The Shaping of Attitudes Towards Women's Employment in the Middle

Home , Women in the workforce

Constraints and Opportunities: The Shaping of Attitudes Towards Women‘s Employment

in the Middle East

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Anne M. Price, M.A.

Graduate Program in Sociology

The Ohio State University

2011

Dissertation Committee:

Katherine Meyer, Advisor

J. Craig Jenkins

Kazimierz M. Slomczynski

Anne M. Price

2011

Abstract

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.

ii 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

iii Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. However, across the region, younger, unmarried, educated, and less religious women tend to hold the most egalitarian views.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my advisor, Katherine Meyer, for her ideas, critiques, and support as I completed my dissertation, and throughout my graduate career. This dissertation has been greatly improved by your continuous feedback. Thank you also to Craig Jenkins and

Maciek Slomczynski for your assistance at multiple stages of this study. I appreciate your feedback as I developed the idea for this dissertation in my prospectus and throughout chapter drafts. This work has also benefited from my affiliation with the Middle East working group at Ohio State University.

Vita

2000...... St. Augustine High School

2004...... B.A., The Florida State University

2007...... M.A. Sociology, The Ohio State University

Publications

Price, Anne M. 2008. ―Colonial History, Muslim Presence, and Gender Equity Ideology:

A Cross-National Analysis.‖ International Journal of Sociology 38(1):81-103.

Katherine Meyer, Daniel Tope, and Anne M. Price. 2008. ―Religion and Support for

Democracy: A Cross-National Examination.” Sociological Spectrum 28(5):625-

653.

Fields of Study

Major field: Sociology

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgments...... v

Vita…...... vi

List of Tables ...... viii

List of Figures ...... ix

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1: Theorizing Attitudes Towards Women‘s Employment in the Middle East:

Cultural, Demographic, Economic, and Political Influences ...... 15

Chapter 2: Attitudes Towards Women‘s Employment in the Middle East in Global

Context ...... 30

Chapter 3. Variation Across The Region: Differences in Attitudes Towards Women‘s

Right to Employment in a Selection of Middle Eastern Countries ...... 57

Chapter 4. Discussion and Conclusions ...... 73

References ...... 84

Appendix A: Tables ...... 89

vii

List of Tables

Table 1. Personal Religiosity ...... 89

Table 2. Operationalizations of All Variables Included in Hierarchical Analyses ...... 90

Table 3. Mean, Standard Deviation, and Range for All Variables Included in Hierarchical

Analyses ...... 91

Table 4. Hierarchical Ordinal Logit Models Predicting Attitudes Towards Women's

Employment Cross-Nationally...... 92

Table 5. All Countries Included in Hierarchical Linear Analysis ...... 93

Table 6. Correlations of All Variables Included in Hierarchical Linear Analysis ...... 94

Table 7. Ordinal Logistic Regression Results Predicting Attitudes Toward Gender and

Job Rights...... 95

viii

List of Figures

Figure 1. Conceptual Model ...... 96

Figure 2. Attitudinal Map ...... 97

Introduction

The Middle East1 has seen dramatic demographic changes in recent decades that suggest significant improvements for the lives of women. The total fertility rate in the Middle

East and North Africa (MENA) region has dropped from approximately seven children in

1960 to just under three in 2009 (Roudi-Fahimi and Kent 2008; CIA Factbook 2009).2

Simultaneously, the average age of women at marriage has risen notably, from an average between 18 and 21 in most of the region‘s countries in the 1970s to between 22 and 25 in the late 1990s (Roudi-Fahimi and Kent 2008). Women have also made substantial gains in access to education: primary school enrollment is ―high or universal‖ in most MENA nations, gender gaps in secondary education have closed or disappeared in many, and women in the region are much more likely to enroll in college than they were in the past (Roudi-Fahimi and Moghadam 2003). The UN Human Development

Report, which uses an index of life expectancy, adult literacy, gross enrollment in education, and standard of living to rank countries, classified the various MENA nations

1 This research broadly examines countries within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region, which is often referred to as simply the ―Middle East‖ for the sake of brevity. The MENA region, as defined by the World Bank, consists of Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, the West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen. 2 In 2009, total fertility rates in the Middle East ranged from 1.71 in Iran to 6.32 in Yemen. Algeria, Iran, Lebanon, and Tunisia all had fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1 (CIA Factbook 2009). 1 as having levels of human development ranging from moderate to very high in 2009

(Human Development Index 2009).3

However, while in many ways the MENA region is modernizing economically and socially, fewer women in MENA participate in the formal labor force than in any other region in the world (Ross 2008). This leads to the question: Do individuals in the Middle

East hold unique attitudes towards women‘s employment in comparison to other regions of the world, and if so, what factors help explain this? Furthermore, how do men‘s and women‘s attitudes towards women‘s employment vary across the countries of the region?

These are important and timely questions. While fewer women in the Middle East participate in the formal labor force than in any other region of the world, this was also the region that saw the largest growth in women‘s share of the labor force between 2000 and 2005 (World Bank 2007). However, there are vast differences in women‘s share of the labor force and the rate at which women‘s share of the labor force is growing across the region.4 Understanding the factors that shape attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East provides insight into how women‘s labor force participation in the region may change in the future. Beyond understanding women‘s employment potential,

3 Specifically, the 2009 HDI classifies four middle eastern nations as having ―Very High Human Development‖ (Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates), six as having ―High Human Development‖ (Bahrain, Libya, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Lebanon), and seven as having ―Medium Human Development‖ (Iran, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Egypt, and Morocco). None of the nations in the region are classified as ―Low Human Development.‖ 4 For example, the lowest rate of women‘s participation in the formal labor market is in the West Bank and Gaza (11%) and the highest is in Djibouti (55%) Kuwait (50% if the large foreign population is included), and Iran (44%). Growth in women‘s employment from 2000-2005 was highest in Algeria, Iran, Oman, Libya, Kuwait, and Tunisia (growth of 3% or more) and lowest in Morocco and Djibouti (dropped by 1%) (World Bank 2007). 2 gender ideology is also important for women in its own right. Gender egalitarianism has been shown to have benefits for women in a wide variety of ways—from the division of housework (Davis and Greenstein 2009) and the likelihood of domestic violence

(Marshall and Furr 2010) to political representation (Paxton and Kunovich 2003). I discuss the implications of women‘s employment and gender attitudes in turn.

More than Just A Job: Why Women’s Employment Matters

There is much sociological interest in the constraints on women‘s employment, because the benefits of women‘s participation in the workforce—not just for women, but for society as a whole—have been widely recognized. Women‘s employment is associated with better perceived health (Schnittker 2007) and is recognized as advantageous for families because it is associated with greater child well-being (Smith 1985).

In addition, research on the Middle East has noted that when women are not seen in the labor force, this reinforces patriarchal ideology and makes it very difficult for women to gain political representation (Moghadam 2003, Ross 2008). Research at the macro level has found a correlation between the proportion of women employed and their representation in parliament in many countries (Walby 2000). Examining state legislatures in the United States, Bratton (2005) found that there are gender differences in bill sponsorship, and that women tend to focus on ―women‘s interest legislation,‖ such as women‘s education and health, equal pay, freedom from discrimination, and affirmative action. Bratton concluded that token women in politics tend to represent women‘s

3 interest. Therefore, greater percentages of women in employment tend to lead to greater representation of women in politics, where they are more likely than men to focus on women‘s issues.

Women’s Employment and National Economic Development

While employment has important implications for individual women and for women‘s status within nations, recent research has also focused on the broader implications of women‘s employment for economic growth. A long-established argument for women‘s unrestricted education, employment, and political participation is that gender discrimination means the nation is not fully utilizing its pool of talent (e.g. Bratton 2005).

Women‘s employment can boost national economies by utilizing an often neglected financial resource (Moghadam 1998). Previous research has also documented the association between higher levels of women‘s employment and lower fertility rates.

Recently, researchers have noted that East Asian nations have become competitive in world markets through export-oriented manufacturing industries, which employ high percentages of women (Klasen and Lamanna 2009). Underscoring the importance of women‘s employment, the World Bank has made the share of women employed in the paid non-agricultural sector one of the key indicators of gender equality and women‘s empowerment, which is a Millennium Development Goal (World Bank 2003).

The Case of the Middle East

4 While women‘s low employment in the Middle East and the many benefits of women‘s employment at the individual, family, and national level are key reasons for examining attitudes towards women‘s work in the region, findings from studies of the Middle East have implications for studies of women‘s status globally. As Valentine Moghadam notes,

―The region is rich terrain for testing and refining many theories and for elaborating the gender dynamics of nationalism, religious politics, citizenship, law reform, cultural expressions, and social movements‖ (Moghadam 2008:18). The reasons for women‘s low employment levels in the Middle East are unclear. In examining women‘s employment patterns cross-nationally, Clark, Adler, and Ramsey (1991) distinguished between

―material conditions‖ and ―cultural conditions,‖ where material conditions refers

―primarily to economic structures and processes that differentially affect the lives of men and women‖ and ―are usually divided into the internal processes of economic development and the external structures of economic dependency ―and cultural conditions that include ―religious, political, or other highly valued commitments that distinguish one set of nations from another, most specifically through the definition of appropriate gender-role behavior‖ (Clark et al. 1991:48).

I draw on both the literature on factors shaping women‘s employment in the Middle East and the literature on individual and national influences on gender ideology in this study.

Following Clark et al. (1991), the current literature on women‘s employment in the

Middle East can be divided into that which focuses primarily on material conditions and that which examines cultural conditions. The cultural approach to examining women‘s employment in the Middle East predominantly focuses on the role of Islam. These

5 cultural explanations view women‘s low employment in the region as attributable to women‘s low status and the lack of gender equality in the region, which in turn is shaped by Islamic laws and norms and accompanying paternalistic attitudes (e.g. Inglehart and

Norris 2003).

However, recent research has suggested that the focus on Islam as the key contextual factor explaining less egalitarian gender ideology in the Middle East may be misplaced. Studies have developed an alternative view: it may not be Islam that results in less gender egalitarian environments, but high levels of personal religiosity that are found in Islamic societies (Christensen and Sjørup 2009, Seguino 2011). Other recent research suggests that it may be the Middle East region that leads to more conservative policies regarding women‘s legal rights, rather than Muslim societies (Frank et al 2010). If politics are included under the broad category of cultural factors, low levels of democracy in Middle Eastern countries are another proposed explanation for the lack of gender equality in the Middle East (see Inglehart et al 2002). National shares of women legislators should also be considered a cultural factor with potential impacts on attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment.

Material explanations for women‘s low employment levels in the Middle East have primarily focused on economic factors. Modernization theorists view countries as potentially transitioning through a series of progressively more developed stages; higher development is viewed as spurring cultural change, including more gender egalitarian ideology (see Inglehart and Norris 2003). High unemployment rates in the Middle East may also explain women‘s low representation in the labor force (see Moghadam 2003).

