Issue #39: Girl at Wadi

Women at work, the international edition

Can I help you? Mona, a 20-something girl, asks me. She starts explaining the mosaic art in that touristy store somewhere off Amman, Jordan.

Do you manage this store? I quip.

Oh no no. She’s petrified at the question. I just work here. It is close to home, so a convenient job.

Jordan is a fascinating country. Full of rolling hills and deserts, weathered mountain-faces and sandstone cliffs, a placid sea and a bouncy one too.

It’s also a country where the female labour participation is less than 15%, as per a World Bank survey.

As a traveler through the more touristy parts of Jordan, my experience attests to that number. Around 10% of all the workforce I have seen so far is female, and mostly in lower-level / menial jobs.

Research states the many obvious issues that hamper women’s working in Jordan, right from lack of public transport to sexual harassment at work, from societal norms demanding women be back home by 5 pm to childcare issues forcing them to stay at home.

Familiar ones, mostly.

Every time a woman has a baby, she loses 3-6 months of full work. I am not even adding pregnancy complications and childbirth difficulties to this number, which might easily double that time.

Anecdotal data (from tourist guides and such) puts the count at a whopping 8-10 kids per woman, in Jordan. Of course, secondary research normalises this number across the entire country to 3.

That’s still 3-5 years off work, if not more. Compound that with the societal pressure of not outsourcing childcare, there we have it.

<15% female participation in the workplace despite a very high literacy rate. And most of those in entry-level jobs, because they drop off after marriage / childbirth.

It isn’t a new story, oft seen in India too, for much the same reasons.

And then, pockets within Jordan surprise me. Female chefs, female hotel managers, female police.

Is it the promise of safe workspaces? Assured accommodation? Pick-up from and drop-off services to their homes?

Or, a diversity metric that forces these organizations to look beyond the deluge of male resumes, seek and search for female ones, fitment and capability aligning?

As always, the answer is complex. And a combination of many factors.

But, it gives me hope. That, with the right value proposition, women can be gainfully engaged and employed in the workforce, no matter whether it is India or Jordan, tourism or technology.

The question is, in fact, a different one.

Do we believe it is worth its while to have more women at the workplace? Do we have the intent to work towards it?

P. S. Views strictly personal. None of the events mentioned in this post refer to the organisation that I am currently associated with.