Can governments meet developmental targets while ignoring the potentials of women? A recent conference discussed policies geared to make use of these potentials. Sherine Nasr listens in The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has made some remarkable economic progress since 2001. The regional economy has been growing at a solid five per cent annually, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) more than quadrupled during the past three years, while exports have expanded to a record $270 billion in 2006. As a result, the region's unemployment rate fell from 14.3 per cent to 10.8 per cent between 2000 and 2005. Most of the MENA countries have made important efforts to liberalise their economies and to foster competitiveness. Nevertheless, the MENA region has been marked the lowest in women's participation in the labour force compared to other parts of the world. "No country can achieve long-term growth without the active participation of women in economic life. No country can raise the standard of living of its people without the contribution of half of its population," said Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) during the first ever MENA-OECD Women Business Leaders' Forum which was organised in parallel with the second MENA-OECD Investment Ministerial Meeting entitled "Making Reforms Succeed". Hosted in Cairo 27-28 November, the two events brought together business leaders and government representatives from more than 30 countries to discuss means to foster women's participation in economic prosperity in the region and to shed more light on the investment reform programmes adopted by countries in the region and their concrete results. Gurria noted that most of the countries in the region have the potential of achieving vigorous economic expansion, but this will depend on their capacity to release the region's most important engines of economic development: women. According to Gurria, much progress has been done on this front. For example, the small and medium-sized enterprises owned by women in several member countries are growing at a faster pace than the economy as a whole. Although the rate of participation of women in the labour force is still one of the lowest in the world, at around 28 per cent, "yet, this rate has grown at a remarkable speed in recent decades," he said. As a result of larger public spending on health and education, the status of women has improved considerably and women's life expectancy in MENA countries has increased. However, women in the region are still struggling under a heavy legacy of obsolete traditions which stand as major obstacles hindering their progress. According to Mahmoud Mohieddin, Egypt's minister of investment, an investment climate assessment survey has been conducted by the World Bank which revealed that women face more obstacles than men when it comes to investment. "In addition to the typical obstacles faced by both men and women such as the difficulty to find access to finance and land, difficulty to market and distribute products, women have to face more challenges represented in employer gender preferences, inability to attain basic services such as social security, and wage discrimination between genders which is, by the way, the least in Egypt compared to other OECD member states," noted Mohieddin. Other handicaps are related to the lack of adequate childcare facilities which are also a factor that hinders woman's opportunities to work outside the house. While statistics in the region are hardly indicative of the percentage of women ownership of total enterprises in the region, "Yet, we stand in a moderate position compared to developed and other developing countries," said Mohieddin who underlined that women own 13 per cent of total enterprises in the MENA region compared to 24 per cent in Europe, which is the highest in the world, 20 per cent in Latin America and eastern Asia, 10 per cent in southern Africa, and three per cent in southern Asia. "Women have to be given their full chance to participate in developing their societies in equal footing with men," said Mohieddin. According to Emma Bonino, Italian minister of international trade and European affairs, women should grasp their own opportunities. "No one will give us space voluntarily. We have to conquer our societies and venture into posts that we have been denied before," said Bonino who indicated that in Italy, at least six million women still have no access to work. "Changing this situation will definitely bring significant net profit to the whole society," said Bonino who believes that women's economic rights should go hand in hand with women's other civil rights as an indispensable partner in any society's welfare. As the first ever MENA-OECD Women's Business Leaders' Forum, women participants promised to undertake the responsibility to help younger women to achieve their equal rights. "We have to fight for younger women in order to succeed. This is our commitment and this is our determination," concluded Bonino. While discussing vital women-related issues in the MENA region, the second MENA-OECD Investment Ministerial Meeting gathered delegations from 18 MENA countries as well as OECD member countries to discuss means to move forward with the investment policy agenda. Building on the success of last year's event in Jordan, the meeting this year focussed on strategies for implementing and stimulating investment climate reforms, particularly in areas related to taxation, investment policies, finance and corporate governance. "The OECD and the MENA region have strong economic ties and this gathering reflects our mutual interest for future cooperation," Gurria who invited ministers from Arab and OECD countries to agree on the programme of work for 2008/ 2010. Notably, an improvement in the investment climate in the regional coupled with a global rise of FDI in emerging economies has resulted in FDI inflows of $49 billion in the MENA region in 2006. A MENA Ministerial Declaration on principles and actions for implementation of investment policy reforms was adopted by participants.
