fall 1996 I spent two months in Turkey and Jordan on a fellowship awarded by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and I was affiliated with the American Research Institute in Turkey (in both Istanbul and Ankara) and the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan. During that time I gathered more data and finalized the book manuscript. I am especially grateful to Dr. Ahmed Hussein and Mr. Emad Omar of the Social Statistics Unit of ESCWA for their cooperation and assistance. There are many people I thank for their cooperation during the various stages of the preparation of this book, and the chapters are peppered with their names, making a listing here redundant. I owe much of my understanding of Algeria to Doria Cherifati-Merabtine and Cherifa Bouatta, and of Egypt to Nadia Ramsis Farah, Nader Fergany, and Sawsan El-Messiri. My site visits in Tehran in May 1994 were facilitated by the Office of Women's Affairs, headed by Ms. Shahla Habibi. In June 1994 in Turkey I received much cooperation from Ms. Selma Acuner, then general director on the status and problems of women, and her assistant, Ms. Birgul Cakirer. At the State Institute of Statistics, Ms. Guldane Kabadayi and Ms. Ayse Karaduman Tas kindly provided me with documents and statistics and responded to my queries about patterns of women's employment in Turkey. At the Ministry of Labor, Ms. Perihan Sari, then deputy director general of labor and a member of the SHP, graciously met with me on very short notice and arranged for visits to two factories and meetings with trade unionists. Ms. Emel Danisoglu, general director of Social Security Institutions, generously explained Turkey's system of social security to me and the problems faced by women. Trade unionists from DISK and TurkIs accompanied me on factory visits, and my conversations with them and with the women workers were kindly translated by Ms. Dilek Hattatoglu of DISK'S International Affairs Department. A number of people made my 1996 research trips to Turkey and Jordan both enjoyable and productive: Feride Acar, Yesim Arat, Haldun Gulalp, Taghrid Khuri-Tubbeh, Fatma Al-Manaa, Nadia Takriti, Amina Adam, Fatma Sbaity Kassem, Maysoon Malak, and, again, Ahmed Hussein and

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

xi

Emad Omar. Eberhard Keniele of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and Azzedine Layachi of St. John's University, New York, read my chapters on Jordan and Syria and on Algeria, respectively, and I ' m grateful for their helpful comments. During 1997 at my new workplace, the Women's Studies Program of Illinois State University, my graduate assistant Amer Mustafa helped to finalize the manuscript in an efficient and diligent manner. Throughout, I have benefited from many conversations with Massoud Karshenas, in what I think has been a mutually rewarding exchange o f economic and sociological perspectives on gender and political economy.

—v: M.

M.

PART ONE

Introduction and Overview

1 The Political Economy of Women's Employment

In previous studies I have surveyed women's employment patterns across Middle Eastern countries and sought to explain low female labor-force participation and labor-force share in terms of the region's political economy and the characteristics of the regional oil economy (Moghadam, 1993: Ch. 2). State-sponsored import-substitution industrialization (ISI), which protected domestic industries through tariff walls, and the development of the oil and petrochemicals industries, with their capital-intensive technologies, allowed for relatively high wages for men during the oil era. But this regional oil economy was male-intensive and lacked competitive drive. Moreover, although it allowed educated women to fill available jobs in public administration, the regional oil economy precluded a deeper involvement of women in the labor force, especially in manufacturing. The female share of nonagricultural employment in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is under 20 percent, whereas it tends to be 35-45 percent in most developing countries, especially those in Southeast Asia and Latin America. In comparing women's employment across oil and non-oil economies, labor-poor and labor-surplus countries, and rich and poor countries, I found that generally the more open the economy and the less dependent on oil revenues, the greater was women's involvement in the labor force. Along with these economic factors, state policies—including attitudes of state managers and the legal framework—were important in explaining differences in women's access to paid work. I also pondered the adverse effects on women, societies, and economies of the underdevelopment and underutilization of female human resources in the region (see, e.g., Moghadam, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c). My interest in women's labor-force participation has been motivated by sociological inquiry, by concerns about equality, and by a recognition that through education and employment women become active participants in society, organize and mobilize themselves, make demands on governments and employers, and advance modernization and democratization. Active involvement in the sphere of production creates a new social and political constituency—women—empowered to question the bases of both patriarchal gender relations and the political-economic order.

3

4

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

In this book, I turn my attention to the ways in which globalization, the post-oil boom era, and the changing political economies of the MENA countries may affect women's labor-force participation, educational attainment, patterns of employment, access to economic resources, and organizations—all crucial indicators of both gender relations and development prospects. Various countries of the MENA region have adopted structural adjustment policies, and most are attempting some form of economic restructuring in order to deepen their integration into the global economy. As ESCWA (1995a: 99), the UN regional commission for West Asia, has stated: "With the beginning of the 1990s, various domestic, regional and global developments have compelled Governments in the region to start deregulating business activities so as to support the emergence of export-led industrial growth strategies. Many countries are gradually shifting to a private-sector-led industrial growth strategy, with heavy emphasis on export, such as in Egypt and, to a lesser extent, the S.A.R. [Syria]." In the mid-1980s MENA countries began to experience a recession, caused in part by the deterioration of terms of trade, the drop in oil prices, the subsequent decline in state revenues, the rise of U.S. interest rates, and increasing indebtedness. In some cases high military expenditures exacerbated the problems. As economies stagnated, unemployment increased to very high rates, worsened in some countries (e.g., Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen) by the return of expatriate labor following the 1990-1991 Gulf War. Structural adjustment policies under World Bank and IMF auspices have been adopted by a number of countries (e.g., Morocco in 1983, Tunisia in 1986, Jordan in 1989, and Egypt in 1990), and other countries have administered their own form of restructuring (e.g., Syria and Iran). The countries of the region have shifted from an etatist development strategy based on ISI to economic liberalization and a strategy for export-led growth to balance budgets and increase productivity and competitiveness. Turkey began the process earliest, immediately after its military coup in 1980. Stock markets have been rejuvenated in several countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iran, and have been active for a longer period in Turkey. Privatization is being undertaken throughout the region, albeit at a slow pace, since governments are cautious about privatizing public-sector enterprises. Countries have initiated the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the liberalization of prices and trade, as well as efforts to reduce the power of trade unions and to tie wage increases to improvements in productivity. The overstaffing of government agencies is a constant theme in World Bank policy papers, and it has been a controversial and sensitive issue in the MENA countries themselves, where governments have preferred the strategy of wage deterioration and slower recruitment to outright layoffs. All countries are pushing to make themselves more

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

5

investor- and trade-friendly. As Mrs. Nawal Tatawi, Egypt's minister for the economy and international cooperation, said in October 1996: "By the end of the century we want to see exports doubled." 1 There is now a burgeoning literature on the subject of adjustment and employment in the MENA region (e.g., Handoussa and Potter, 1991; Hansen, 1991; Karshenas, 1995a, 1995b; World Bank, 1995b). But that literature and the broader studies on the Middle Eastern political economy (e.g., Richards and Waterbury, 1996) tend to overlook gender-specific effects, or they assume that gender is a side issue. In my view gender issues and women's employment are certainly not peripheral to the economic prospects of the region, its ability to increase competitiveness, and its capacity for social development. At the same time, the changing political economy is bound to affect women's economic positions and their wellbeing, in ways both positive and negative. Pertinent questions include the following: Will economic liberalization in the MENA countries, which are characterized by low female labor-force participation rates and a small female share of the salaried labor force, increase demand for women workers and job opportunities for women across different sectors? What kinds of jobs are likely to be available to women? Will the education and training of women receive more attention? Will economic liberalization result in an intensification or a subversion of the "patriarchal gender contract" that has thus far characterized the region? The issues explored in this book and the analysis presented are broadly situated within the women-in-development/gender-and-development (WID/GAD) approach to economic development and the status of women. It may be useful to consider this framework briefly before moving to the specific hypotheses, empirical evidence, and argument I develop in this book.