6 More recently, researches have argued that the heavy reliance of many Middle Eastern nations on oil creates an economic (and cultural) environment that is not conducive to women‘s employment (see Ross 2008). Finally, demographic structures, including total fertility rates, women‘s share of higher education, and women‘s economic rights as assured by law may all influence attitudes towards women‘s employment.

In this work, I examine both cultural and material conditions that may shape attitudes towards women‘s employment, following the idea expressed by Charrad (2009:547) that

―If we are to develop a fuller and more nuanced understanding of macro processes that shape gender inequality in the Muslim Middle East, … our challenge [is] analyzing how such different forces as oil, kinship structures, and politics come together to produce different outcomes.‖ Unlike some previous research which focuses on the role of Islam in shaping gender attitudes, this study includes a regional effect of the Middle East and measures of degree of religiosity at both the individual and national levels. Cultural, demographic, economic, and political explanations are combined for a comprehensive examination of attitudes towards women‘s employment in the region. I discuss the cultural and material conditions that may shape attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East in greater depth in Chapter 1.

Desirability of Available Employment and The Importance of Attitudes

While the overall benefits of women‘s employment for women‘s status is clear, it is important to note that the employment opportunities available to women are not always

7 desirable. Some exploitative types of employment clearly do little to improve a woman‘s individual position or women‘s status more generally. Keddie (1999:7) notes that while the trend towards greater educational attainment and employment outside the home is generally favorable for women, there are negative consequences as well, such as ―more frequent divorce, migration patterns that may separate men from women, sweated labor, prostitution, and other factors disrupting the family whose role is often less central than it used to be.‖ Thus, a more definitive determinant of women‘s status and well-being may not be the overall percentage of women employed in a society, but rather the degree to which individuals believe women have an equal right to employment.

Researchers have long been interested in cultural attitudes because of their ability to challenge or reinforce status differences between social groups as well as legal rights and institutions. It has been more than two decades since Valentine Moghadam wrote, ―That gender asymmetry is a fact of life and women‘s subordination has economic, political, and cultural aspects is well recognized‖ (1988:221). In the intervening period, much research has linked gender ideology to very specific outcomes in the political, economic, and cultural spheres. Research has shown that at the national level ―societies with greater gender equality are more likely to be prosperous and sustain stable democratic institutions‖ (Htun and Weldon 2010:207). In their recent review of the literature on gender ideology, Davis and Greenstein (2009) specify the outcomes associated with egalitarian gender attitudes within the US: increased employment and earnings for women (Corrigall & Konrad 2007, Cunningham et al. 2005); a lower age of first motherhood for women regardless of relationship status (Stewart 2003); higher

8 educational aspirations among both boys and girls (Davis & Pearce 2007); and greater earnings for mothers (Christie-Mizell et al. 2007). In addition, research on societies as diverse as Taiwan, Israel, Germany, Canada, and Sweden has found that men with more egalitarian gender ideology complete a greater share of household labor (Davis and

Greenstein 2009). Finally, a recent study of Turkish women found those who hold more patriarchal ideology are also more likely to believe domestic violence is justifiable

(Marshall and Furr 2010).

Thus, the rationale for studying the formation of gender ideology is well established. In addition, examining attitudes towards women in a specific area of the public sphere in comparison to statistics reflecting their objective position in that area can be particularly revealing. In societies where gender attitudes are substantially more liberal that what is reflected in women‘s current position, this may suggest that economic or legal factors are constraining women‘s mobility, rather than societal norms. In contrast, in nations where women are prominently represented in the public sphere, but gender attitudes remain conservative, this may suggest a nation is responding to norms pushed by the international community, resulting in national policies that are more progressive than the existing cultural norms. Thus, attitudes towards women‘s employment allow for a better interpretation and understanding of women‘s rates of formal employment across societies.

Unique Contribution

9 Most broadly, this study contributes to understanding how individuals‘ beliefs about the equal or differential rights of men and women in society are developed. As detailed in

Davis and Greenstein‘s 2009 review of the literature on gender ideology, most of the research utilizing gender attitudes has used it as an independent variable, focusing on the consequences of gender ideology. The literature that has treated gender ideology as the outcome has predominantly focused on how individuals‘ personal characteristics and experiences shape their gender ideology (Davis and Greenstein 2009), rather than examining effects of national context. This study expands understanding of how gender ideology is shaped by focusing on how individual characteristics operate to shape gender ideology within unique national contexts.

This study contributes most directly to the literature examining gender ideology in the

Middle East. Inglehart and Norris have used aggregated individual level data to examine differences across regions in gender-related attitudes, theorizing that that the ―true clash of civilizations‖ is caused by differences in beliefs about gender equality between

Muslim societies and the West (Inglehart and Norris 2003ab). Other studies have examined the relationship between support for gender equality and democratic governance (e.g. Inglehart, Norris, and Welzel 2002), including examining differences between non-Arab and Arab societies (Rizzo, Abdel-Latif and Meyer 2007). In the closest work to the current study, Norris (2009) examined the differential impact of residing in an Islamic society, residing in a society with high oil wealth, and strength of individual religiosity in explaining attitudes towards gender equality, and found an

Islamic society had the greatest influence on attitudes. In this study, I expand the

10 contextual focus beyond an examination of oil wealth versus Islam to include other relevant economic factors, political context, expanded cultural measures, and demographic factors. Thus, this study contributes to the literature on gender egalitarianism in the Middle East by creating a comprehensive theory and model of attitudes towards women‘s right to employment in the Middle East.

The first set of analyses utilizes hierarchical models that include all available nations in the World Values Survey (1999-2004) and treats the Middle East as an indicator variable.

I enter structural factors into analyses in an attempt to determine which aspects of national context explain less egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s right to employment in the Middle East in comparison to the rest of the world. The key focus in hierarchical analysis is on the effect of contextual factors in shaping gender egalitarian attitudes.

Thus, I examine a comprehensive list of variables: the regional effect of residing in the

Middle East; the cultural effect of the mean level of religiosity held by individuals in the region; demographic factors (fertility rates and women‘s tertiary enrollment); economic characteristics (per capita gdp, oil rent, women‘s economic rights, and men‘s employment to population ratio); and political characteristics (national level of democracy and the percentage of women in national parliament).

In addition, while the Middle East is often discussed as a uniform region, this study allows for the fact that individual predictors of gender egalitarianism may vary across countries of the Middle East. Thus, in the second set of analyses, I use individual country regressions to examine how individual socio-demographics operate to shape attitudes

11 towards women‘s employment within a selection of nations in the region. The individual country regressions allow for an examination of how well indicators of gender equality

(developed predominantly from data on Western nations) operates in the Middle East.

Comparing the Middle East country regressions with the global sample of nations allows for an examination of how individual factors important in shaping attitudes align across the samples. The individual country regressions also allow for an examination of heterogeneity among a sample of Middle Eastern nations, both in terms of overall levels of support for women‘s equal right to employment and in the factors that shape gender ideology in each society.

Data and Methods

All individual-level data for this analysis comes from the World Values Survey (WVS).

The World Values Survey Association is a non-profit association based in Stockholm,

Sweden. The association carries out surveys of nationally representative samples of individuals worldwide. The surveys specialize in documenting values and attitudes as well as individual socio-demographic characteristics. Standardized questionnaires obtain information on individual beliefs regarding religion, gender roles, work motivations, democracy, good governance, social capital, political participation, tolerance of other groups, environmental protection, and subjective well-being. The surveys are carried out by a worldwide network of social scientists and have covered 97 countries representing

90% of the world‘s population (Inglehart, World Values Survey). The fourth wave of the

12 World Values Survey is the most extensive, covering 67 countries and 96,000 respondents.

In addition to the World Values Survey, contextual measures of national characteristics are drawn from a variety of intergovernmental and non-governmental sources. I utilize the United Nation‘s Millennium Development Goals database and World Development

Indicators and the World Bank‘s education and economic data. I also use data from the

Inter-Parliamentary Union‘s ―Women in National Parliaments‖ dataset and Freedom

House‘s Index of Democracy. Finally, I use Cingranelli and Richards Human Rights dataset for a measure of women‘s legally assured economic rights by nation. All of these indicators are discussed in greater depth in Chapter 2.

Structure of Research and Summary

This research first reviews and synthesizes the existing literature and current trends in the

Middle East in an effort to move toward a comprehensive theory of the factors shaping attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East. Next, this study combines hierarchical linear models that include all available nations in the 2000 World Values

Survey (WVS) and treats the Middle East as an indicator variable with individual country regressions of eight Middle Eastern nations. In the first stage of analysis, hierarchal linear models are computed examining whether or not individuals in the Middle East hold significantly different views regarding women‘s employment in comparison to individuals in all other world regions, and what structural factors influence gender

13 ideology. This provides insight into the degree to which individuals in the Middle East are unique in their attitudes regarding women‘s right to employment. It also allows for an examination of how well factors that are particularly relevant to the Middle East region and expected to influence gender ideology operate in explaining attitudes.

The second stage of analysis compensates for the fact that the Middle East is too often discussed and analyzed as a uniform entity. Regressions of individual countries are used to examine how individual socio-demographics may operate differently in predicting attitudes towards women‘s employment within the various nations in the region. The

Middle East nations vary in terms of political regimes, levels of democracy, overall wealth as well as the percentage derived from oil, colonial histories, and prominence of foreign workers, all of which may mean socio-demographic predictors may not operate uniformly across the region. Differences in these structural factors may affect how much explanatory power the models offer in different Middle Eastern nations. The models constructed on Western theories of the factors that shape gender attitudes may have much more predictive power in some Middle Eastern nations than they do in others.

Chapter 1: Theorizing Attitudes Towards Women‘s Employment in the Middle East:

Cultural, Demographic, Economic, and Political Influences

In order to examine attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East in terms of both structural factors and individual factors, I develop a conceptual model of attitudes towards women‘s employment that takes into account both individual socio-demographic characteristics that may make some parts of the population more supportive of women‘s right to employment than others, as well as contextual factors that are especially pertinent to the Middle East and may shape attitudes in the region. I propose that the cultural, demographic, economic, and political contexts of nations combine with individuals‘ own characteristics to influence attitudes. The conceptual model is presented as Figure 1. In this chapter, I examine specific variables within each of these categories and discuss how they may impact attitudes.

The Cultural Argument

Religiosity

A major focus in the literature examining women‘s status in the Middle East is the role of religious culture, and much of this has focused on the role of Islam, seeing it as unique

15 among world religions in justifying and perpetuating the subordination of women.

Inglehart and Norris (2003) have argued that attitudes towards gender equality and women‘s status is the true divide between Muslim and non-Muslim societies, not attitudes towards democracy, which the majority of both populations tend to favor. Fish

(2002) argues that it is not lack of trust, degree of religiosity, or political violence that keeps Muslim states from establishing electoral democracy, but the subordination of women.

