| Dramatic human development has occurred in the Middle East in recent decades. Of particular importance to women, fertility rates have dropped, gender gaps in secondary education have narrowed, and women are much more likely to enroll in college than they were in the past. Nonetheless, women's employment rates in the region are the lowest in the world, suggesting unique factors are affecting women's employment. The mechanisms through which individual and national factors impact women's right to employment are not well understood. In particular, cultural factors are often assumed to play a role in women's low employment in the region after other factors are accounted for, but these cultural factors are not directly examined.;This research examines individual and national factors that shape attitudes towards women's equal right to employment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. First, I examine the existing literature and trends in women's status in the region and work towards developing a comprehensive theory of how attitudes towards women's right to employment are shaped. This is followed by two sets of analyses that examine the impact of these factors.;In the first set of analyses, I compare individual attitudes towards women's right to employment in the Middle East to individual attitudes in a global selection of nations available in the 1999--2004 wave of the World Values Survey (N=57), using hierarchical linear models. Findings show that individuals in the Middle East, compared to those in all other nations, hold significantly less gender-egalitarian views of women's right to employment. The negative effect of residing in the Middle East is partially countered by lower national religiosity, higher levels of female tertiary enrollment, greater shares of women in parliament, greater economic rights for women, and greater economic development. However, the negative effect of being highly religious is magnified among those individuals living in Middle Eastern nations. At the individual level, across the globe, young, unmarried, employed women who are less religious are the most supportive of women's equal right to a job.;In the second stage of analysis, I examine differences in the personal characteristics that predict attitudes towards women's right to employment in eight MENA countries (Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey), using the 1999--2004 wave of the World Values Survey. Predictors capture variations in individual characteristics that have been established as important factors in predicting gender egalitarianism. Findings show that the MENA nations are not uniform in terms of the overall percentages of individuals who disagree with the idea that men have greater rights to a job than women, or in the personal characteristics that predict these attitudes. The model has more predictive power in Iran, Iraq, Morocco, and Turkey than it does in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. However, across the region, younger, unmarried, educated, and less religious women tend to hold the most egalitarian views. |