Gender and Development: A Conceptual Overview In recent years, a number of studies have appeared that either trace the evolution of women in development (e.g., Rathgeber, 1990; Razavi and Miller, 1995) or present research exemplifying the GAD approach (e.g., Blumberg et al., 1995). At present, the GAD framework is flexible and interdisciplinary, reflecting the diversity of theoretical backgrounds and methodological approaches—including Marxism, feminism, and neoclassical economics—of the sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and economists undertaking GAD research. Nevertheless, there is a core of assumptions, concepts, and methods that may be delineated. First there is the premise that women in any society represent an unequal, disadvantaged, or oppressed social category (e.g., Sen and Grown, 1987). There is also the understanding that women's positions are variable by social class

6

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

(e.g., Moghadam, 1994a; Kabeer, 1994), that the state and political struggles may impede or advance women's basic needs and strategic interests (Molyneux, 1986), and that the effects of economic development have been different for women than for men (Boserup, 1970; Moser, 1993; Moghadam, 1996a). In particular, the capitalist development process—the commercialization of agriculture, industrialization, and the recent structural adjustment policies—have had adverse effects on women in both their productive and their reproductive roles (e.g., Elson and Pearson, 1981; Commonwealth Secretariat, 1989; Sparr, 1994; Bakker, 1994). Women's roles in the spheres of production and social reproduction consist of waged employment and informal income-generating activities, domestic labor and child care, and community-based activities (Moser, 1989; Elson, 1991b). These activities have tended to be undervalued by society, ignored by planners and policymakers, and rendered invisible in national accounts (Beneria, 1982). Because of gender bias or patriarchal controls, women have had fewer rights and opportunities than men have had in the areas of literacy, reproductive control, education, salaried work, property rights, and formal politics (Agarwal, 1995; Tinker, 1990; UNDP, 1995). Where women have been marginalized from the productive process or, conversely, where their productive and reproductive labor time has been overstretched, the effects not only have been devastating for women but may well have undermined the stated goals of structural change (Palmer, 1991; Joekes, 1989). These propositions have been tested and substantiated empirically, through cross-national quantitative studies (e.g., Ward, 1984; Catagay and Ozler, 1995); small-scale surveys of households in one or two countries (e.g., Finlay, 1989; Chant, 1995; Kanji, 1994; Garcia and de Oliveira, 1995); country case studies using ethnographic methods, including participant observation and in-depth interviews (e.g., Fernandez-Kelly, 1983; Gallin, 1996; Safa, 1996); the analysis of secondary sources or data from large-scale surveys for one or more regions (e.g., Kandiyoti, 1985; Bakker, 1988; Floro, 1995; Allen, 1996; Moghadam, 1995d, 1996b); or a combination of research methods (e.g., Moghadam, 1994b; Safa, 1995; Chant, 1995b). Research on women's labor-force participation has identified a number of constraints on women's employment: (1) household inequalities and the traditional sexual division of labor, whereby men may allocate labor time and control the distribution of resources and rewards; (2) the overall gender ideology of the society, which favors men in the household, labor market, and polity and relegates women to a subordinate or secondary role; (3) the legal system and regulatory framework as defined by the state, which could reinforce the above conditions and hamper women's full participation through labor laws, family laws, and civil codes; (4) the social and physical infrastructure, including the state of roads, public transportation, the quality and proximity of schools, and the availability of childcare facilities; and (5) economic conditions and policies that could be

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

7

inhospitable to working women, contrary to their well-being, or an impediment to their participation. For example, a strategy for economic growth that calls for cutbacks in the areas of health, education, and welfare could constrain women's availability for work, limit their productive capacity, or overextend their labor time. Economic conditions have varying effects on women's labor-force participation and employment patterns. Periods of stability and growth that result in high wages for men could result in female domesticity, whereas adverse conditions may force women to seek jobs or an income to supplement the family budget. Solutions to the disadvantaged position of women are varied, ranging from the passage of antidiscrimination laws to calls for greater integration of women in the development process. Although GAD theorists and researchers are extremely critical of the current neoliberal economic environment, it is perhaps a sign of the times that few explicitly call for the politically organized transformation of the social structure, economic system, or political order, as did socialist-feminists and Marxists in the 1970s and 1980s. It stands to reason that because gender inequality has a systemic character—and discrimination is only the end result of a complex network of social relations—such inequality requires a systemic solution. Today there is a tendency to play down the systemic defects and to address problems and issues that may be tackled more immediately. Strategies to improve women's positions include making economists and planners more aware of gender (e.g., Elson, 1995; Moser, 1993; Beneria, 1995; Pearson, 1995); calling on governments and employers to spread women's reproductive responsibilities equitably (Palmer, 1995; Moghadam, 1996a); and calling for greater investments in women's education, access to credit, and employment (Fong and Perrett, 1991; Khoury and Moghadam, 1995). It is believed that these strategies could lead to deeper transformations and to the eventual economic empowerment of women in societies. It is also believed that change and especially political empowerment could come about through women's mobilization and the activities of feminist organizations (Sen and Grown, 1987; Moser, 1993; Moghadam, 1994a, 1996c). Having reviewed the broad parameters of the GAD framework within which this book is situated, we now turn to a discussion of the specific ideas and concepts advanced in the present study of the changing political economy and working women in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Interaction of Gender and Political Economy: The Gender Contract This book examines the ways in which the economic reform process in the M E N A region is affecting or is likely to affect the economic status of

8

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

women in the short term and gender relations and women's empowerment in the longer term. Thus, we need to examine the relationship between gender and political economy, including the implicit or explicit rules governing the relationships between men and women, women and the state, and women and employers. Gender relations and the sexual division of labor take different forms, varying with historical context, the mode of production, system of distribution, social class, culture/ethnicity, and type of state. The structure of the female labor force similarly correlates with these factors, hence the muchdocumented changes and variations in the forms of deployment of women's labor power across space and time. A historical constant, however, is that no society has treated its women and men equally, and men and women have been assigned different roles in the spheres of production and reproduction. In all contemporary societies and cultures there exists an implicit or explicit "gender contract," which usually places women in a subordinate position and men in a dominant position, whether in the household, the labor market, the polity, or some other social institution. The concept of a gender contract has become familiar in Nordic countries since the late 1980s. It acknowledges but is somewhat different from the well-known concept of the "sexual contract" advanced by Pateman (1988), which criticizes the "social contract" in political philosophy as an agreement that involves only male individuals and that also implies the male prerogative to women's bodies. In Finland, Julkunen and Rantalaiho (1992) have used the concept to analyze gender relations and the welfare regimes of the Nordic countries, particularly with respect to the labor market. Rantalaiho (1993) explains that although labor-market roles and family roles, and production and social reproduction, are institutionally separated, they tend to be combined in individual lives, daily and through the life course: An older or so called "traditional" solution that was historically established in the earlier industrialized countries was to divide the responsibilities in "separate spheres," the gender contract where men as breadwinners belong in the sphere of production, [in] the labor market, and women are housewives in the sphere of reproduction, at home. The social pattern was constructed with definitely class specific solutions, so that the well-to-do middle class family was the ideological model which often was far from the working class reality. There is also a more modern type of gender contract, which more or less normalizes women's role [in] the labor market. The gender contract presently prevailing in the Nordic countries entails the individual right of women to paid work and a certain amount of personal independence, both economically and socially—in exchange for women's continuing responsibility for human care, both within the public services and in the family, and women's acceptance of "women's wages" and a subordinate position within the processes of power. (Rantalaiho, 1993: 5)

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

9

Although Rantalaiho and other Nordic feminists realize that what sets them apart from the rest of Europe, not to mention the United States and developing countries, is the institutionalized system of child-care centers and paid maternity leave, which has allowed women the time for both labor-market activity and increased involvement in political bodies, they feel that theirs is an "unfinished democracy" that requires further renegotiation of the gender contract toward more equality in the labor market, an end to occupational sex typing, and shared responsibility in care giving. The notion of a contract may appear specific to Western countries, but in fact it may be appropriately applied to other regions, for at least three reasons. First, as Rantalaiho notes, the notion of a gender contract "points to how we live in a world of taken-for-granted gendered structures. . . . [T]o call it a 'contract' challenges just that invisibility, and instead poses the question of 'parties' and agenda, and calls for an open, politicized renegotiation" (Rantalaiho, 1993: 5). Second, although contract theory was developed for Western countries, contracts certainly do exist in other countries, and these are specified in constitutional laws, labor laws, and family laws. The highly formal marriage contract in Muslim societies is an example of an indigenous contract. Third, the idea of a gender contract that refers to the rights, roles, and values of women and men and that is subject to modification and renegotiation through structural change and women's mobilization (or, more ominously, through backlashes such as fundamentalist movements) is compatible with the argument being presented here and, indeed, with the evidence from the Middle East and North Africa. Around the world, there have been shifts in the pattern of gender relations, although not always in satisfactory directions. As noted earlier, in the Nordic countries, economic modernization, social democracy, and feminist activism have resulted in a more gender-egalitarian social contract. But in other areas such as South Korea (see Lie, 1996), economic growth has been predicated upon female employment, but it has not resulted in a more equitable gender contract. Not only do women remain subordinate in a cultural sense, but their position in the labor market is very weak, and gender-based wage disparities are among the highest in the world (see UNDP, 1995: 36). In the MENA region, the traditional gender contract has prevailed, in part due to the fact that the oil-based political economy has tended to reinforce a more patriarchal form of gender relations. But what might the future hold as the political economy changes? Strictly speaking, patriarchal gender relations are kin-based and often strongest in rural areas (see Kandiyoti, 1985). Here I use the term "patriarchal gender contract" to refer to the nonagricultural, urban-based sexual division of labor predicated upon the male breadwinner/female homemaker roles, in which the male has direct access to wage employment or control over the means of production, and the female is largely economically dependent upon the male members of her family. During the oil