A problem with some of the literature that attributes women‘s low status in Muslim majority nations to an Islamic culture is that it does not specify the particular mechanisms through which the culture is transmitted. Reskin (2008) criticized sociological research on race and gender inequality for generally failing to specify the particular mechanisms that link individual ascribed characteristics with outcomes such as lower earnings.

Instead, the literature tended to control for relevant variables, and attribute residual differences to ―allocators‘ motives.‖ This same problem can be seen with much of the literature attributing women‘s status to a Muslim majority. An Islamic culture is seen as the primary cause of women‘s low status or lack of attitudes towards gender equality, but the specific mechanisms through which this culture is transmitted and perpetuated is not identified.

Recent findings suggest an alternative view of the relationship between predominantly

Muslim societies and less egalitarian attitudes. Research suggests that it is not Islam itself that is the barrier, but the high levels of personal religiosity that are found within Islamic

16 societies, relative to other societies. Earlier research has shown that low levels of individual religiosity are associated with gender egalitarian sentiment (Banaszak and

Plutzer 1993). Recent research now suggests that at the national level, high mean levels of religiosity may be associated with a more patriarchal population, regardless of predominant religion. Research using a large cross-national dataset (the World Values

Survey) has found that ―countries with large numbers of religious conservatives tend to have more traditional gender roles‖ (Christensen and Sjørup 2009:89). In other recent research also using the World Values Survey, researchers find that, controlling for both a country‘s predominant religion and individual religious affiliation, religiosity itself (in terms of intensity of belief) is consistently associated with less egalitarian gender ideology (Seguino 2011:10). Further, ―no one religion stands out as consistently more gender inequitable in its effects than all the others,‖ which the authors note contrasts with research that has argued that Islam has a uniquely negative effect on gender ideology

(Seguino 2011:10). The negative impact on gender ideology that has been associated with predominantly Muslim societies may in fact be due to highly religious populations in

Muslim countries. In predominantly Muslim countries, individuals express greater personal or subjective religiosity than individuals residing in other countries (Seguino

2011).

This is in line with previous research that has found religious fundamentalism to be associated with support for anti-feminist policies among evangelicals in the U.S.

(Benchotz 1999) and Catholics in Poland (Nowicka 1996). Keddie (1999:11) also notes that both Christian and Islamic religiously-oriented groups that have sought political

17 power have typically used ―conservative, scripturally-oriented positions on women and the family.‖ Furthermore, in a study of individuals in the United States, Moore and

Vanneman (2003) found that individuals residing in states with a higher percentage of fundamentalists expressed less egalitarian attitudes, even when their own religious affiliation and practices were taken into account. Evidence that state religious context affects attitudes suggests that national context may as well. Thus, individuals living in highly religious societies may express less egalitarian gender attitudes than individuals in less religious societies.

Middle East

Recent research on the cross-national adoption of sex law reforms (e.g. laws criminalizing marital rape), suggests that there may a regional effect on gender policies rather than an effect of dominant religion. In an examination of sex-law reforms adopted between 1965 and 2005, being a Middle East nation was found to significantly decrease adoption of sex-laws, while a Muslim society had no effect (Frank et al 2010). Thus, residing in the Middle East is expected to have a negative impact on individual gender attitudes in comparison to those living in other societies.

National Demographic Factors Shaping Gender Attitudes

National demographic trends relative to women‘s status also likely shape attitudes towards their right to employment. Two important trends in the region are the drop in fertility rates with the demographic transition and a substantial rise in women‘s tertiary

18 enrollment over the past five years. A drop in women‘s fertility rates suggests there may be an accompanying change in ideas about the role of women in society and their right to employment. Women‘s greater tertiary enrollment indicates an investment in women‘s education that may translate into changed expectations for their labor force participation.

Fertility

Individuals in countries with higher fertility rates may have less egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s right to employment due to women‘s greater care-taking responsibilities. In preindustrial societies (both of the past and contemporary) women have been able to combine agricultural work and other tasks with childcare.

Industrialization tends to increase the distance women have to travel to work and changes the type of work women are performing to a kind less compatible with childcare

(Brewster 2000). Despite a dramatic drop in women‘s fertility rates in the North Africa and Middle Eastern region, rates remain higher than in many other areas of the world.

Accounting for differences in fertility rates may contribute to explaining less egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East.

Women’s Tertiary Education Rates

Female tertiary education rates reflect women‘s status and educational opportunities, and affect their access to particular types of employment. The MENA region has made huge strides in reducing the male-female disparity in education. Recently in many MENA

19 nations, more women than men are enrolling in and completing tertiary education, although they remain over-represented in traditional female majors (World Bank 2007).

However, the World Bank notes that the lower percentage of men entering universities than women is likely due to the fact that more men than women are able to obtain lucrative jobs without this qualification. However, with the rising age of marriage, women have the option of entering the labor market or continuing their schooling (World

Bank 2007).

Examining the trends in men‘s and women‘s tertiary gross enrollment5 over the 1990s reveals that the vast majority of the nations in the MENA region saw increases in both men‘s and women‘s tertiary enrollment, and a substantial closing of the gender gap.

There are two exceptions to this: in Turkey the gender gap increased slightly over the

1990s, from 7.9 in 1990 to 8.1 in 1999, and in Egypt the gender gap stayed relatively stable over the decade (World Bank edstats). Notably, both Jordan and Saudi Arabia saw more women than men enrolled in tertiary education by the end of the decade. In Saudi

Arabia, this was a dramatic change; the nation began the 1990s with a gender gap of 1.1, but ended the decade with a gender gap of -8.1, indicating significantly more women enrolled in tertiary education (World Bank edstats). Furthermore, there is substantial variation in women‘s tertiary enrollment across the region. Because higher levels of

5 Tertiary gross enrollment is defined as the ratio of total enrollment, regardless of age, in tertiary education to the population of the age group officially corresponding to the tertiary level of education (typically ages 18 to 23). While net enrollment (the ratio of tertiary enrollment within the corresponding age group to the total population within that age group) could be a more accurate indicator, net enrollment data is available for very few countries because of the lack of availability of precise data regarding the ages of students in tertiary enrollments. Therefore, tertiary gross enrollment is used as an indicator. 20 tertiary enrollment reflect greater opportunities for women, as well as giving them a greater presence in the public sphere, higher levels of tertiary gross enrollment for women are expected to positively influence attitudes towards women’s employment.

The Economies of the Middle East and Attitudes Towards Women’s Employment

Attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East may be influenced by perceived or actual economic constraints. If desirable employment opportunities are limited, or are simply perceived to be limited, individuals may believe women‘s employment to be a threat to their own jobs and livelihood. In her theoretical examination of the basis of women‘s subordination globally, Barbara Epstein argues that ―The more group solidarities are in question in a society, the stronger the differentiation between males and females and the more severe is women‘s subjugation‖ (Epstein 2007:4). This suggests that if economic factors unique to the contemporary Middle East limit job opportunities, individuals will be less supportive of women‘s right to employment than they will be in other societies.

The Middle Eastern nations differ in their natural resource endowments, as well as the ways in which revenues from natural resources are divided among the citizenry. They are also varied in the degree of revenues spent on the military, infrastructure, and social welfare. However, when the Middle East region is compared to the rest of the world, the economies of the region share many similarities. The region is uniquely affected by the presence of oil wealth, and by the ways in which this wealth affects the movement of

21 individuals and employment opportunities across the region. The availability of a family wage for male earners, the presence of household subsidies from oil revenues, the size of particular economic sectors, unemployment rates, and the availability of desirable employment likely all shape attitudes regarding women‘s employment.

Ross (2009) underscores the importance of distinguishing between different economic activities, rather than overall levels of income or wealth, in understanding women‘s status. He notes that ―Growth that draws women into the labor force is empowering, but growth that encourages women to remain home—like growth based on petroleum extraction—can be politically debilitating (Ross 2009:579).‖ Thus, economic factors may affect attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment.

Oil Wealth

Recent research has argued that oil wealth is the key factor accounting for women‘s low participation in the labor force in the Middle East, which in turn impacts their ability to gain political representation (Ross 2008). Nations that have high levels of oil wealth tend to have small agricultural and manufacturing sectors, and large service and construction sectors (Ross 2008). Agricultural and manufacturing sectors are areas where women tend to have greater employment (Moghadam 2003). When these sectors are reduced, there is less demand for female labor. The Arab States contribute less than one percent of global manufactured exports (Norman and Pack 2008). While manufacturing has been growing in the region, this is mostly driven by the production of refined oil, fertilizer, and

22 aluminum smelting in the Gulf countries, which are all industries that do not employ many people, because their production is highly automated (Norman and Pack 2008).

Algeria and Morocco are similar in terms of size and location, but Algeria has much greater oil wealth. In Algeria, 14% of the labor force is agricultural, while the corresponding figure for Morocco is 40% (World Bank).

Oil wealth also allows for men to earn a family wage, meaning women‘s labor force participation may not be as economically essential. This is attributed to higher male wages due to larger construction and service sectors, and to high government transfers to households because of large government revenues on oil (Ross 2008). Ross (2008) argues that the presence of fewer women in the labor force translates into strong patriarchal norms. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that oil wealth will negatively impact individual attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment. Not only will oil wealth allow for a family wage and less economic necessity for women to work, may also create a culture in which women‘s non-participation in the labor force is normative.

Thus, higher levels of oil wealth are expected to have a negative impact on attitudes towards women’s equal right to employment.

Unemployment Rates

Some have argued that unemployment rates are one of the most pertinent economic factors in explaining low levels of labor force participation and the gender gap in the

MENA region (Karshenas 2001; Moghadam 1998). With unemployment rates of 14.3%

23 in 1995 and 13.2% in 2005, the MENA region stood out as having the highest unemployment rate in the world, even higher than Sub-Saharan Africa, the world‘s poorest region (Raphaeli 2006). Currently, less than half of adults in the Arab States are employed (Noland and Pack 2008). This is exacerbated by the fact that the labor force is growing at a rate of 3.5-4% annually (Noland and Pack 2008), which increases the number of jobs that will have to be created to reduce the unemployment rates. However, though high unemployment rates characterized most MENA countries throughout the

1990s, the rates were most extreme in Algeria (29.8% in 2000), Jordan (between 10 and

15% in 2000), and Morocco (13.6% in 2000) (World Bank; International Labor

Organization).

