Women, work and management in the Middle East

Abstract

The role and position of women in the Middle East continues to be the subject of much interest in discussion in the public arena and despite questions about their under-representation in work and management, their experiences remain under-researched and under-represented in the academic literature (Metcalfe et al., 2009; Kemp et al., 2013; Kemp and Madsen, 2014; Varma and Russell, 2016). In the past decade, the Middle East region has witnessed significant economic, demographic, generational, socio-cultural and political shifts that have had implications for women’s experiences of/at work and highlight the tensions in the role and agency of women as agents of transformational change. Instances such as the 2010 “Arab Spring” revolution saw significant political and economic turmoil resulting from efforts pushing for democratisation and equality (Moghadam, 2014; Bastian et al., 2018). For example, discussing the online activism of Arab feminists during the citizen revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, Newsom and Lengel (2012) outline the different uses women made of online social media to support social change, and their particular role in empowering themselves and others in order to challenge hegemonic and patriarchal norms and political oppression (p. 33). However, women’s own positions regarding existing socio-political structures have been fragmented and despite some women’s support for the revolution as a way of dissenting against the patriarchy, there is still support (from both men and women) of traditional views that result in societal segregated roles (Abdalla, 2015b). In the context of the strength of the role of religion and cultural norms in shaping the gender social order, and how their relationship governs women’s lives and work in the Middle East (Moghadam, 2003), these efforts set a different tone for the global understanding of the narratives of dissent from women in the Arab world.