10

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

boom era of the 1960s and 1970s—characterized also by urbanization, rural-urban migration, and intraregional flows of capital and labor—the patriarchal gender contract was made possible and indeed financed by the regional oil economy, the wealth of the oil-producing states, and the high wages of male workers. These conditions limited both the supply of female labor and the demand for women workers in industry and in services; hence the overrepresentation of highly educated and professional women within the female labor force. The patriarchal gender contract assumed that women would marry young, that households would be headed by men, and that men would have jobs and would provide for their families. In such a context, families invested more in the educational attainment of males than of females, a practice that resulted in the rather large gender gaps that exist in literacy and mean years of schooling in the region (see Chapter 2). The patriarchal gender contract was—and in many places still is—codified in law, especially in the region's personal status or family laws, such as those requiring women to obtain the permission of fathers or husbands to gain employment, to seek a loan, to start up a business, or to undertake any form of travel. These laws also give women a lesser share of inheritance of family wealth. My research and observations during the 1990s lead me to conclude that today's economic realities are challenging the patriarchal gender contract in fundamental ways. In the post-oil boom era, and in a global context of recession and restructuring, the male breadwinner role is no longer guaranteed, unemployment has grown, wages have deteriorated, per capita incomes have fallen, inflation has soared, poverty has worsened, femaleheaded households are increasing, and more and more women are seeking jobs out of economic need. Rising prices and deterioration of real wages have forced male wage workers to take on second jobs in all but the rich Gulf states. It is widely recognized that the demographic structure of the region, wherein 40-50 percent of the population is under the age of fifteen, reflects and contributes to low labor-force participation, high dependency, low productivity, and high unemployment—a situation exacerbated by low economic growth rates and new forms of poverty. 2 The economic problems facing the governments of the region are how to restructure from oil to competitiveness, how to attract domestic and foreign investment, how to generate jobs and absorb new entrants to the labor force, and how to achieve growth and reduce poverty. In this context it is clear that the marginalization of women from productive employment and the large gender gaps that exist in education may be impeding the region's growth and competitiveness. This is the socioeconomic context in which gender issues broadly speaking and women's education and employment more specifically are not only relevant but central to the process of structural change in the MENA region. It is important to note that the relationship between gender and political economy is not one-sided but is interactive; that is, each structure influences

11

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

the other. Moreover, although the relationship between gender and political economy may be stable at times, it is also subject to change. In the MENA region certain conceptions of gender—of the roles, rights, and values of men and women—may have influenced labor-market and economic processes, but gender definitions, or the gender contract, may also change as a result of economic or political developments. I argue that the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa is changing and that the gender contract could change with it. The evolving new political economy—characterized by trade liberalization, the end of massive labor exportation and importation, the growth of labor-intensive and exportoriented industries, and the imperatives of the global economy (competitiveness)—could accelerate women's economic participation. If so, new patterns of women's employment, along with the activities of the burgeoning women's movements, could lead to a transformation of the patriarchal gender contract toward a more egalitarian set of gender relations— albeit one in which women's position as women might improve, though their position as workers would need to be monitored. What is the current situation, and how might it change? Table 1.1 indicates the cross-regional differences in women's occupational activity and the underrepresentation of women in the Middle East (referred to in the table as "Western Asia") and North Africa in nearly all occupational groups. The pattern of relatively low female labor-force participation and the masculine nature of most employment is what I believe may change as a result of the changing political economy. Before we consider in more detail the ways that economic liberalization might affect women's employment in the Middle East and North Table 1.1

Women's Share in Major Occupational Groups, 1990, by Region Prof./Tech. & related

Admin./ manag.

Clerical & service

Sales workers

Production workers

Western Europe Other

50 44

18 32

63 69

48 41

16 22

Eastern Europe

56

33

73

66

27

36 41 49 52 43 48 32 37 29

15 18 23 29 11 17 6 7 9

37 52 59 62 48 48 20 29 22

52 53 47 59 42 53 8 12 10

20 17 17 21 30 21 16 7 10

Developed countries

Developing

countries

Sub-Saharan Africa Oceania Latin America Caribbean Eastern Asia Southeast Asia Southern Asia Western Asia North Africa

Source: UN, The World's Women 1995: Trends and Statistics, Chart 5.16.

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INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Africa, let us situate these regional developments and likely outcomes, within global trends.

Globalization and Female Labor The current stage of international capitalism, or globalization, is manifested by new forms of competition, technological progress in transportation and communications, increased flexibility of labor markets, and international production by transnational corporations (TNCs). The last consists of some 40,000 parent firms and 250,000 foreign affiliates, largely European, North America, and Japanese, but now also including TNCs from South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mexico. Outside North America, Europe, and Japan, where the bulk of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows, TNCs are especially active in Latin America and East and Southeast Asia, and China has been receiving a very large share of total investments in developing countries. But FDI flows and TNC investments are much smaller in the Middle East and in Africa. Indeed, in 1994 the value of FDI stock in West Asia (the Middle East) and in Africa (including North Africa) was $34.5 billion and $53.1 billion, respectively, compared with $ 1 8 6 billion in Latin America and the Caribbean and $305.1 billion in East, South, and Southeast Asia (UNCTAD, 1995: Table 5, pp. 112-113). This gives the Middle East a mere 1.5 percent share of the world total and 5.9 percent of the share of the developing country total. Clearly, this is a situation that must change, and MENA states are actively pursuing foreign investment. An emerging trend parallel to and not incompatible with globalization is regionalization, which entails the formation of regional blocs for economic development and cooperation. The major regional blocs in the global economy today are the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The MENA region does not yet have a viable and dynamic regional bloc because of continuing political uncertainties and rivalries. But this is a step that the region must take if it is to develop markets, protect interests and resources, and regulate labor-capital flows within the region and internationally. 3 The restructuring of the global economy and shifts in the flows of capital and labor have had implications not only for regions but for states and social classes. The process has not been gender-neutral: In the current global environment of open economies, new trade regimes, and competitive export industries, restructuring relies heavily on female labor, both waged and unwaged, in formal sectors and in the home, in manufacturing and in public and private services. This phenomenon has been termed the "feminization of labor" by Standing (1989), who has hypothesized that the

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

13

increasing globalization of production and the pursuit of flexible forms of labor to retain or increase competitiveness, as well as changing j o b structures in industrial enterprises, favor the "feminization of employment" in the dual sense of an increase in the number of women in the labor force and a deterioration of work conditions (labor standards, income, and employment status). 4 Women's growing share of many kinds of jobs, however, has not been accompanied by a redistribution of domestic, household, and child-care responsibilities. Moreover, women are still disadvantaged in the new labor markets, in terms of wages, training, and occupational segregation; they are also disproportionately involved in the nonregular forms of employment that are increasing: temporary, part-time, casual, or home-based work. Generally speaking, the situation is better or worse for women depending on the type of state and the strength of the economy. Women workers in the welfare states of northern Europe fare best, followed by women in other strong Western economies. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the economic status of working women changed dramatically for the worse following the collapse of communism. In much of the developing world, a class of women professionals and workers employed in the public and private sectors has emerged as the result of such factors as rising educational attainment, changing aspirations, economic need, and demand for relatively cheap (female) labor. However, vast sections of the economically active female population in the developing world lack formal training, work in the informal sector, have no access to social insurance, and live in poverty. The Surge in Women Workers and Professionals As the global economy has expanded, a process of female proletarianization has been taking place. In developing countries, more and more women have been drawn out of the home and into the labor force, responding to a demand in the labor-intensive and low-wage textiles and garments industries, as well as in electronics and pharmaceuticals, which produce for the home market and for export. The surge in female employment in developing countries began in the 1970s, following a period of capitalist development and economic growth characterized by displacement of labor and craftwork, commercialization of agriculture, and rural-urban migration that resulted in the marginalization of women from the productive process, especially in urban employment. Some called this earlier process "housewife-ization" (Mies, 1986; see also Boserup, 1970, 1987; Tinker, 1976), and others described it as the "inverted-U pattern" of female labor-force participation in early modernization. During the 1970s it was observed that export-processing zones along the U.S.-Mexico border and in Southeast Asia, established by transnational corporations to take advantage of low

14

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

labor costs in developing countries (see Frobel et al., 1980; Nash and Fernandez-Kelly, 1983), were hiring mainly women. By the early 1980s it was clear that the new industrialization in what was then called the Third World was drawing heavily on women workers, and many studies by women-in-development specialists and socialist feminists centered on the role played by the available pool of relatively cheap female labor in labor-intensive industries. Gender ideologies emphasizing the "nimble fingers" of young women workers and their capacity for hard work, especially in the Southeast Asian economies (Elson and Pearson, 1981; Heyzer, 1986; Lim, 1985), facilitated the recruitment of women for unskilled and semiskilled work at wages lower than men would accept and in conditions that unions would not permit. In South Korea in 1985, women's earnings were only 47 percent of equivalent male earnings; in Singapore, the figure was 63 percent (Pearson, 1992: 231). In Latin America, women entered the labor force at a time when average wages were falling dramatically. 5 Around the world, women's share of total industrial labor rarely exceeds 3 0 - 4 0 percent, but "the percentage of women workers in export processing factories producing textiles, electronics components and garments is much higher, with figures as high as 90% in some cases" (Pearson, 1992: 231). Comparing markets and employment in South Asia and Southeast Asia for a study published by ESCAP (the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific), Perkins (1992) found that export orientation explained the vast difference in women's access to employment and income in the two regions. Studies commissioned by INSTRAW, a UN agency, led Joekes to conclude that "exports of manufactures from developing countries have been made up in the main of the kinds of goods normally produced by female labor: industrialization in the post-war period has been as much female led as export led" (Joekes/INSTRAW, 1987: 81). The process of the feminization of labor continued throughout the recessionary 1980s, not only in the manufacturing sector but also in public services, where throughout the world women's share has grown to 3 0 - 5 0 percent—at a time when public-sector wages, like industrial wages, have been declining. As already noted, the feminization of labor refers not only to the influx of women into relatively low-paying jobs but also to the growth of part-time and temporary work among men, especially in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, mainly in retail trade, hotels and catering, banking, and insurance (UN, 1991: 190). As world trade in services and out-sourcing by global firms have increased, so has the involvement of women in various occupations and professions of the services sector. Women have made impressive inroads into professional services such as law, banking, accounting, computing, and architecture; in tourism-related occupations; and in the information services, including offshore airline booking, mail order, credit cards, word processing,