High unemployment rates often disproportionately affect women, either through discrimination, or because in some nations they tend to have lower human capital than men (Moghadam 1998). High unemployment can prohibit even skilled workers from obtaining employment. Moghadam (1998) notes that the percentage of women in Jordan who were not working but wanted to work (i.e. the percentage of women unemployed) was higher than the percentage who were not working by their own choice (i.e. the percentage of women not in the labor force). Unemployment in the Middle East over the past four decades has been highest among the highly educated, which Noland and Pack

(2008:60) believe may be attributed to a ―rational search for jobs that reward effort.‖

Educated women have been particularly hard hit as employment opportunities have shifted from the public to private sector (Noland and Pack 2008).

24 There is also evidence that high unemployment rates among educated women may be due to cultural or individual expectations about acceptable employment for women that are more stringent than those regarding men‘s employment. A 2006 Egyptian labor force survey found that women are nearly twice as likely as men to state that they are unemployed because a job was not available at an ―appropriate workforce‖ (22 versus 13 percent of the unemployed) (Assaad 2008). High unemployment rates are expected to negatively impact individual attitudes towards women’s employment.

Level of Development

Level of development has also been shown to predict more gender egalitarian attitudes

(Inglehart and Norris 2003; Price 2008). Ronald Inglehart, Christian Welzel, and Pippa

Norris have argued that industrialization, urbanization, and subsequent economic development leads to greater political engagement and increases the likelihood that democracy will take hold (e.g. Inglehart and Welzel 2009, 2005). In this version of modernization theory, economic development and democratization also leads to a number of cultural changes, including support for gender equality.

Political Factors Affecting Attitudes Towards Women’s Employment

Level of Democracy

25 In authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, non-governmental organizations advocating for women‘s rights and worker‘s rights are commonly completely barred, or face high degrees of regulation and restrictions (Pratt 2007). When women are unable to organize for greater rights, this not only makes it more difficult for them to enact change, but also reduces their visibility in the public sphere. Despite reforms to family law, progress on women‘s rights is ―stymied by the lack of democratic institutions, and independent judiciary, and freedoms of association and assembly‖ (Kelley 2010:3). Thus, greater levels of democracy are expected to translate into more favorable attitudes toward women‘s employment. In a cross-national study, Inglehart and Norris (2003) found a strong association between democracy and support for gender equality. Further research has found that democracy, measured in terms of the level of citizens‘ political liberties and civil rights within a nation, has been linked to greater support for women in the public sphere, i.e. higher education, the labor force, and politics (Price 2008).

Women in Parliament

The share of women in parliament has a number of implications for women‘s status.

Women‘s representation not only reflects the idea that women are legitimate actors in shaping society, there is also evidence that the legislation women politicians support directly impacts women‘s lives. Women in parliament advocate feminist policies such as maternity leave and childcare provision (Kittilson 2008; Schwindt-Bayer and Missler

2005). Such evidence of women parliamentarians working directly for policies that allow women to balance employment and caretaking responsibilities suggests that a greater

26 share of women in parliament will lead to more egalitarian attitudes about women‘s right to employment.

Individual Socio-Demographics

In addition to the context of nations that may make individuals within one society more likely to hold egalitarian gender ideology than those in another, individual socio- demographics also shape attitudes toward gender equality. Research (primarily conducted on Western more developed nations) has found a number of personal characteristics that affect gender ideology. Theoretical explanations can be broadly categorized into those that tend to focus on how individual interest versus exposure shape gender attitudes

(Bolzendahl and Myers 2004, Davis and Greenstein 2009). Interest explanations focus on how individuals work to further their own interests, which are shaped by their ascribed and achieved characteristics (eg. gender and marital status). Exposure explanations focus on how attitudes are developed through life experiences, such as education and employment. Both explanations have received support. Those who express the most egalitarian gender role ideology tend to be young, single, and employed women with more than average education (Banaszak and Plutzer 1993; Baxter and Kane 1995; Kroska

2009, Price 2008, Warner 1991). The negative effect of increased age can be explained by the fact that younger individuals tend to have less conservative attitudes. Women who are single are more dependent on the labor force and less on the traditional marital division of labor than are those with a male breadwinner (Davis and Robinson 1991;

27 Warner 1991). Women tend to have more exposure to gender inequality than men do in their daily lives (Baxter and Kane 1995).

Education and employment appear to have both direct and indirect effects on increasing gender egalitarianism. Higher education exposes women to alternative gender roles, outside the familial sphere, and also leads to greater opportunities for employment.

Women who are employed are more economically dependent and thus less reliant on men. Women may also become more gender egalitarian as they encounter discrimination in the workplace (Baxter and Kane 1995). Employment also works to develop egalitarian gender ideology among men. In their review of the literature on gender ideology, Davis and Greenstein note that two previous studies (Gerson 1993 and Coltrane 1996) have found that ―men who experience blocked opportunities in the labor force are likely to become more gender egalitarian‖ (Davis and Greenstein 2009: 95). Previous research supports this idea; Smith (1985) found that husbands of employed women are more gender egalitarian than husbands with wives that do not work outside the home. Thus, I expect to find that those who express the most egalitarian gender role ideology tend to be young, single, and employed women with higher education.

Personal Religiosity

In addition to individual socio-demographics, personal religiosity has also received much attention in the literature on gender ideology. Numerous studies have found that those who are highly religious hold more traditional gender ideology than those who are less or not religious (e.g. Bergh 2006; Inglehart and Norris 2003; Moore and Vanneman 2003). Thus, it is expected that individuals who express higher levels of personal religiosity will also hold more conservative gender ideology.

Conclusion

This chapter draws from the literature on the factors influencing women‘s employment and the literature on gender egalitarianism to develop a theory of attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East. It is proposed that cultural and material factors at the national level have an important influence on individual attitudes. National cultural, demographic, economic, and political characteristics shape individual feelings of security and willingness to extend rights to others. Individual characteristics are markers of position in the society‘s stratification system. Individuals who have more to gain from women‘s equal employment rights are expected to feel favorably towards the idea.

Chapter 2: Attitudes Towards Women‘s Employment in the Middle East in Global

Context

Attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment vary widely across the globe, as can be seen in Figure 2 in Appendix A, which presents an attitudinal map, or the percentage of individuals in each country who disagree or strongly disagree with the statement, ―When jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job than women.‖

This chapter focuses on the contextual factors that shape attitudes towards women‘s employment, with a particular focus on explaining lower levels of support for women‘s employment in the Middle East in comparison to other nations.

Data and Analysis

All individual level data for this analysis is from the 2000 wave (collected between 1999-

2004) of the World Values Survey (WVS). The WVS is a worldwide survey that collects individual-level attitudinal data to investigate socio-cultural and political change. The surveys are carried out by a worldwide network of social scientists and include 97 countries representing 90 percent of the world‘s population (Inglehart, World Values

Survey). The 2000 wave of the World Values Survey is the most extensive, covering 67 countries and 96,000 respondents. The second largest is the 2005 wave of the WVS,

30 currently in progress, with 54 countries and 77,000 respondents. The 2000 wave is not only the most extensive, but also includes the best representation of the Middle East of any of the available waves6. Data are available for Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel,

Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Sample Selection

For the hierarchical linear models examining individual attitudes towards women‘s employment, all nations in the 2000 World Values Survey (wave 4) with data on attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment, socio-demographics, and contextual variables were selected. There are 70 nations/territories total available in the 4th wave.

Puerto Rico was dropped because it is not an independent country. Israel, China, and

Venezuela were all dropped because they were missing data on one or more items included in the religiosity scale.7 Serbia and Montenegro and Northern Ireland were dropped because Freedom House data on level of democracy were missing for both.

Tanzania was dropped because data on total fertility in 1999 were not available. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Malta, and Uganda were dropped because they did not have data on women‘s legal economic rights, as measured by the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human

6 Of the five waves of the WVS, the first does not include any Middle Eastern nations, the second and third waves only include data on Turkey, and the 5th wave includes 6 Middle Eastern nations (Egypt Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Turkey), but key variables including employment status in Jordan and measured of personal religiosity are not available. Also, while data is available for Iran & Iraq in the 5th wave, they are included on ―List B‖ rather than ―List A‖ designating that there is only data on these nations for a reduced questionnaire. 7 Specifically, individuals in Israel were not asked the item accessing how important religion is in their daily lives (a006); individuals in China were not asked the item accessing how important God is in their daily lives (f063); and individuals in China, Israel, and Venezuela were not asked the item regarding whether or not they get comfort and strength from religion. 31 Rights Dataset. Jordan, Pakistan, and Indonesia were dropped because they did not have adequate variation on personal religiosity, a key individual-level variable. Some nations were missing on more than one contextual variable: both China and Northern Ireland were also missing data on female tertiary enrollment and Serbia and Montenegro was also missing on total fertility. These 13 nations missing on key variables were dropped from analysis. This resulted in a total sample of 57 nations, which includes 7 Middle

Eastern nations.8 This allowed for an examination of the question of how the attitudes of men and women in the Middle East toward women‘s employment differ from attitudes in the rest of the world, and what contextual factors explain any differences. A list of all nations included in the hierarchical analyses is included in Appendix A, Table 5. Within all the analysis, listwise deletion was used to eliminate respondents who did not have valid responses for any given variable. The final sample size for all hierarchical models is

73,860 individuals and 57 nations. Descriptive statistics and correlations for all variables included in the hierarchical analyses are provided in Table 3 and Table 6, respectively.

Measurement

Dependent Variable: Attitudes Towards Women’s Rights to Employment

Egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s employment is conceptualized as an ideology that women and men should have equal rights to employment; one gender should not be

8 Class was not used as a predictor in hierarchical analyses because this item was only asked in 31 of the 60 nations, and the nation-specific analyses showed it is not a prime predictor of either women‘s employment or men‘s and women‘s attitudes toward dual-providing. 32 favored over the other in job decisions. Egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s employment is not conceptualized as including views on the acceptability of working mothers, or whether it is desirable for both partners in a marriage to be employed.

Thus, the dependent variable in analyses examines attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment in periods of job scarcity. This was selected as the best operationalization of gender egalitarian attitudes towards employment. It measures attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment without confounding these attitudes with those about the role of mothers, or whether it is desirable for both spouses to be formally employed.

In the 2000 wave of the WVS, respondents were asked, ―For each of the following statements I read out, can you tell me how much you agree with each. Do you agree, disagree, or neither agree nor disagree?” The exact item used to conceptualize attitudes about gender differences in right to employment is: “When jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job than women.” Respondents were asked whether they agreed, disagreed, or neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement. This item was selected as the best indicator (among those available in the WVS) of attitudes towards women‘s right to employment. Choices were recoded so that a higher score equals more gender egalitarian attitudes (agreed = 1, neither = 2, disagreed = 3).

Attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment are fairly well distributed. 40% of the sample agrees that when jobs are scarce men should have more rights to a job than women, while 48% of the sample disagrees with this statement, and 12% neither agrees nor disagrees. Attitudes vary by region. Individuals in North America expressed the most

33 egalitarian views, with a mean of 2.7, followed by Western Europe with a mean of 2.4,

Latin America and Eastern Europe both with means of 2.3, Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa both with means of 1.7, and the Middle East and North Africa with a mean of 1.4. This provides support for the hypothesis that the Middle East is in fact unique in terms of individual attitudes regarding women‘s employment, as well as in terms of women‘s actual employment rates. A map of attitudes towards women‘s employment for each country with data available is provided as Figure 2.

Independent Variables: National-Level Factors

Pertinent national level variables include a regional measure (a dichotomous indicator variable for individuals residing in the Middle East), a cultural measure (the national level of religiosity), demographics including national fertility rates and women‘s tertiary enrollment rates, economic factors, including oil wealth and men‘s employment to population ratio, and political measures: level of democracy, the percentage of women in parliament, and women‘s economic rights as assured by law. All national level variables are standardized (mean 0, standard deviation 1) to allow for comparison of the strength of pertinent national level factors in explaining attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment.

Region

34 Middle East

An indicator variable for the Middle East was used to designate whether individuals reside in a Middle Eastern nation versus all other nations available globally. Algeria,

Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are the interest group, coded with 1 and all other nations are the referent, coded with a 0.

Cultural

National Level of Religiosity

National level of religiosity was created by calculating the mean on the personal religiosity scale for each nation. This is the mean level of religiosity on the three variable scale for individuals in each nation. Individuals express the lowest levels of personal religiosity in the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Denmark. Levels of personal religiosity are highest in the populations of Iraq, Jordan, and Morocco.

Demographic

Fertility Rate

Total fertility rates were obtained from each country for 1999 from the World

Development Indicators. Rates are well distributed ranging from a low total fertility rate

35 of 1.13 in Bulgaria and Belarus to highs of 5.49 and 6.21 in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, respectively. Mean fertility for the full sample is 2.15.

Women’s Tertiary Enrollment

Women‘s tertiary gross enrollment rates for 1999 were obtained from the World Bank edstats. This is the total number of students enrolled at the tertiary level of any age expressed as a percentage of the population of the typical age for tertiary education. This is an indicator of women‘s participation in tertiary education in each country. Thus, higher gross enrollment rates indicate that a higher proportion of the female population in the nation is receiving tertiary education.

One weakness of this measure is it includes underage and overage tertiary enrollments, which means it is possible for a country to have a tertiary gross enrollment rate over 100.

A more desirable measure when available is net tertiary enrollment, which is the total number of students of typical tertiary age that are enrolled. However, these data is not collected by the World Bank or available from any other source. I also considered several alternate indicators of women‘s participation in higher education provided by the World

Bank. First, I considered the ratio of female to male tertiary enrollment. However, this measure was not available for seven nations in the sample, including Egypt, when the years 1999-2002 were all considered as possible sources. Second, I considered the percentage of women in secondary education in 1999. However, data were missing for ten nations in the sample, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Finally, I considered using

36 the expected years of total average years of education for women in each country (World

Bank data) as an indicator of women‘s overall access to education. This indicator was lacking both in that it was not an indicator of women‘s participation in higher education and it was missing for about one-fourth of the sample, including key Middle Eastern nations.

Economic

Per Capita GDP

Overall wealth of each country is measured by per capita gross domestic product (GDP).

Per capita GDP for each country for 1999 comes from the World Bank.

Oil Rent

To measure oil rent, I use Michael Ross‘s oil rents per capita measure (Ross 2008). This is the country‘s annual rents in oil and gas, standardized by its mid-year population, expressed in 2000 dollars, from 1993-2002. Of the available nations, oil wealth is highest in Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iraq, Russia, and Iran, respectively. Analyses were also conducted with two alternate measures of oil wealth. The first was self-constructed. In accordance with previous research (Ross 2001; Sachs & Warner 1995), oil wealth was measured as a continuous variable of the national oil exports (in billions of barrels)

37 divided by the national GDP for 1999. Data on oil exported and national GDP were obtained from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook.

The second measure used was also a continuous variable, measured as national oil production standardized by gross national income for 1999. (Gross national income is gross national product minus the compensation of employees and property income payable to the rest of the world, plus corresponding income received from non-residents).

This measure of oil wealth is publicly available as replication data from the Peace

Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO). The measure was created by Fearon and Laitin (2003).

Although the results seemed generally the same with all three measures (self-constructed,

Fearon & Latin, and Ross), each of the first two had significant limitations. My self- constructed measure was based on oil exports data from the CIA World Factbook, and the data were not consistent in year collected across countries. Fearon & Latin‘s measure was not available for several nations in the sample: Iceland, Iraq, and Luxembourg. In addition, oil exports is argued to not be an accurate measure of oil wealth because ―it does not include oil that is produced but consumed domestically, and it does not account for extraction costs, which vary widely from country to country‖ (Ross 2008:121). Ross‘s measure corrects for the fact that oil exports often indirectly are measuring the size of national economy. When countries of varying economic status produce the same amount of oil, poorer countries tend to export more because they consume less (Ross 2008:121).

38 A third measure potential measure under consideration was a measure of oil wealth developed as part of a comprehensive measure of rentier status (Jenkins et al 2011). This measure corrects for the limitation of the first two datasets. It is a continuous measure of oil rent in 1999 standardized by population in 2000 dollars. However, data are currently missing for multiple nations in my sample: Belgium, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg,

Macedonia, Portugal, Singapore, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Women’s Economic Rights

The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset is used to measure women‘s economic rights as assured by law in each country. The CIRI dataset evaluates 195 countries in terms of government respect for internationally recognized human rights and assigns annual scores for each country. Reliability scores and information for replication is included for all data; at least two coders assessed each country for each country-year

(CIRI). Included in the dataset is measures of women‘s rights to equal political, economic, and social treatment in each country. I use the 1999 measure of Women‘s

Economic Rights. The rights evaluated for each country are: equal pay for equal work; free choice of profession or employment without the need to obtain a husband or male relative‘s consent; the right to gainful employment without the need to obtain a husband or male relative‘s consent; equality in hiring and promotion practices; job security9; non- discrimination by employers; the right to be free from sexual harassment in the workplace; the right to work at night; the right to work in professions classified as

9 Job security includes maternity leave, unemployment benefits, and no arbitrary firings or layoffs. 39 dangerous; and the right to work in the military and police force. CIRI scores range from

0 to 3. A score of 0 means that ―there were no economic rights for women in the law and systematic discrimination based on sex may have been built into the law.‖ A score of 1 means that women had some rights that were not adequately enforced, while a score of 2 equates with some enforced legal rights for women. A score of three means that women had all or nearly all of the rights listed, and the government ―fully and vigorously‖ enforced these laws (CIRI Short Variable Descriptions). Scores for the sample range from 0-3. The mean for the sample is 1.42.

Men’s Employment to Population Ratio

Men‘s employment to population ratio is the ratio of the total working-age male population that is employed to the total male working-age population of that country.

Data on the employment to population ratio (expressed as a percentage) for 1999 comes from the United Nations Millennium Development Goals database. The mean is 65.51.

Percentages range from a low of 44.7 in Macedonia to a high of 84.5 in Bangladesh. To check validity of these rates, I compared them with unemployment rates for each nation available from the CIA World Factbook. Macedonia has had high unemployment rates for the past decade. Compared to all other UN member nations with available data,

Macedonia had between the 2nd and 8th highest unemployment rates for the period from

2002 to 2007. Bangladesh has had consistently low unemployment rates, ranking between 84 and 100 for available data between 2005 and 2007. However, Bangladesh has experienced high rates of underemployment (CIA World Factbook).

I also considered alternate sets of data. The International Labor Organization‘s Laborsta dataset of employment statistics includes total unemployment rates and unemployment rates for men and women for 2000. However, data were missing for 7 of the 57 nations included in the global analysis, including Iraq and Iran, and Jordan. The employment to population ratio available from the UN Millennium Development Goals database was available for all 60 nations and was selected as the best indicator of the labor market viability and employment opportunity in each nation.

Political

Democracy

Freedom House‘s Index of Democracy was used to measure each country‘s level of democracy. Freedom House is a non-governmental organization that conducts annual evaluations of the degree of democratic freedoms in 194 countries and 14 territories.

Countries are scored in terms of political rights and civil liberties on a range from 1 to 7, where 1 represents complete freedom (or high levels of political rights and civil liberties) and 7 represents low freedom (or little political rights and civil liberties). Scores from the

2002 are based on evaluations of the countries between 2001 and 2002. The measures of political rights and civil liberties are averaged for each country for an overall score. This measure of democracy is then reverse-coded so that a higher score represents a higher level of democracy.

Percent of Women in Parliament

The percent of women in parliament in the lower or single house for 2000 comes from the Inter-Parliamentary Union‘s ―Women in National Parliaments‖ dataset. The mean percentage of women in parliament is 13.31. No women are in the national parliament in

Saudi Arabia. The largest representation of women in national parliament in this sample is Iceland with 34.9%.

Independent Variables

Individual Socio-Demographics

Individual socio-demographic predictors included in all analyses are age, gender, marital status, educational attainment, employment status, and a scaled measure of personal religiosity. Age is a continuous variable measured in years. Marital status is coded as a dichotomous variable where married is the interest group and single status (divorced, never married, widowed, or cohabiting) is the referent. Education has eight categories; values range from 1, inadequately completed elementary education, to 8, university with a degree or more. Education is recoded into a dichotomous variable where individual with at least some tertiary education are the interest group (1) and all lower levels of educational attainment are the referent (0). Employment is measured by a dichotomous indicator; the interest group is those currently employed full or part time or self-

42 employed (1) and the referent is those who are unemployed, students, retirees, or other.

The average age of respondents in this sample is 41, 59% of respondents are married, and

51% are currently employed.

Personal Religiosity

Religiosity is difficult to measure in the Middle East because it is highly skewed; the vast majority of respondents indicate high levels of religiosity. Therefore, to increase the validity of the measure of religiosity, as well as to best capture the existing variation among respondents, I created a three item scale to measure religiosity. The items included are: ―How important is God in your life?‖ (on a scale of 1 to 10, where a higher score indicates greater importance); ―How important is religion in your life?‖ (on a scale of 1 to 4 where 4 equals greater importance); and ―Do you get comfort and strength from religion?‖ (where yes is coded with a 1). Exploratory factor analysis with the pooled data showed that these items align well; all items have factor loading scores above 0.7. Table

1 presents the mean, standard deviation, and factor loadings of the religiosity measure for the pooled data, as well as the country specific highest and lowest loading scores.

