The new Arab woman is more educated and empowered, and engaged in a whole spectrum of political, social, business and cultural activities and positions. But, while women make up 49% of the population in the Arab world, only 28% are in the active workforce, making this figure the lowest of any region in the world. The following headlines provide a brief description of different aspects of the situation of Arab women today.

Arab Women & Leadership

• Arab women's participation in decision-making is growing, but remains relatively minimal.
• Social stereotyping of women and men reinforces the tendency for political decision-making to remain the domain of men. Likewise, the under-representation of women in decision-making positions in the areas of arts, culture, sports, media, education, religion and law has prevented women from having a significant impact on many key institutions.
• Women hold just 1.5% of boardroom seats in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
• Saudi Arabia had the lowest percentage of female representation in the boardroom, with just one of 786 seats, or 0.1% occupied by women. Kuwait and Oman were found to have the most female representatives in boardrooms, with a share of 2.7% and 2.3% respectively. Kuwait has a total of 30 female board members out of a total of 1,101, while Oman has 21 out of 905. Dubai was found to have the third highest percentage of female representation (1.2%), followed by Bahrain (1%), Abu Dhabi (0.6%) and Qatar (0.3%).

Arab Women & Business

• The number of Arab women entrepreneurs is steadily on the rise.
• The UAE has over 11,000 businesswomen managing investments worth over 4 billion dollars. Of these, 9.41% are from Kuwait, 8.9% from Saudi Arabia, 8.7% from Bahrain, 7.4% from Oman and 5.4% from Qatar.
• In Bahrain, the number of women employers rose from 193 in 1991 to 815 in 2001, or by more than 322%.
• In Saudi Arabia, estimates of the number of businesses owned by women range between 20,000 and 40,000.
• In Tunisia, the number of women-owned businesses increased from 2,000 in 1998 to 5,000 in 2005.
• Arab businesswomen invest in capital markets, real estate, commerce, the tourism industry and other sectors.
• In coming years the pool of women looking for work in the Arab countries is expected to grow. The rate of growth of the total work force in Arab countries is estimated at 3.5% per year for the period from 2000 to 2010, while that of the female work force is estimated at 5%.

[1]Source: Arab Human Development Report, 2005.
[2]Source: Human Development Report, 2007 - 2008.

Arab Women & Technology

• The Internet is the fastest-growing tool of communication ever. It took radio broadcasters 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million people, television 13 years, and the Internet just 4 years.
• A gender gap exists in access and usage of information and communication technologies. Only 4% of Arab women use the Internet.
• In Palestine, 31.5% of women and 39.8% of men use computers. 23.7% of women and 40.7% of men use the Internet.

[3]Source: Human Development Report, 2007 - 2008.
[4]Data refer to the most recent years available between1994 and 2005.

[5]Source: Human Development Report, 2007 - 2008.

Arab Women & Politics

• The fact that women have the right to vote and stand for election in most countries does not mean that women are fully participating in political life. The number of Arab women involved in politics is still far from representative of their proportion of the population.
• Social pressure for women’s rights, and some Arab governments’ response to it, has catalyzed certain positive changes. Quota systems have brought about an influx of women into positions of power.In Iraq, women’s representation in parliament reached 25% with the 2005 elections. In Morocco, the percentage of women in parliament rose from 1% in 1995 to 10.5% in 2007. In Jordan, women’s representation climbed from 2.5% in 1995 to 6.4% in 2007. In Tunisia it rose from 6.8% to 22.8%.
• Out of over 180 countries worldwide, only 13 have elected women as heads of state or government, 2 as general-governors, 15 as vice presidents and deputy heads of state. The Arab world’s share of these figures: Dr. Najah Al-Attar, Vice President of Syria (2006) and Kadija Abeba, Deputy Head of State of Djibouti (1992).

[6]Source: Human Development Report, 2007 – 2008.
[7]Source: Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership (website).
[8]Source:Inter- Parliamentary Union (website).