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

15

telecommunications, and so on. The surge in women's employment is not characteristic only of developing countries. In sixteen European countries, the increase in the labor force over the 1 9 8 3 - 1 9 9 1 period was quite dramatic, whereas it was relatively modest for men. In six of those countries the male labor force actually fell over the period, most significantly in Belgium (down 3.4 percent). 6 The increases in women's employment around the world are the result of the rising educational attainment of women and their changing aspirations, as well as economic need and household survival strategies (e.g., Nam, 1991; Steele, 1992; Chant, 1995a). The increases are also the result of the demand for women and for relatively cheap labor in growing sectors of the economy, such as labor-intensive manufacturing and tourism (e.g., Chant, 1992; Pearson, 1992; Standing, 1989). Wages, Informalization, and

Unemployment

The relatively low wages of women are certainly a factor in the growing demand for women workers in the developing world. On average, women earn 75 percent of men's wages (see UNDP, 1995: 36). Sweden, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam are at the upper and more egalitarian end ( 8 9 - 9 1 percent), and Bangladesh, Chile, China, Cyprus, the Philippines, South Korea, and Syria are at the lower and more unequal end ( 4 2 - 6 1 percent). The lower wages that women earn are mainly from within the private sector, whereas the public sector tends to reward women more equitably. In Egypt, women's wages in the private sector are about half those of comparable males, whereas in the government sector women are paid the same as men (World Bank, 1995a: 73). In Turkey, female public employees receive pay equal to that of their male counterparts; the largest gender-based earnings gap occurs among agricultural and production workers, where female earnings are only half of the male earnings (Kasnakoglu and Dayioglu, 1996: 6). Some of the difference in the income gap is certainly based on the lower "human capital" formation and lack of continuous employment of some women workers. Yet gender bias accounts for much of the difference in earnings. In some countries women earn less than men despite higher qualifications, a problem that is especially acute in the private sector. For example, in Ecuador, Jamaica, and the Philippines, "women actually have more education and experience, on average, than men, but get paid between 20 and 30 percent less" (World Bank, 1995a: 45). Although women have been entering the formal labor force in record numbers, much of the increase in female labor-force participation has occurred in informal sectors, especially in developing countries. The extent of this sector and women's involvement in it are matters of dispute because they are not always captured in the official statistics. What is clear, though, is that many formal jobs have become "informalized" as employers

16

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

seek to increase "flexibility" and to lower labor and production costs through subcontracting, as Beneria and Roldan (1987) showed in their study of Mexico City. Drawing on existing gender ideologies, subcontracting arrangements encourage the persistence of home-based work. Many women accept this kind of work—with its insecurity, low wages, and absence of benefits—as a convenient form of income generation that allows them to carry out domestic responsibilities and care for children; some deny that it is "work," preferring to call it a hobby or a form of amusement, in order not to counter cultural codes or gender ideologies that idealize housewifery. (See also Cinar, 1994; MacLeod, 1996; Dangler, 1994; Watson, 1992.) The growth of informalization is observed also in developed countries (e.g., Fernandez-Kelly and Garcia, 1989). It should come as no surprise that despite women's key role in national economies, their unemployment rates are very high. This is partly a function of the nature of economic restructuring itself, which has entailed massive retrenchment of labor in most developing countries, in the former socialist countries now undergoing marketization, and in the developed countries. Unemployment rates are very high by international standards in Algeria, Egypt, Jamaica, Jordan, Morocco, Nicaragua, Poland, the Slovak Republic, and Turkey (World Bank, 1995a: 29). And although unemployment is high for men, it is often higher for women (see Moghadam, 1995d). In many developing countries unemployed women who are seeking but not finding jobs are new entrants to the labor force (as in Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and Chile, where female unemployment rates can be as high as 30 percent, compared with 10 percent for men). In the MENA region, high population growth and the low work-creation capacity of the economy have resulted in growing unemployment, and educated women experience higher rates of unemployment than do educated men (Shaban, Assaad, AlQudsi, 1995; Moghadam, 1995e). In some cases, women may be seen as "expensive labor" because of labor legislation requiring generous child care and maternity leave. 7 In certain countries where restructuring has occurred in enterprises employing large numbers of women, or in export sectors that have lost markets, the female unemployment rates may also reflect j o b losses by previously employed women (as in Malaysia in the mid-1980s, Vietnam in the late 1980s, Bulgaria in the early 1990s, and Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey more recently). The fact that in Russia and Poland women's unemployment is higher than men's despite women's higher educational attainment and their long work experience is suggestive of the existence of gender bias in labor markets. 8 In all regions, the high unemployment rates represent the downside of globalization and economic restructuring, especially for women workers, who must contend with both the class and gender biases of the post-Keynesian economic policy environment.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

17

Thus women face contradictory trends within the globalization process. The feminization of labor has been accompanied by the feminization of unemployment; the supply of job-seeking women is increasing, and demand for them exists, but it is limited. The deployment of female labor generally corresponds to the type of development or growth strategy and the imperatives of the capital accumulation process. Yet there have been unintended consequences of women's economic participation. The entry of women into the labor force in such large numbers has important implications for gender consciousness and activism, for the equality and empowerment of women, and for changes in gender relations and ideologies within the household and the larger society (Kahn and Giele, 1992; Moghadam, 1990, 1994a, 1996a; Safa, 1996; Tiano, 1994). Women with education and work experience have mobilized into feminist groups and women's nongovernmental organizations in response to continuing problems for women in the areas of literacy, education, employment, health, poverty, violence, human rights, and political participation (see Chapter 9).

Structural Adjustment and Working Women In this last section, we return to the main issues with respect to economic reform and women's economic status. According to economists, unemployment and balance-of-payments problems may be solved through an economic adjustment program wherein macroeconomic policies, especially interest and exchange rates, can be manipulated. This approach eliminates the bias against exportables and redirects investment from nontradables toward tradables. The shift from import substitution to export-oriented industrialization should have a positive impact on employment, as the latter creates more job opportunities than the former. Economists also argue that labor-market flexibility facilitates the process of adjustment and structural change. However, adjustment policies are likely to alter employment, wages, work conditions, and living standards for certain groups in society, which in turn could undermine the political viability of the reform measures themselves. The now-classic UNICEF study, Adjustment With a Human Face (Cornia, Jolly, and Stewart, 1987), showed that structural adjustment has a social price; some social categories are adversely affected by the prescribed policies, and inequalities increase. Subsequent studies have shown that privatization hurts workers and government employees, as wages tend to lag behind price increases. Denationalization of state firms and contraction of the public-sector wage bill, while reducing the deficit and inflation, increase unemployment. Another aspect of structural adjustment is socialsector restructuring, achieved through cutbacks in social services and the introduction of "user fees" for purposes of "cost recovery" in state provision

18

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

of education and health care. As a result of these measures, inequalities usually increase and new impoverished groups emerge. In the MENA region it is feared that "the imposition of fees for elementary and primary education, as required by structural adjustment policies, could adversely affect the attendance of poor children, who may join the informal labor force at a very young age" (ESCWA, 1995a: 118). A Syrian economist notes "a downgrading of living standards in most Arab countries between 1990 and 1993" (Marzouq, 1994: 49). The burden of adjustment falls on the shoulders of the urban poor, labor, and women. Studies by WID/GAD specialists demonstrate that the decline in men's wages and the increases in household poverty that force women to seek employment or informal work (and that sometimes lead poor parents to remove daughters from school either to help at home or to bring in an income) create enormous burdens on women. Structural adjustment policies heighten the risk and vulnerability of women and children in households where the distribution of consumption and the provision of health care and education favor males or income-earning adults. Structural adjustment causes women to bear most of the responsibility of coping with increased prices and shrinking incomes, since in most instances they are responsible for household budgeting and maintenance (see Elson, 1991a; Afshar and Dennis, 1992; Sparr, 1994; Bakker, 1994). Rising unemployment and reduced wages for males in a given household— and especially in households maintained by women alone, an increasing proportion of all households in most regions—lead to increased economic activity on the part of women and children, often in the informal sector. Women's employment and pay may suffer. For example, in Mexico women's total income declined from 71 percent of men's in 1984 to 66 percent in 1992; women were laid off in the public sector and in other sectors, and their share of jobs dropped from 42 percent to 35 percent (UNDP, 1995: 40). Why do economic crisis and structural adjustment hurt women more than they do men? One reason lies in the nature of intrahousehold inequalities. In some parts of the world, and especially in large patriarchal households, women do not enjoy the same relationship to their own labor as do men. They cannot organize and distribute their labor time as they see fit, they engage in considerable unpaid domestic labor, they may receive unequal amounts of food, they may have no property rights, and the products of their labor (including such products as handicrafts and rugs) are usually appropriated and disposed of by their husbands or fathers. (Their labor time may also be organized by the elder or senior women in the extended-family household.) Morvaridi (1992, 1995) has vividly documented the intensification of women's work in his study of women agricultural workers in Turkey, while Agarwal has described the consequences of the lack of property rights for Indian women (Agarwal, 1995). Extrahousehold