Analytical Strategy

The analysis includes individuals nested within nations, and explanatory variables at both the individual and contextual level. Thus, I use hierarchical modeling to explore the relative effects of both individual characteristics and contextual factors on attitudes

43 towards women‘s equal right to employment. Hierarchical modeling allows for the examination of variation in attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment both within and between nations, meaning some information can be gained about the relative importance of contextual factors and individual characteristics in predicting individuals‘ attitudinal support for women in each of these areas. The dependent variable has ordered response categories ranging from 1 to 3, so I use hierarchical ordinal logit for analysis.

Because I am interested in predicting support for women in each of these areas, I reverse coded the dependent variable. Lower values on the scale now indicate more egalitarian gender attitudes in each of these areas, as follow: 1) disagree 2) neither agree nor disagree; 3) agree.

Findings

I. The Middle East in Comparison to All Other Nations (Hierarchical Linear Modeling):

Attitudes Towards Women’s Relative Rights to a Job

A hierarchical ordinal logit two-level model is used to examine the individual and contextual factors that influence attitudes toward women‘s right to employment in the

Middle East in comparison to all other regions. The equation for the fully unconditional model is:

Level 1

η1j = β0j

η2j = β0j+δ2j

Level 2

β0j = γ00+μ0j μ0j ~N(0,τ00)

δ2j = δ2

Results of this model are presented in Model 1 in Table 4. This model includes only the dependent variable and a random intercept, which allows for the determination of the proportion of the overall variance that lies between and within nations. The variance component of 1.200 is highly significant (p<0.001) demonstrating that much of the variation in individual attitudes towards women‘s employment is at the national level.

This provides statistical support for the importance of including national-level measures in the models of attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment. The estimate of

γ00 is 0.261. The intercept indicates the probability in log odds of an individual responding disagree versus all else (i.e. neither agree nor disagree or agree). The estimate of threshold 2 is 0.612 and indicates the probability in log odds of an individual responding disagree or neither agree nor disagree versus agree.

Individual Socio-Demographics and Religiosity

Model 2 introduces socio-demographics and a measure of personal religiosity at the individual level. Findings show that hypotheses regarding the effects of individual socio-demographics and religiosity are mostly supported. Older individuals tend to hold less egalitarian ideas about women‘s equal right to employment (b=-0.014, p<0.001).

45 Women hold more egalitarian ideology about women‘s right to employment relative to men (b=.595), an effect that is highly significant (p<.001, one-tailed). Individuals that have at least some tertiary education are also much more likely to express egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s employment (0.611, p<.001, one-tailed). Those who are employed also express significantly more egalitarian attitudes (0.228) than those who are not, and this effect is also highly significant (p<.001, one-tailed). Married individuals are less likely than singles to hold egalitarian ideas about women‘s right to employment (-

0.131, p<0,001). Also, those who express greater personal religiosity are less likely to express egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s equal rights to employment (b=-0.214, p<.001). Individual factors have significant impacts on attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment across the globe. In addition, the variance component (tau intercept) of 1.110 is highly significant (p<0.001), indicating that much of the variation in individual attitudes towards women‘s employment is at the national level, net of individual characteristics.

Regional & Cultural Effects

Model 3 adds national level factors to the model conditional at level 1. This model adds an indicator variable for residing in the Middle East, in order to determine the effect of living in this region (in comparison to all other nations) on attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment. It also adds a measure of the mean level of personal religiosity held by individuals within that nation. Findings show that living in the Middle

East has a highly significant and negative effect on beliefs about women‘s rights to

46 employment relative to men (b= -0.584, p<.001). The mean level of personal religiosity expressed by individuals in that nation also has a negative and highly significant effect

(b=-0.435, p<.001). In addition, the unexplained variance drops substantially in this model (Tau=0.646, p<.001) in the current model versus 1.110 in the previous). The highly significant variance component also shows that there is much remaining variation in attitudes towards women‘s employment at the national level, net of these individual and national factors.

National Factors: Demographic

Model 4 adds demographic characteristics relevant to women‘s status at the national level. Women‘s national tertiary enrollment rate has a strong and positive effect on individual attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment (b=0.409, p<.001). On average, individuals residing in nations in which a higher percentage of the female population is enrolling in tertiary education tend to hold more gender egalitarian attitudes regarding women‘s equal right to employment. However, the national total fertility rate does not have a significant effect on attitudes towards women‘s employment and is not included in subsequent models. Even after women‘s tertiary enrollment and the insignificant effect of women‘s fertility rates are accounted for, the effects of residing in the Middle East and national religiosity remain strong and negative. However, the magnitude of the effect for both variables has dropped substantially with the addition of these national demographic factors. The effect of residing in the Middle East has dropped to -0.486 (versus -0.584) in the previous model and the effect of national religiosity has

47 dropped to -0.250 (versus -0.435) in the previous model. The unexplained variance at level 2 has also dropped to 0.477 (p<0.001).

Model 5 drops the insignificant effect of total fertility rate and adds two economic measures: the per capita gross domestic product for 1999 and national oil rent in the same year.

Per capita GDP has a significant positive effect on attitudes towards women‘s right to employment (b=0.324; p<.001). Oil wealth is not significant in this model. (Supplemental analyses show oil wealth is only significant before per capita GDP is taken into account.)

Middle Eastern nations with high oil wealth in this sample are Saudi Arabia, Algeria,

Iraq, and Iran. Outside the Middle East, the highest levels of oil wealth in this sample are found in Canada, Russia, Mexico, Great Britain, and the United States. This model also shows that once GDP and oil wealth are accounted for, national level of religiosity is no longer a significant predictor of individual attitudes towards women‘s right to employment. The negative effect of residing in the Middle East on attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment remains strong and significant (b= -.485, p<.001) controlling for these economic factors. The effect of women‘s tertiary enrollment has dropped in magnitude from the previous model, but remains a strong and significant predictor (b=0.409, p<.001). The unexplained variance at level 2 has also dropped in this model to 0.401 (p<.001).

48 Model 6 drops the highly insignificant effect of oil wealth and adds two more national economic factors: women‘s economic rights and men‘s employment to population ratio.

Both of these assess the national employment opportunities available to women.

Women‘s national economic rights as assured by law have a significant positive effect on attitudes towards their equal rights to employment, even after controlling for relevant regional, cultural, demographic, and economic measures (b=0.220, p<.001). Men‘s employment to population ratio does not have a significant effect on attitudes towards women‘s right to employment. The effect of residing in the Middle East drops from -

0.485 in the previous model to -0.417 in the current model, which takes women‘s economic opportunities into account. However, the negative effect of residing in the

Middle East remains highly significant (p<.001). Women‘s tertiary enrollment also remains highly significant, although the size of the effect drops (b=0.353 in the current versus 0.409 in the previous, p<.001). The total variance at level 2 has again dropped in this model (tau=0.389, p<.001).

Model 7 drops the insignificant effect of men‘s employment to population ratio, and introduces two measures of the political environment: the national level of democracy and the percentage of women in parliament.

The percentage of women in parliament has a strong and significant positive effect on attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment (b=0.415; p<.001). In nations where women make up a larger share of national parliament, individuals are more likely to disagree with the idea that men have greater rights to employment than do women.

49 However, the effect of national democracy is not significant once relevant regional, cultural, demographic, economic, and political variables have been taken into account.

The effect of living in the Middle East has again dropped in size once political environment has been taken into account, but continues to have a significant negative effect on individual attitudes (b=-0.370, p<.001). Women‘s tertiary enrollment also has a strong significant positive effect on attitudes (b=0.337, p<.001). Per capita GDP and women‘s economic rights are no longer significant in this model. The unexplained variance at level 2 is the lowest in this model of any of the seven. Unexplained variance at the national level in attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment has dropped from 1.129 in the unconditional model to 0.270 in the current.

Finally, model 8 adds the hypothesized cross-level interaction between personal religiosity and residing in the Middle East. The equation for the fully-specified model is:

Level 1:

η1ij=β0j+β1j(age)+β2j(female)+β3j(educ)+β4j(married)+ β5j(employed)+β6j(religiosity)

η2ij= η1ij +δ(2)

Level 2:

β0j=γ00+ γ 01(Middle East)+ γ 02 (National religiosity)+ γ 03(Women‘s Tertiary)+ γ 04

(GDP)+ γ 05(Women‘s Economic Rights)+ γ 06 (Democracy)+ γ 07 (Women‘s

Parliament)+μj

β1j=γ10

50 β2j=γ20

β3j=γ30

β4j=γ40

β5j=γ50

β6j=γ60+ γ61 (Middle East)+ μj

δ2j= δ2

Controlling for individual socio-demographics, the individual effect of residing in the

Middle East and national religiosity, and relevant national demographic, economic, and political factors, the interaction has a strong and highly significant negative effect on egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment. Specifically, individuals who express high levels of personal religiosity and reside in the Middle East are particularly unlikely to disagree with the idea that men should have more rights to a job than women. Including the interaction term also greatly reduces the size and significance of the main effect of residing in the Middle East (b=-0.184, p<.05 in the current model versus b=-0.337, p<.001) in the previous model. Residing in a country with a higher level of women‘s tertiary enrollment also has a strong positive effect on attitudes towards women‘s employment (b=0.338, p<.001), as does residing in a country with a higher percentage of women in parliament (b=0.415, p<.001). Individuals residing in wealthier nations also tend to be more supportive of women‘s equal right to employment, but this effect is not highly significant (b=0.136, p<.05).

Looking at the fully-specified model as a whole shows that young, educated, employed, single women are the most supportive of women‘s equal right to a job, especially when they reside in countries outside the Middle East, where women have high rates of tertiary enrollment, greater economic rights as assured by law, and higher percentages of women in parliament. Looking to the interaction term, those residing outside the Middle East and expressing less personal religiosity express the most egalitarian views. The unexplained variance in this model is slightly lower than in the previous (tau=0.269, p<.001). Overall, this model appears to be the best fit for the data.

Supplemental Analyses: Hierarchical Ordinal Logit Models

Supplemental analyses were conducted to check the robustness of findings. In supplemental analyses, the sample was limited to those age 18 to 65, because this is the group most expected to be in the labor force. The employment variable was re-coded to exclude students and retirees from the sample. However, findings were not significantly different in strength or direction of results, so the larger sample size was retained for the analyses presented. A measure of social class was also considered for analyses, but ultimately not included because it greatly reduces sample size for the hierarchical models.

Supplemental analyses were also conducted with an alternate measure of religiosity to retain the three nations that did not have adequate distribution for the three-item scaled measure of religiosity (Indonesia, Jordan, and Pakistan). The item in the scale asking respondents to rank the importance of religion in their lives on a four-point scale was

52 used as the sole measure of personal religiosity. Means on this variable were used for the measure of national religiosity at the contextual level. Using the one-item measure of religiosity allows for a total sample size of 60 nations and 84,381 individuals. There was one change in significance of results in these models. In model 8, the main effect of the

Middle East is non-significant (versus significant at the .05 level in the 57-country analyses presented here). There were no other changes in significance or direction of effects. Thus, for purposes of the main analyses, the religiosity scale is used. The scale measures personal religiosity in substantially greater depth than the one-item measure.

