Egypt and the rest of the Middle East and North Africa have made rapid progress in improving women's education and lifespan and in lowering fertility levels, but still lag behind when it comes to offering equal economic opportunities, says a World Bank report released today.
Calling on countries to shrink the gap, the World Bank said gender equality is important in its own right as well as being "smart economics" that can boost productivity and "raise democratic prospects for all".
The World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, shows a mixed picture for the MENA region, with successes in key areas like health and education balanced by persistent struggles in the workplace and home.
"Many of the disadvantages of women have diminished over time across the developing world, but many other gender gaps persist as countries get richer," said Sudhir Shetty, co-director of the team that prepared the report.
Egypt, with 84 million citizens the region's most populous country, seemed to exemplify the successes and setbacks, going by the limited fields where data is cited.
Amongst all developing regions, it was the Middle East that achieved the largest decline in the maternal mortality ratio between 1990 and 2008 -- a drop of 59 per cent.
On a broader level, 'excess female deaths' for all women under 60 in the region also fell by 17 per cent, from 216 per 1,000 in 1990 to 179 in 2008.
In terms of fertility rates, developing countries saw sharp falls over short periods, much faster than historic declines in today's rich countries -- and it was the MENA region which led the way. In Morocco, the fertility rate fell from 4 children per woman to 2.5 between 1992 and 2004. Egypt's current estimated fertility rate is just under 3 children per mother.
Basic educational opportunities in the region also improved markedly, said the Bank, with female school enrollments growing faster than male enrollments over the last decade. In Egypt -- a country listed as showing 'moderate inequality' - around 70 per cent of school-age girls are enrolled in school, a level equivalent to the US in 1925, the Bank said.
The report also finds little evidence of systematic gender discrimination in the use of health services or in health spending. In Egypt, for instance, more was spent per capita on outpatient services for women -- LE68 per year -- than on male healthcare, which received LE58.
But other indices show a far slower shift towards equality, with women lacking access to economic opportunities and facing multiple barriers when seeking employment.
Across the MENA region, women's participation in the labour force remains low, at just 26 per cent compared to the 52 per cent global average. In Jordan, only 15 per cent of women aged 29-to-65 years work, compared with 79 per cent of men.
Although the report doesn't cite overall figures for Egypt, data for the fourth quarter of 2010 from state statistics agency CAPMAS showed men comprised three-quarters of the Egyptian workforce and had an unemployment rate of 4.6 per cent.
The rate for women was almost five times higher, at 22.6 per cent.
But the World Bank's latest report did break down the numbers of Egypt's female workforce, showing 49 per cent work in services and 46 per cent work in agriculture, with industry picking up the slim balance.
Data for salaried workers in Egypt seemed to challenge some long-held assumptions, with women earning 82 cents for every dollar earned by Egyptian men -- a significantly better ratio than in Germany, Iceland and Georgia.
But these jobs were unrepresentative as a whole, with women in the MENA region, as in the rest of the developing world, far more likely to be working in the informal sectors of the economy which do not pay a regular wage. In Egypt, over 60 per cent of working women are in the informal sector, according to World Bank data.
Egyptian women who were in formal employment tended to cluster in the public sector. In 2006, private sector firms accounted for less than a quarter of female employment in urban Egypt and around 8 per cent in rural areas, seeming to back the frequent assertion cited by the Bank that the public sector is more compatible with women’s “reproductive role,” offering “shorter hours, more access to childcare, and greater tolerance for maternity leave.”
Top jobs for women -- limited throughout the world -- are even less available in Egypt, said Shetty during a press briefing in Cairo last week. Women's representation in parliament averages 20 per cent globally, but in Egypt stood at just 2 per cent in 2010, down from 4 per cent in 1990.
"This is the same with the representation of women on the boards of large firms," Shetty added.
Control over income also widely varied in the MENA region, as with other developing nations. In Egypt, around 3 per cent of married women in the richest fifth of the control had no control over earned cash income, a proportion that swelled to some 12 per cent in the poorest fifth.
"Conservative social norms and legal restrictions on mobility and choice [in the region] can ... limit women’s decision-making power and their ability to participate in society outside the home," said the report.
Also choking potential are the limited job opportunities for all MENA citizens, with high rates of youth unemployment a problem throughout the region, and women disproportionately impacted.
Although the data was compiled before the onset of the so-called Arab Spring, the World Bank claimed the political changes sweeping the region broadly backed the report's findings, reiterating "the critical need for greater opportunities for economic and social participation for all".
"We need to achieve gender equality," said Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, adding the organisation had to find "other ways to move the agenda forward to capture the full potential of half the world's population."
The 187-nation development lender has provided US$65 billion in the past five years to support girls' education, women's health, and women's access to credit, land, agricultural services, jobs and infrastructure, he said.
The Bank proposed four areas for action: addressing the excessive mortality rates and gender gaps in education, closing earning and productivity gaps, giving women a greater voice in the home and society, and limiting the transmission of gender inequality from generation to generation.
Such improvements would all be for the greater economic good, was the report's constant refrain.
Most striking was its claim that eliminating barriers that block women from certain occupations would reduce the productivity gap and boost worker's output by 3.0 to 25 per cent across a range of countries.
"Blocking women and girls from getting the skills and earnings to succeed in a globalised world is not only wrong, but also economically harmful," said Justin Lin, the World Bank's chief economist.
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