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

19

reasons pertain to labor-market segmentation and inequities experienced by women, including the income gap and the lack of support for women's child-rearing responsibilities. The reasons women are especially disadvantaged by structural adjustment lie in cultural, political, and economic factors that may be summarized as follows: •

•

•

•

•

•

•

Customary biases and intrahousehold inequalities lead to lower consumption by women and girls and and fewer benefits for them among lower-income groups. The mobility of labor that is assumed by neoliberal economic thought and encouraged by structural adjustment policies does not take into account the degree to which women's geographic and occupational mobility is constrained by family and child-rearing responsibilities. The legal and regulatory framework often treats women not as autonomous citizens but rather as dependents or minors—with the result that in many countries, women cannot own or inherit property, seek a job, or take out a loan without the permission of husband or father. Structural adjustment extends women's labor time by increasing women's productive activities (higher labor-force participation because of economic need and household survival strategy) and reproductive burdens (women have to compensate in care giving for cutbacks in delivery of social services). Because women are concentrated in government jobs in many developing countries, and because the private sector discriminates against women or is otherwise unwilling to provide support structures for working mothers, women suffer disproportionately from policies that aim to contract the public-sector wage bill by slowing down public-sector hiring. Women in the industrial sector tend to be laid off first during restructuring or privatization because of gender bias but also because women workers tend to be concentrated in the lower rungs of the occupational ladder, in unskilled production jobs, or in overstaffed administrative and clerical positions. The poverty-inducing aspect of structural adjustment hits women hard and is especially hard on mothers maintaining households alone.

Having outlined the criticisms of the negative aspects of structural adjustment, which were drawn largely from WID/GAD literature, I will offer an alternative line of argumentation. Inasmuch as structural adjustment is meant to increase or bring about the efficient mobilization and intersectoral mobility of a country's human and nonhuman resources, the underutilization of a female population and extreme forms of gender segregation—conditions that exist in the Middle East and North Africa—represent

20

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

a misallocation of human resources and require new policies. Economic liberalization, especially the export-oriented manufacturing strategies that tend to be prescribed, could favor women's employment because: • These policies raise the demand for women in the labor-intensive, traditionally female-intensive branches that are geared for export. • In the current era of globalization, countries are forced to make their industries—and their labor forces—more competitive, partly by raising skill levels. This could favor increased attention to more education, vocational training, upgrading of skills, and entrepreneurship for women. • Structural reforms often call for fiscal changes and the mobilization of domestic resources through such measures as expanding the tax base and making taxation more efficient. Governments may reason that in order to increase the income-tax-paying population, policies would be needed to increase the size of the female labor force. • Women's numbers could rise in such expanding occupations as banking, insurance, accounting, computing, and so on, which are becoming feminized internationally. • The expansion of tourism can break down cultural proscriptions against women's employment in sales and services occupations. 9 • As governments relinquish control over economic enterprises to focus on expanding and upgrading health, education, and social services, this could enhance the participation of women in the social sectors. • The emphasis on private-sector development could encourage women-owned or -managed businesses. It should also be noted that women's employment and pay under structural adjustment need not always work to their detriment. For example, in Costa Rica, export-oriented apparel and electronics assembly firms created more jobs for women, "but not by lowering their pay compared with other private-sector jobs." Women maintained their jobs and pay in the public sector, where they are heavily concentrated (UNDP, 1995: 40). The reason is that "the Costa Rican government made an explicit effort to promote gender equality, it increased paid maternity leave, ratified the ILO conventions against discrimination, and toughened its own laws by passing the Law of Equality in 1990" (UNDP, 1995: 40). The outcomes of structural adjustment for women would seem, therefore, to depend very much on the attitude and approach of the government—which in turn is most likely influenced by economic considerations (such as arguments showing that investing in women pays off in social and economic terms) as well as by the moral suasion of women's organizations and international organizations.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

Constraints

and

21

Opportunities

Earlier in this chapter I identified five groups of constraints that women face entering and remaining in the labor force. These constraints are especially pertinent in the MENA region. The question is, can economic liberalization radically change women's employment profile by breaking down the household, legal, and labor-market constraints that have thus far impeded their full participation and sustained the patriarchal gender contract? Or could these constraints be reinforced? Will the women's organizations target these constraints and work toward their removal? Will governments recognize the impediments to structural change caused by women's marginalization and, like Costa Rica, work to integrate women and improve their economic status? There are several possible outcomes for the Middle East and North Africa. First, if it is true, as studies have indicated, that no country has successfully industrialized or pursued export-led development without relying on a huge expansion of female labor, then we can expect to see increases in women's share of the labor force as demand for female labor rises in the labor-intensive, female-intensive export-manufacturing sectors. Indeed, this seems to be occurring in Tunisia and Morocco, and to a lesser extent in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. These countries have witnessed large export gains in textiles—and increases in the number of women workers. Second, as the tourism sector expands, we can also expect to see a growing involvement of women in tourism-related sales and services occupations, currently largely filled by men. Already, hotel management schools in a number of countries are training young women; women employees are seen in the large hotels of Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt; women are now employed in handicrafts shops in Jordan; and a new trend in Turkey is the hiring of young women in the trendy cafes of Istanbul and Ankara. Third, realization of the objectives of structural change—as well as agitation by women's organizations—could bring pressure to bear on governments to modernize family codes and other laws and regulations that constrain women. Fourth, as the government sector stabilizes recruitment and more men gravitate toward higher-paying jobs in the expanding private sector, public-service employment could become "feminized." Indeed, there has been a steady increase in the female share of government employment in almost all MENA countries. However, there could be negative outcomes as well. The contraction of the public sector and the expansion of a private sector that is "unfriendly" to women and that otherwise offers undesirable working conditions could dissuade educated women from entering the labor force and increase housewife-ization among middle-class women. For women from working-class and lower middle-class families, economic need and household survival

22

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

strategies could continue to propel them toward the labor market, but the job opportunities would be mainly in the informal or unregulated sectors, including home-based activity through subcontracting arrangements, without the security provided by work in the formal sector. If the employment costs to women, including the poor nature of the social and physical infrastructure and of social policies, remained great, this could serve as a disincentive for women to enter the labor force. 1 0 The continuing association of women with family responsibilities and the perception of women as less skilled and less committed to the labor force could be the basis for the gender bias that relegates women to a disadvantaged position in the labor market, with the result that women workers (administrative, clerical, and unskilled production workers) would be more likely to be made redundant during the privatization of state-owned enterprises in MENA countries. At the same time, the reluctance or inability of many private-sector employers to provide women workers with maternity-leave benefits or child-care facilities would create a labor-market constraint for women workers with family responsibilities. Finally, the negative scenario includes the possibility that the educational sector could be left to its own devices, without government support to educate more teachers, raise their salaries, improve the quality of schools, and encourage higher enrollment and school completion rates. The higher costs of schooling and lack of job opportunities could serve as a disincentive for parents to invest in the education of their daughters. The recognition that this is already occurring has prompted women's organizations in MENA countries and in other developing regions to call for a reordering of governmental priorities toward greater investments in the education of girls. Globalization and economic liberalization, therefore, suggest two alternative scenarios for the MENA region: (1) economic liberalization and foreign investments in labor-intensive light industries, along with improvements in literacy and education, will raise the demand for female labor in the growing private sector and in foreign-owned firms; regular employment at higher wages will be available; and homework and workshop production through subcontracting at lower wages will be available; (2) domestic and foreign investments in export-oriented sectors do not occur, or occur in nonfemale industrial branches, with minimal effects on female labor; the contraction of public-sector recruitment means that educated women will be unemployed or remain housewives. Available data suggest that the first scenario pertains to Turkey, Tunisia, and Morocco and, to a lesser extent, Egypt and Syria. The second scenario could be relevant to Iran and Algeria. The countries examined here are Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iran, and Algeria. The sequencing of the country case studies reflects differences in the timing, pace, and progress of economic