Statistically, the scaled-measure operates quite well, as can be seen in Table 1.

Finally, all possible measures that could be used to operationalize the dependent variable were explored in depth. In supplemental analyses that are not presented, both within- country and hierarchical models were conducted with an alternate measure of attitudes towards gender and employment that is also available in the 4th wave of the WVS. This measure examines attitudes regarding whether both spouses should contribute to household income. However, this measure was ultimately discarded, because the question does not state whether ―contributing to household income‖ entails employment.

It appeared that respondents could interpret the idea of ―both spouses contributing to household income‖ as a division of labor in which one spouse‘s unpaid work within the home allowed for the partner‘s formal employment.

53 Conclusions

Examining net effects shows that individuals in the Middle East hold significantly more conservative attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment when compared to individuals in other world regions. This regional difference in attitudes can be partially explained by a combination of national and individual factors pertinent to the region.

This research supports the argument for a strong cultural component shaping attitudes towards women‘s rights in the Middle East. Controlling for the regional effect of residing in the Middle East and national demographic characteristics pertinent to women‘s status (fertility rates and women‘s tertiary enrollment), individuals residing in nations with a higher mean level of religiosity are significantly less likely to support women‘s equal right to employment. Although the national effect of religiosity disappears once economic characteristics of the nations are controlled for (namely per capita GDP and oil wealth), the effect of individual religiosity remains strong. In addition, those individuals who express high levels of personal religiosity and reside in the Middle East are particularly likely to believe that women have less right to employment than do men. This effect is highly significant controlling for cultural, demographic, economic, and political context of nations, as well as individuals own socio-demographic characteristics. This finding suggests that being highly devout has an additional negative impact on Middle Eastern attitudes that is not found in other world regions.

In addition to cultural factors, I find that the demographic and political factors that directly reflect women‘s status have strong impacts on individual attitudes. Individuals

54 residing in nations where women are enrolling in tertiary education at higher rates are more supportive of women‘s right to employment than individuals residing in nations with lower female enrollment rates. Women‘s representation in national government also has a significant positive impact on attitudes, controlling for all relevant factors.

However, not all demographic and political factors reflective of women‘s status have a significant influence on attitudes—I find no support for my hypothesis that individuals residing in nations with lower levels of fertility would express greater support for women‘s employment.

It is important to note that this study is an examination of net effects shaping attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East, and some of the effects of contextual variables may be manifest through the presence of others. For instance, research has shown that countries with higher national incomes are more likely to transition to democracy, and democracies are more likely to be viable in these societies. Democratic countries tend to have higher percentages of women in parliament, which leads to more egalitarian attitudes towards women in the workforce. Thus, net effects may reflect temporally prior mechanisms.

Overall economic development (as represented by GDP) is the most important economic factor in explaining attitudes towards women‘s right to employment. Individuals residing in wealthier nations are more likely to support women‘s right to employment than individuals in less developed nations. In contrast to hypotheses, level of oil wealth and tightness of the labor market (as represented by men‘s employment to population ratio)

55 are not significant predictors of attitudes towards women‘s right to employment once relevant individual factors and national culture and demographics are taken into account.

In this sample, the Middle Eastern nations with the greatest oil wealth are Saudi Arabia,

Algeria, Iran, and Iraq. Outside the Middle East, Russia, Canada, Mexico, and Great

Britain have the greatest oil wealth (as measured by oil production per capita). This may explain why oil wealth has no effect on attitudes towards women‘s employment once the regional effect of residing in the Middle East and national level of development are taken into account. In contrast to Ross (2008) I find that national culture and women‘s representation in higher education and parliament (combined with individual characteristics) do more to explain women‘s status in the Middle East than oil wealth.

Chapter 3. Variation Across The Region: Differences in Attitudes Towards Women‘s

Right to Employment in a Selection of Middle Eastern Countries

The previous chapter attempts to explain attitudes towards women‘s employment in the

Middle East in comparison to other regions of the world. First, it is established that individuals residing in the Middle East hold significantly less egalitarian gender attitudes than individuals living in other world regions. National factors pertinent to the Middle

East region are entered to explain this regional difference.

This chapter takes a micro-level approach by examining variation in attitudes towards women‘s employment across a selection of Middle Eastern countries. The focus is on variation in the percentage of individuals who believe that women should have equal rights to employment across countries, and on the ability of individual socio-demographic factors to successfully explain variation in attitudes in each country.

Context: Differences in Women’s Status Across the Region

Eight Middle Eastern nations have sufficient data for analysis, as will be discussed in the section on sample selection. These are: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco,

Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. These countries differ in cultural norms about the role of

57 women and women‘s legal status. These differences may result in more of the population supporting women‘s right to employment in some nations than in others. Individual socio-demographics that have been found to predict egalitarian gender attitudes may also have more predictive power in some nations than in others. The next few paragraphs briefly summarize differences in women‘s status that suggest there may be variation in attitudes towards women‘s employment across the region.

Turkey

Turkey stands out from the other Middle Eastern countries in the sample for allowing its citizens greater democratic freedoms and having a history in which calls for women‘s rights have been linked to modernization and economic progress. After the dissolution of the Ottoman empire in which Islamic law was the main basis for legislation, ―the founders of the Republic aimed to establish a liberal Western society, secular as well as democratic in Turkey (Arat 1994:243). Turkey is the only country in the region with a constitutional separation of religion and the state (Moghadam 2003). Research has shown Islamic family law is often used to discriminate against women. Turkey is one of the few nations in the region (along with Tunisia and Yemen) that has legislated civil family law (Saud 2000:20). In the 1980s, a strong women‘s movement in Turkey contributed to democratization and opened up an opportunity for women to have a role in politics through participation in grassroots organizations (Arat 1994). More recently,

Turkey has made efforts towards European Union accession, and this has meant promising to honor human rights and promote equal access to the political and economic

58 spheres. Some improvements in women‘s status have been made, although the country still faces pressure to improve the ―deeply embedded low economic, social, and political status of women in Turkish society‖ to improve its chances of joining the European

Union (Hughes 2004:5).

Iran and Iraq

The 1980-1988 war between Iran and Iraq changed women‘s status in each country.

During the war women‘s employment increased in both Iran and Iraq. In contemporary

Iran, political leaders ―actively encourage women to take up fields of study they deem both socially necessary and appropriate for women, especially medicine and teaching‖

(Moghadam 2003:27).

Iraqi women‘s status improved with the passing of a progressive personal status law in

1959 and when the Ba‘ath Party granted women additional rights in the areas of education and employment in the 1970s (Ahmed 2010). While women‘s employment increased during the wartime period in Iraq, after the war the country entered a more conservative period. Women‘s movement and style of dress became more regulated.

Maternity leave policies and financial incentives were used to encourage a higher birth rate to make up for wartime deaths, which also contributed to a change in perceptions of women‘s role (Ahmed 2010).

59 Algeria, Jordan, and Morocco

Algeria and Morocco share some similarities regarding women‘s status. Unlike Tunisia, which adopted a more progressive family code in the post-colonial period, both Algeria and Morocco adopted conservative family codes, although Algeria wavered much longer among alternatives before adopting the code (Charrad 2001).

In Jordan, women‘s employment increased in the late 1970s, when the county‘s men migrated to work in the oil-rich Gulf countries, but declined in the mid-1980s with the economic recession and men‘s return migration (Malt 2005).

Saudi Arabia and Egypt

In Egypt, ideas about women‘s right to employment may be driven by economic concerns. In recent surveys, men have expressed concern with their ability to find employment. Along with this, ―societal expectations that men should serve as the primary breadwinners for family lead some men to say that men should receive preferential treatment in hiring‖ (Katulis 2004:17). The World Economic Forum ranks countries on their degree of gender gap across five categories: economic participation, economic opportunities, political empowerment, educational attainment, and health and well-being.

Of the 58 countries ranked, Egypt received the lowest score, below the other two Middle

Eastern countries included (Turkey and Jordan).

60 Egypt and Saudi Arabia are very different in the degree to which women are able to participate in the public sphere. In a study of religiosity and gender egalitarianism,

Kucinskas (2010) finds that mosque attendance among women is much higher in Egypt than in Saudi Arabia. In Egypt, mosque attendance is seen as an acceptable way for women to express their religiosity, while in Saudi Arabia pious women are expected to pray at home. In an examination of religious fundamentalism among Egyptian and Saudi

Arabian youth, Saudi youth were found to be more religious in terms of daily prayers, self-described religiosity, an support for Shariah (Moaddel and Karabenick 2008).

Discussing the strong segregation of women in Saudi Arabia, Le Renard (2008:610) explains that while ―both women‘s educational levels and (daily) activities have completely changed over the last 50 years; at the same time, most of these activities have developed inside a ‗female sphere‘.‖ Saudi women are separated from men in education and public spaces and are not yet permitted to vote or run for political office.

Gender Equality Scales and Economic Explanations

While there is clear variation in women‘s status across the selected Middle Eastern nations, attempting to categorize or ―rank‖ the nations in terms of women‘s status is difficult, because the status of women varies depending on which indicators are used.

The Gender Empowerment Measurement created by the United Nations focuses on women‘s political representation and their economic status relative to men, with indicators such as the national percentage of female legislators, senior officials. The

United Nations Gender Inequality Index (GDI) places greater emphasis on women‘s

61 health, with indicators such as the maternal mortality rate and adolescent fertility rate.

The World Economic Forum‘s measure of the Gender Gap focuses on women‘s political, economic, and educational equality, but also includes a score for women‘s health and well-being. Although none of the rankings include all of the countries in the sample, looking at the most recent country rankings on each measure, some commonalities are clear: Turkey, Iran, and Jordan are ranked higher than Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt on all of the scales.

Economic differences in the selected nations may also affect attitudes, because individuals may be less likely to support women‘s right to employment when jobs are scarce or when men are able to earn a family wage. Moghadam (2003) classifies the

Middle Eastern nations in terms of their oil resources and their tendency to export migrant workers or to import them. Algeria, Iraq, Iran, and Egypt all have mixed oil economies, while Jordan, Morocco, and Turkey do not have oil resources. Saudi Arabia is an oil-rich nation and imports workers. Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey are all labor exporters (Moghadam 2003). Individual country regressions allow for the fact that overall levels of attitudinal support for women‘s right to employment and factors that explain support for women‘s employment may vary across the region.

Sample Selection

For the nation-specific analyses, only Middle Eastern nations are included in the sample.