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

23

liberalization, from those countries furthest along the road to liberalization (Tunisia, Morocco, and Turkey) to those that are relative beginners (Iran and Algeria). Nevertheless, as this book will show, across the region there are similarities in the forms of economic restructuring that are occurring, in the public policies that have been adopted, in the patterns of women's labor-force participation, and in the activities of women's organizations. One common feature is that the changing political economy is having a corresponding effect upon labor-capital relations, gender relations, and women's positions within the urban and rural labor markets. Another common feature is that changes in the economic structure and in women's employment in the MENA region are occurring against a backdrop of conservatism and fundamentalism. How economic imperatives interact with and possibly attenuate the effects of ideology in the current context of liberalization and globalization is one underlying theme of this book. The extent to which the hypotheses and contrasting scenarios presented above are being realized in the region is another major theme. In the country case studies, we will address the following questions: •

• •

•

•

•

Economic liberalization favors the shift to tradables and the expansion of the export manufacturing sector (and, in some countries, tradable services). Where do women fit in? Assuming household constraints on women's labor-force participation, what strategy will increase the number of women available for the export sector? Assuming competition from fast-growing, exporting countries like China and Vietnam, what strategy will be necessary to make women workers competitive? Given the linkages between education and employment, are women being prepared for liberalization and globalization? The neoliberal policy regime encourages private-sector and entrepreneurial development. Where do women-owned or -managed businesses come in? What legal and regulatory changes are necessary to encourage female entrepreneurship? Labor adjustment programs, training programs, employment services, and social fund programs are now in place in many adjusting countries. Are women benefiting from them? The need to improve labor information systems and labor-force statistics is widely acknowledged. Are the data adequately genderdisaggregated? Do they account for women's unpaid work, disguised employment (e.g., home-based work), agricultural work, and informal-sector activities? Recently there has been renewed discussion about collective bargaining and workers' rights. Where do women workers fit in? To what extent are they organized? Do the unions have women's sections?

24

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

• How are women's organizations responding to the pressures and opportunities afforded by the changing political economy in the region? What are the forms and orientations of women's mobilization?

Notes 1. See "Egypt Ready for the Global Market: Minister," in Middle East Times, 2 0 - 2 6 October 1996, p. 10. Mrs. Tatawi is the former chairwoman of the Arab Investment Bank, and she became the first woman in Egypt to hold a high-ranking economic post in the government. Her favorable assessment of structural adjustment contrasts with the pessimistic evaluation of living standards and investments and exports by Syrian economist Nabil Marzouq. See Marzouq, 1994. 2. According to the World Bank, the poverty headcount index (percentage of population) in 1991 was 33 percent for the Middle East and North Africa, compared with 25 percent for Latin America, 48 percent for sub-Saharan Africa, and 49 percent for South Asia. For the developing world as a whole, the poverty headcount figure was 30 percent. Clearly, the stereotype of the rich Arab region should be discarded. As for female-headed households, estimates vary because of definitional differences and frequent undercounting, but between 13 percent and 17 percent of total households in the MENA region are headed by women, according to International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and UN estimates. In the region there are cross-national differences, and within countries, rates may be as high as 30 percent in some poor urban districts (as in Cairo) or in rural districts (as in Yemen). For a conceptual and comparative study of the feminization of poverty, see Moghadam, 1996b. 3. It is possible that several economic cooperation and development blocs could be formed within the region. In addition to the already functioning Gulf Cooperation Council (the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf region minus Iran and Iraq), the Arab Maghrib Union (of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Mauritania) could be revived, and another bloc formed for the Mashreq plus Egypt. Turkey is seeking membership in the EU. Both Turkey and Iran are active in the Economic Cooperation Organization, which also includes the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. For most of the region, however, and especially for Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, trade with Europe will be both desirable and necessary, and deeper ties with Japan and the Southeast Asian NICs (newly industrialized countries) should also be explored. 4. The argument is not incompatible with earlier studies on "the feminization which showed that women's labor-force participation declines in earlier periof industrialization and modernization and then rises. See, for example, Pamand Tanaka, 1986. Standing's evidence suggests that the feminization pattern been accelerating as a result of neoliberal economic policies. 5. It should be noted that during the 1980s in Latin America, average industrial wages fell by 17.5 percent and the average minumum wage by 35 percent; in Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, and Peru, the wage falls were truly dramatic. Workers with better union organization and with the benefit of collective bargaining, such as those in construction and industry, saw their wages fall somewhat less (20 percent). Unfortunately, women workers were not thus shielded because of their lower levels of unionization in most countries. Perhaps the worst off were people in the informal sector, who between 1980 and 1989 suffered an estimated 42 percent drop in income. See ILO, World Labour Report 1993: 24.

U," ods pel has

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

25

6. See Employment Observatory: Trends (Bulletin of the European System of Documentation on Employment), no. 19, 1994: 11-14. The Nordic countries, including Finland, now have the highest rate of employment among women, with North America following close behind. Scandinavian women moved into the labor market in the 1960s and 1970s mainly through part-time jobs. (In Finland, women work in full-time jobs.) Yet in this region such work, most of it in the public sector, is characterized by normal working conditions, regularized pay, permanent employment, and social security. 7. It is said that protective legislation, including maternity leave and childcare provisions in labor law, raises the cost of female labor and is a disincentive to the recruitment of women workers. It should be noted, though, that these policies are firmly in place in many European countries where women form half the labor force. The disincentive arises when the employer is solely responsible for the cost of maternity-related benefits. 8. The higher unemployment rates of women as compared with those of men may also reflect men's ability to enter into self-employment and women's difficulties in starting their own businesses in many countries. 9. Tourism is a mixed blessing, for both women and the environment. It brings in foreign exchange and generates jobs and income, but it strains the environment and sometimes promotes prostitution. It is unlikely that sex tourism on the scale of Southeast Asia could ever develop in the countries examined in this book, given the absence of U.S. military bases and the countries' cultural features. 10. Two surveys of women and employers carried out in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Turkey in 1989 as part of a World Bank study of female employment found that "an overwhelming proportion of the women interviewed thought that more women would work if there were better childcare facilities available." See Papps, 1993: 103.

2 Educating Women for a Globalizing Economy

There is a broad consensus that education is a basic need and a human right, as well as a principal element of social and economic development. This notion is in line with a development concept promulgated by the UN General Assembly in 1970, which determined the six pillars for a better life for all people: "education, health, nutrition, housing, social welfare and to safeguard the environment." For economists, education is regarded as human capital investment, 1 and the development of human resources and manpower planning influences the rate, structure, and character of economic growth (Todaro, 1994: ch. 11). Others view education as a prerequisite of citizenship, a basic entitlement, and a means toward a more egalitarian society. Sociologists are interested in education as a site of socialization and social change. Educational systems may serve to impart the ideology of the existing political and economic order, but they also facilitate social change, a largely unintended consequence. The notion of education as a human right and a developmental imperative informs the discussion in this chapter concerning the status of women's education in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly in light of the changing political economy and the efforts toward structural change. I hope to show that the failure both to raise the education of women to the same level as that of men and to improve the quality of education imposes a substantial cost on development efforts.

Women, Human Development, and Competitiveness The concept of "human development," which has been elaborated in the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP's) annual Human Development Report since 1990, captures the integral role of education: The ultimate purpose of development is to expand the capabilities of people, to increase their ability to lead long and healthy lives, to enable them to cultivate their talents and interests, and to afford them an opportunity to live in dignity and with self-respect. The means by which this is

27

28

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

achieved may be diverse—by increasing the stock of physical capital, introducing new technologies, changing institutions, altering incentives. Equally important, and sometimes more important, are investments in human capital—the provision of education and training, the creation of employment and opportunities to acquire skills while on the job, the provision of primary health care and adequate nutrition, expenditure on research and on seeking out new sources of information. (Griffin and Khan, 1992:1)

In this definition, education plays a central role in the realization of development through human capital formation, but it leads also to the expansion of human capabilities. The UNDP's emphasis on literacy and education as vital to this expansion and to national development may be elaborated by a GAD perspective, which sees women's education and productive activities as key to both national development and women's capabilities. Research in the 1960s established that education contributes directly to the growth of national incomes by improving the productive capacities of the labor force. It is now broadly recognized that the education of girls and women has many positive social effects, in terms of women's empowerment and gender equality as well as in terms of benefits to households and to national economies. Many studies by economists and by GAD specialists have found that investment in women's education is in general more socially profitable than investment in men's education (Blumberg, 1989; Psacharopoulos, 1994). Increases in female secondary school enrollment have been associated with increased labor-force participation and contributions to national income. Women's earning capacity also increases with higher levels of education. Conversely, educational deficiencies sharply limit women's capacity to enter the workforce. Child nutrition has been shown to correlate positively with the size of the mother's income (Dwyer and Bruce, 1988: 6). Women's education leads to lower fertility, better family health, and reduced infant and child mortality (Cleland and Hobcraft, 1985; LeVine et al., 1991). Educated women also make better use of their time. A study in urban south India found that higher education among women led to a reduction in the time they spend in all nonmarket activities except teaching children (UNDP, 1995: 11). The education of the mother has intergenerational effects on her children, in particular her daughters. Educated women have increased their political participation and are better informed about their legal rights and how to exercise them. Women's education leads to higher formal labor-force participation, which in turn has been associated with greater economic growth. In the United States, the growing formal labor-force participation of women and rising female/male earnings ratio between 1890 and 1980 were associated with a growth in national income per capita that exceeded the growth in male earnings by 28 percent. During the same period, women's teaching for low wages made possible the mass education that added another 12-23 percent to national income (Blumberg, 1989). Goldin's analysis of the

EDUCATING WOMEN FOR A GLOBALIZING ECONOMY

29

relationship between economic growth in the United States and the shift of women's activities from the home to the labor market found that, among other things, annual national per capita income would have been at least 14 percent lower had the female labor force not expanded in the United States (Goldin, 1983, 1986). In countries with high female labor-force participation, such as the Nordic countries and the United States, female employment has expanded the government's tax base. In turn, in the Nordic countries especially, these taxes are used for distributional purposes, in particular to continue to provide social supports for working mothers. There is some debate among sociologists of education as to whether national education systems reproduce existing ideologies and forms of inequality or promote social mobility and social change. In fact they do both. Although state-sponsored education is intended in part to produce a loyal middle class, and textbooks often depict women in traditional gender roles, there can be no doubt that education is an agent of change, especially for women. For many girls and women, schooling and literacy classes are their only exposure to a wider world, where they have contact with a nonfamily institution, receive social recognition, and gain self-confidence and self-esteem. This has an impact on their knowledge about health and family planning and on their ability to negotiate and bargain the "gender contract," whether at home or at the workplace. Education has long been considered important, but in today's integrated and competitive global economy, the training, skills, and knowledge that workers are able to provide become urgent matters. As the labor force becomes more feminized around the world, characteristics of the female labor force are highly relevant to capital investment decisions. Rates of female education have improved throughout the developing world, including the MENA region. Significant deficiencies remain, however, and in many countries noticeable gaps persist between male and female enrollment and attainment rates at all levels. Although these gaps are more evident in rural than in urban areas, overall they are important enough that the level of female education in many parts of the region prevents girls and women from improving their economic and social status and contributing optimally to national economic growth and development. In the MENA countries, girls' enrollment rates in higher education have recently increased almost twice as fast as those for boys. Yet males continue to outnumber females, in some countries by as much as two to one. Illiteracy among women remains high, higher than the rates for men. In Morocco, a majority of women (62 percent) are illiterate. Such a failure of human development could impede the country's ability to compete in an increasingly liberalized and competitive global economic environment. The gender gap in education is not only a brake on development but an impediment to women's well-being and self-reliance. The wife's role in decisionmaking may be weaker than the husband's when the husband's

30

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

education is much greater than the wife's. Little control by women over their reproductive lives and over the allocation of resources for children may mean larger families and less healthy children. Thus, a large gender gap in education can lead to significant welfare losses as well as losses in women's autonomy and their status within the family. In the MENA region the persistence of the gender gap in education is both an equity issue and a developmental issue. In the post-oil wealth era, investments in currently underendowed and underutilized social groups are not only desirable but absolutely necessary if the region is to catch up with other, highly competitive countries in the global economy. Investing in girls' education and employability will accelerate the structural change already under way in the region and facilitate the region's capacity to face the challenges of the twenty-first century. Various trends in the world pose special challenges to women. The emergence of an increasingly knowledge-intensive society and the growth in information and communication technologies require that women acquire appropriate education and training to function in contemporary society. Further, education and training should enable women to perform well in a changing economic, social, and cultural environment. As we have seen in Chapter 1, changes in the economic environment include the outward orientation of economies, the increasing call for flexibility in labor markets, and the growing importance of small and medium-sized enterprises. All of these elements create both opportunities and challenges for women, as well as demands on them to adjust to economic restructuring. Given the new economic realities and the importance of girls' schooling, it is imperative to examine strategies for improving girls' and women's education in order to close the gender gap and to provide education and training that will equip women for a changing economy and society. This entails the question of the quality of education and its financing. Although women are increasingly entering male-dominated fields of study, only few have access to technical training. A diversification of skills through vocational training not only would provide women increased access to gainful employment but would also make a substantial contribution to economic development. Lifelong learning and retraining are indispensable in preparing women for the twenty-first century. In an increasingly globalized and competitive world economy, factory workers' level of schooling becomes very important. An ESCWA study of Arab women in the manufacturing industries (textiles and garments, food processing, pharmaceuticals, and electronics) found a high rate of illiteracy (48 percent) among the women workers in Egypt and Yemen, low rates in Iraq and Syria (only 18 percent) and no illiteracy among women workers in Jordan. Still, only in Jordan did a high percentage (44 percent) of women workers have secondary/vocational education. In Syria and Iraq most women work-

EDUCATING WOMEN FOR A GLOBALIZING ECONOMY

31

ers had primary school education only. In pharmaceuticals and electronics firms, however, educational attainment tends to be relatively high—secondary education at least, with higher attainment among the women than the men—except in Egypt (ESCWA, 1995c: Table 7, p. 17). At a time when a typical factory worker in Vietnam—male or female—has completed at least ten and often twelve years of schooling (see Moghadam, 1994b), Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, and Tunisia may be at a disadvantage in the years ahead. At a time when computer skills are in great demand, vocational schools ought to offer women more than beautician and secretarial courses. The issue of fields of study, vocational and technical training, diversification of skills, and the quality and financing of education for women therefore need to be systematically addressed.

Women's Education in Developing Countries A study of international patterns of enrollment rates and gender disparities undertaken for the World Bank (King and Hill, 1993) finds that enrollments differ considerably by region. In their overview, Hill and King report that except for South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, all regions have achieved nearly universal primary education for boys. Only in East Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, however, have enrollment rates for girls approached similar levels; in the other three regions—MENA, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia—they continue to lag behind. In South Asia the gender gap in primary enrollment has actually widened since the 1970s because policies to expand the education system improved access for boys more than for girls. As countries approach universal primary education, the gender gap in enrollment becomes more apparent beyond the primary level. The study also finds that whereas the gender difference in secondary enrollment has narrowed in East Asia and Latin America, it has widened in the MENA region, as well as in South Asia after 1965 and in sub-Saharan Africa. Hill and King report that the gender gap in educational attainment, measured by years of schooling, is greater in low-income countries than in middle-income countries. This chapter includes tables illustrating gross enrollment rates at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels for MENA countries. But as many scholars have noted, these statistics can be very misleading because they mask other important measures of educational progress, including how many students remain in school, how many are promoted to the next grade, and how many complete each cycle. If high dropout rates prevail even in the lower primary grades, there is a greater likelihood that "functional illiteracy" will result (Hill and King, 1993: 10). In low-income countries, girls are more likely than boys to leave primary school before finishing. In sub-Saharan Africa and in the MENA region, the dropout rate is higher for

32

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

girls than for boys. But in Latin America, the Caribbean, Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, and the Philippines, girls are less likely than boys to drop out of primary school. How do countries in the Middle East and North Africa fare in educational attainment? According to the World Bank, the mean years of schooling for both men and women in 1990 was 5 in Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia; 4 in Algeria and Iran; and 2 in Morocco (World Bank, 1995b: 55). Excluding Iran and Turkey and considering only Arab countries as a whole, UNESCO data show that the mean years of schooling for adults age twenty-five and over in the early 1990s was 3.8 for men and only 2.1 years for women. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the figures were 5.6 years for men and 5.3 years for women—reflecting both the higher rate of educational attainment and the narrower gender gap in Latin America (see UNESCO, 1994). Not surprisingly, given education and employment linkages, 36 percent of the workforce in Latin America is female, compared with an average of 17 percent in Arab states. According to UNESCO figures for the early 1990s, among Arab states, the highest rates of educational attainment among people age twenty-five years and over were found in Kuwait, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq, where the figures ranged from four to six years. In Iran, the mean years of schooling was 4.6 years for men and 3.1 years for women. In Vietnam, a much poorer country than Iran with a much larger peasant population, men attained 5.8 years and women 3.4 years of education by the early 1990s. In Cuba, a country not nearly as rich as any of the MENA countries mentioned above, men attained 7.5 and women 7.7 years of education. In Romania, a lower medium-income East European country, the mean years of schooling for both sexes was 7.2 in 1977; by 1995 it had increased to 8.7—9.3 years for men and 8.2 years for women. In Turkey, where a large part of the labor force remains in agriculture, the adult population's mean years of schooling is under 5—as low as 3.6 according to a Turkish study. 2 Fully 78.1 percent of the total labor force have only primary education or less; 7 percent have graduated from junior high school, 9.7 percent from high school, and a mere 5.2 percent are university graduates (UNDP-Ankara, 1996: 30). When the population under the age of twenty-five is considered, the MENA countries fare better, but there are still considerable gender gaps. In all cases the mean years of schooling for women is lower than that for men by two or three years (and in the case of Saudi Arabia, by more than four years). Table 2.1 illustrates both the male-female gaps in educational attainment in the MENA region and the striking differences with other developing countries. Adult illiteracy rates remain high in some MENA countries, especially among women: 66.2 percent, for example, in Egypt and 62.0 percent in Morocco in 1990. In Syria, 44.2 percent of the women were illiterate in 1995, compared with only 14.3 percent of the men (UNESCO, 1995). By

EDUCATING WOMEN FOR A GLOBALIZING ECONOMY

33

Table 2.1 Mean Years of Schooling, Age Twenty-Five and Above, Early 1990s, by Sex and Country MENA country Algeria Egypt Iran Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Saudi Arabia Tunisia

Males

Females

Other developing countries

4.4 3.9 4.6 5.7 6.0 6.0 5.3 5.5 4.1 5.9 3.0

0.8 1.9 3.1 3.9 4.0 4.7 3.5 1.3 1.5 1.5 1.2

Argentina Chile China Colombia Malaysia Mongolia Philippines Sri Lanka Thailand Uruguay Vietnam

Males 8.5 7.8 6.0 6.9 5.6 7.2 7.8 7.7 4.3 7.4 5.8

Females 8.9 7.2 3.6 7.3 5.0 6.8 7.0 6.1 3.3 8.2 3.4

Source: Compiled by the author from UNESCO, 1994.

contrast, in the Kyrgiz Republic, only 4.7 percent of women were illiterate, and in Vietnam, only 12 percent. According to the UNESCO report, partly because of rapid population growth, "the absolute number of illiterate adults is still increasing in certain regions, notably Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab states, and Southern Asia, with women forming a substantial majority in each case" (UNESCO, 1995: 30). Education has been adversely affected in many developing countries as a result of the economic crisis and measures of structural adjustment in the 1980s. During the 1980s, developing countries generally maintained public expenditures on education as a proportion of their national incomes. However, the significant population growth combined with the low growth of national incomes actually resulted in budgetary cuts in public expenditures on education. Thus, public expenditures on education per capita in sub-Saharan Africa fell by more than one-half between 1980 and 1989. Elsewhere, crisis and restructuring have resulted in higher costs, lower enrollments, rising dropout rates, and lower quality of education (UN, 1995b: 8). In the Middle East and North Africa, high population growth and budget cuts led to the overcrowding of classrooms and the overburdening of teachers. Declining real incomes for teachers in Egypt, Turkey, and Iran, among other countries, have led a considerable number of teachers to take second jobs. Social and Private Returns on Women's

Education

According to Schultz, the private and social benefits, both market and nonmarket, of investing in female education far outweigh the private and social costs. In many cases, the private rate of return for completing the final secondary school examination is higher for women than for men—in Sri Lanka, the rate is three times as high for women as for men in urban areas

34

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

and twice as high in rural areas. Benefits include higher family income and social status and, for the female student, higher earnings and greater occupational mobility. Education encourages women to shift from homebased to market-based work, a move that has several advantages, including additions to the GNP and to the tax base. Unemployment is generally lower among the more educated than among the less educated a decade after they enter the labor market. One of the private gains from increased schooling is enhanced access to regular work opportunities in the market labor force and hence a lower incidence of involuntary unemployment. Women's education, which returns more in taxes to support public services, including schooling, has a higher social rate of return than men's education (Schultz, 1993: 79). 3 Increases in men's education that contribute to raising their wages tend to reduce the number of hours their wives work in the market labor force. Moreover, contrary to the still-widespread notion in developing countries that investing in girls' education is a waste because daughters leave the family to get married and sons stay to look after the parents, care providers are increasingly daughters, as much sociological research has shown that daughters are increasingly becoming care providers. Microeconomists have amassed enough data supporting the link between more education and higher earnings to explain the growth in school enrollments in most low-income countries. More important, in the developing world, middle-class and working-class parents appear to be responding to the growing evidence that educated sons and daughters get much better jobs, and that with jobs and an income, daughters are in a better position to care for aged parents. They seem to realize that their children, female and male, will eventually earn more than enough to justify the sacrifices made to send them to school. Generally, however, lower-income and rural households have yet to appreciate the longer-terms benefits of investing in girls' education, and in the context of economic difficulties, they may not be able to sustain the rising costs of schooling. Education therefore plays a key role in the advancement and employability of women. This fact is becoming increasingly acknowledged, although in many developing countries only a few years of education is compulsory, mandatory school attendance is not enforced, and the World Bank, which has been supporting girls' education, still focuses on primary schooling rather than secondary schooling. The recognition that women are key players in the development process and in social progress is growing, but there remain many constraints on women's participation, on their ability to contribute to economic growth and social development, and on the expansion of their own capabilities. These constraints exist within the household, in the legal and regulatory framework, in the social and physical infrastructure, and in economic policies that marginalize or overburden women. Elimination of these constraints requires (1) equal rights in family

EDUCATING WOMEN FOR A GLOBALIZING ECONOMY

35

law, labor law, and social insurance; (2) public investments to lower the costs of girls' education and women's employment; and (3) proactive measures and policies to ensure women's access to education and training, paid employment, and social services. Constraints on Girls'

Education

The gender gap in education is a function of social and gender inequality. More specifically, it results from structural constraints faced by girls and women. These may originate within the household and family dynamics, within the society at large, or within government policy. As such they represent a combination of cultural and political economy factors that shape the opportunity structure for women. There are many constraints on education for females, some general and some specific to regions, countries, cultures, and social classes. In this section we focus on seven constraints that girls and women face in their access to education, especially in the MENA region. The first constraint is obviously cost. In poor or rural families, the opportunity cost of girls' forgone labor is greater than that of boys, because girls contribute so much to household-related economic activities and are expected to marry and leave home. There is thus a tendency to see schooling for girls as unnecessary, irrelevant, and costly. Yet at higher stages of development, and as families improve their standard of living, education becomes a benefit and not a cost. The development process, assisted by a state-directed education system and free schooling, results in a growing tendency for parents to view schooling for girls in a more positive light. This explains the steady increases in girls' enrollments at the primary and secondary levels. However, it appears that in more recent years, this secular trend has been disrupted by the social costs of structural adjustment. The introduction of user fees as part of cost recovery strategies in both education and health may have resulted in a return to the perception on the part of poor or rural families that education, especially for girls, is too expensive. This may be why there has been so little progress in girls' schooling in Morocco, where in 1992 only 57 percent of primary school-aged girls were enrolled. The second constraint on girls' schooling, especially the completion of schooling, is early marriage for girls and their socialization for family, particularly in rural areas. In Iran, Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco, for example, the socialization of girls emphasizes the acceptance of the predominant gender roles, with marriage and family, not higher education or employment, as their ultimate goals. Fertility rates are declining but still high in the region, and except for Tunisia and Turkey, fertility rates are above the average for all developing countries (which is currently 3.5). The third constraint pertains to geographical distance. Researchers have shown that distance from school is a more significant constraint for

36

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

girls than for boys. In Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, parents are reluctant to send their daughters to distant schools because they fear exposing them to moral or physical risks. Studies have shown that even in the relatively more open societies of Malaysia and the Philippines, distance to school is a greater deterrent to girls' enrollment than to that of boys (Hill and King, 1993: 33). The fourth constraint pertains to the national education policy. As elaborated by El-Sanabary, such a policy can be directed toward gender equality (as for example, through affirmative-action measures to guarantee increased access of girls to schools and universities), or toward gender differentiation (through separate schools and curricula for males and females). No MENA country has ever issued policies specifically intended to promote gender equality. Furthermore, gender-based school segregation may have resulted in more resources being allocated to boys' schools than to girls' schools. Many countries have made compulsory a certain number of years of schooling, but they do not enforce this requirement. El-Sanabary explains that the first MENA countries to enact legislation mandating compulsory education were Egypt (in 1923) and Turkey (in 1924). Although both countries set target dates for achieving universal primary education—1970 in Egypt and 1972 in Turkey—Egypt kept extending the date and has yet to meet the goal. Turkey, however, linked education and the emancipation of women to national development and social progress (El-Sanabary, 1993: 148). Nevertheless, illiteracy persists in Turkey, particularly among rural women. In the absence of a concerted effort on the part of state agencies to enforce compulsory education, such legislation has limited effects, especially in rural areas. Public expenditure on education is part of national education policy. Here the data reveal that MENA countries spend a relatively high percentage of GNP (5.5 percent in 1991) on education, compared with OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries (5.3 percent), Latin America (4.2 percent), and South Asia (4.1 percent). Yet Arab countries spend far less per pupil than do Latin American and OECD countries (UNESCO, 1994: 19). But much of the relatively high expenditures on education (see Table 2.2) may be lost to inefficiency. The exception is Turkey, which spends only 3.3 percent of its GDP on education, leading to calls that it "raise educational expenditures to at least the internationally suggested levels" (UNDP-Ankara, 1996: 35). 4 Some MENA countries have spent far more on the military sector than on education. According to UNDP data, countries where military expenditures exceed public expenditure on education and health are Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen (UNDP, 1995). World Bank data show that in 1993 Jordan allocated 22.1 percent of total expenditure on defense, compared with 14.3 percent on education, 6.3 percent on health, 16.3 percent on housing, social security, welfare, etc., 12.8 percent on economic services, and 28.2 percent on other (World Bank, 1995a: Table 10).

37

EDUCATING WOMEN FOR A GLOBALIZING ECONOMY

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