First, the sample is limited to the 9 Middle Eastern and North African nations available in

62 the 2000 wave of the World Values Survey. It is then further limited to those countries which have data on women‘s employment, attitudes toward women‘s rights to employment, and religiosity and socio-demographics, resulting in a sample of eight countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable measures variation in attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment. In the 2000 wave of the WVS, respondents were asked, ―For each of the following statements I read out, can you tell me how much you agree with each. Do you agree, disagree, or neither agree nor disagree?” The exact item used to conceptualize attitudes about gender differences in right to employment is: “When jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job than women.” Respondents were asked whether they agreed, disagreed, or neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement. This item was selected as the best indicator (among those available in the WVS) of attitudes towards women‘s right to employment. Choices were recoded so that a higher score equals more gender egalitarian attitudes (agreed=1, neither=2, disagreed=3).

Independent Variables

Individual socio-demographic predictors included in all analyses are age, gender, marital status, educational attainment, employment status, and religiosity. Age is a continuous variable measured in years. Marital status is coded as a dichotomous variable where

63 married is the interest group and single status (divorced, never married, widowed, or cohabiting) is the referent. Education has eight categories; values range from 1, inadequately completed elementary education, to 8, university with a degree or more.

Education is recoded into a dichotomous variable where individual with at least some tertiary education are the interest group (1) and all lower levels of educational attainment are the referent (0). Employment is measured by a dichotomous indicator; the interest group is those currently employed full or part time or self-employed (1) and the referent is those who are unemployed, students, retirees, or other.

Personal Religiosity

Religiosity is difficult to measure in the Middle East because it is highly skewed; the vast majority of respondents indicate high levels of religiosity. Therefore, to increase the validity of the measure of religiosity, as well as to best capture the existing variation among respondents, I created a three-item scale to measure religiosity. The items included are: ―How important is God in your life?‖ (on a scale of 1 to 10, where a higher score indicates greater importance; ―How important is religion in your life?‖ (on a scale of 1 to 4 where 4 equals greater importance); and ―Do you get comfort and strength from religion?‖ (where yes is coded with a 1). Exploratory factor analysis with the pooled data showed that these items align well for all countries except Jordan10. All items have factor loading scores above 0.7. Table 1 presents the mean, standard deviation, and factor

10 An alternate measure of religiosity was used for Jordan. This is discussed in the supplemental analyses. 64 loadings of the religiosity measure for the pooled data, as well as the country-specific highest and lowest loading scores.

Findings

First, it is clear that MENA is not uniform in terms of attitudes towards women‘s relative rights to a job. While in all the nations more individuals agree that men have more rights to a job than women than disagree with this idea, the absolute percentages vary substantially. Turkey is a clear outlier among the selected nations, with individuals expressing more egalitarian attitudes; 32% disagree with the idea that men should have more rights to a job than women. Turkey is followed by Iraq and Iran where 22% of individuals disagree, Algeria with 19%, Jordan and Morocco each with 12%, Saudi

Arabia with 8% and Egypt with less than 1% disagreeing with this idea.

Table 7 presents results of the ordinal logistic regressions predicting attitudes towards women‘s rights to a job during periods of job scarcity. First, it can be seen that the models hold more predictive power in some nations in the region. The model operates best in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Morocco. At least four of the six variables are strong predictors of attitudes towards women‘s employment in each of these nations. Across these nations, younger, less religious women with at least some tertiary education are the most supportive of women‘s equal right to employment. Additionally, in Iraq and

Turkey, married individuals are less supportive of women‘s equal right to employment than those who are unmarried.

The western model of attitudes towards women‘s employment has less explanatory power in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. In each of these nations, three or less of the variables significantly predict attitudes towards women‘s right to employment.

Being female is the only variable that consistently predictors more egalitarian attitudes across these four nations. In Algeria and Jordan, those who have at least some tertiary education express more egalitarian views. In Egypt and Jordan, those who are unmarried have significantly more egalitarian views. In Saudi Arabia, only being a less religious woman significantly predicts more egalitarian views.

Next, the individual effects in each country are examined in greater depth. Looking at the models individually, in Algeria, being female (b=1.368), having at least some tertiary education (b=0.421), and being employed (b=0.592) are all highly significant predictors of egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s equal right to a job (p<.001). Specifically, being a woman increases the odds of disagreeing with the idea that men have more rights to a job than women (versus agreeing or neither agreeing nor disagreeing) by 3.929 times, when all other variables in the model are held constant. Having at least some tertiary education increases these odds by 52%. And, being employed increases the odds by 80%.

In Egypt, being female significantly increases the likelihood that an individual will express egalitarian attitudes (b=0.719, p<.001). Being older and being married decreases the likelihood that an individual will express egalitarian attitudes. Being female increases the odds that an individual will disagree with the idea that men have more rights to a job

66 than women (versus agreeing or neither agreeing nor disagreeing) by 2.052 times, when all other variables in the model are held constant. Being married as opposed to single decreases the odds that an individual will disagree with the idea by 30%. For each 1-year increase in age, the odds of disagreeing with the statement are reduced by 1%.

In Iran, being female significantly increases the likelihood that an individual will disagree with the idea that men have more rights to a job than women (b=0.871, p<.001). Having at least some tertiary education also significantly predicts more egalitarian views

(b=0.306, p<.01). Being religious and older both decrease the likelihood that an individual will disagree with the idea that men have more rights to a job than women (b=-

0.186 and b=-0.014, respectively). Both effects are highly significant (p<.001). Being female increases the odds that an individual will disagree with the idea that men have more rights to a job than women (versus agreeing or neither agreeing nor disagreeing) by

2.390 times, when all other variables are held constant. Having at least some tertiary education increases the odds that an individual will disagree by 36%, when all other variables are held constant. For a one-unit increase in religiosity, the odds of disagreeing

(versus neither agreeing nor disagreeing or agreeing) are reduced by 17%. For each 1- year increase in age, the odds are decreased by about 1%.

In Iraq, being female significantly increases the likelihood that an individual will disagree with the idea that men have more rights to a job than women (b=0.622, p<.001). Having at least some tertiary education also increases the likelihood that an individual will disagree with the idea that men have more rights to a job, although this effect is not

67 highly significant (b=0.247, p<.05). Being older decreases the likelihood that an individual will disagree with the idea (b=-0.003, p<.05), as does being married (b=-0.330, p<.01) and being more religious (b=-.0084, p<.05). Women are 86% more likely to disagree with the idea that men should have more rights to a job than women, when all other variables are held constant. Those who have at least some tertiary education are

28% more likely to disagree. Being married decreases the likelihood of disagreeing by about 28%. Those who are more religious are about 8% less likely to disagree and those who are older are less likely to agree by only less than 1%.

In Jordan, those who are female are more likely to disagree with the idea that men have more rights to a job (b=1.010) as are those who have at least some tertiary education

(b=0.644). Those who are married are less likely to disagree with the idea (b=-0.764).

Being female increases the odds of disagreeing by 2.746 times. Having at least some tertiary education increases the odds of disagreeing by about 90%. Being married decreases the odds of disagreeing by 53%.

In Morocco, women are more likely to disagree with the idea that men have more rights to a job (b=0.887, p<.001). Those who have some tertiary education are also more likely to disagree (b=1.333, p<.001). Those who are religious and those who are older are less likely to disagree with the idea (b=-0.075 and -0.010, respectively). Being female increases the odds of disagreeing versus the other two response categories by 2.429 times. Having at least some tertiary education increases the odds of disagreeing by 3.793.

Those who are more religious are about 7% less likely to disagree, when all other

68 variables are held constant. Similarly, those who are older are about 1% less likely to disagree.

In Saudi Arabia, only being female with a positive effect (0.801, p<.001) and expressing greater personal religiosity with a negative effect (b=-0.194, p<.001) are significant predictors of more egalitarian attitudes. Being a woman increases the odds that an individual will disagree with the idea than men have more rights to a job than do women by 2.227 times. Expressing greater personal religiosity decreases the odds of disagreeing by about 18%.

In Turkey, being a woman and having some tertiary education have significant positive effects on attitudes towards women‘s equal right to a job (b=0.743 and b=1.018, respectively). Those who are more highly religious are significantly less likely to disagree with the idea that men have more rights to a job than women (b= -0.525, p<.001). Those who are married are also less likely to disagree with the idea (b=-0.399, p<.001). Being older also has a significant negative effect on attitudes (-0.007, p<.01).

When all other variables are held constant, being a woman increases the odds of disagreeing with the statement by 2.103 times. Having at least some tertiary education increases the odds of disagreeing by 2.768 times. Being married decreases the odds of disagreeing with the statement by 33%. For each 1-year increase in age, the odds of disagreeing are reduced by about 1%.

69 Supplemental Analyses: Within-Nation Regressions

Supplemental analyses were conducted to test the robustness of results. As in the hierarchical linear models, the analyses were conducted with the sample limited to those

18 to 65 years of age and with an alternate coding of employment that excludes students and retirees from the sample. However, these results did not differ in direction or significance of findings. Thus, the final sample includes student and retirees and is not restricted by age. A 5-category subjective measure of social class ranging from upper class (1) to lower class (5) was also included in initial analysis. However, class was a significant predictor only in Iran and Turkey, where it had the hypothesized positive effect. However, examining standardized coefficients and significance levels (p<.05, one- tailed in each) show that it is not a strong predictor in either case. Including a measure of class also reduces the sample size substantially, so it is not included in final within- country or hierarchical analyses.

Since the dependent variable has is ordered with three response categories, I use ordinal logistic regression in final analyses, which is generally accepted as the best option.

However, a number of other possible modeling options were available, and I tested the utility of alternate modeling strategies in supplemental analyses. The dependent variable can be treated as linear and continuous and ordinary least squares regression can be used.

The dependent variable can be dichotomized and logistic regression can be used, or an ordinal logistic regression can be fit. Within-country regressions were conducted with all three types of analyses. For OLS, the dependent variable was re-coded so that higher

70 scores expressed more egalitarian gender ideology. The item asks level of agreement with the statement, ―When jobs are scarce, men have more rights to a job than women.

Response categories are 1(agree), 2(disagree), and 3(neither agree nor disagree).

Responses were re-coded as: 1(agree), 2(neither agree nor disagree), and 3 (disagree).

This same coding was also used for the ordinal logistic regression. For the logistic regression, the dependent variable was dichotomized: Disagree (1); Neither Agree nor

Disagree or Agree (0). Multinomial logistic regression was also considered as a possible modeling technique, but was not ultimately used because it does not retain the variation captured in the ordering of responses. Ordinal logistic regression was selected as the best method for final analyses for because it retains maximum variation and an ordinal dependent variable violates OLS assumptions. However, in Iraq, all respondents either agreed or disagreed with the idea that men have more rights to a job than women; no respondents replied that they neither agreed nor disagreed. Thus, a supplemental logistic regression was used in Iraq. There was no difference in direction or significance of results; thus ordinal logistic results are presented to maintain consistency across countries.

Pseudo R2 is used to estimate variance explained in the ordinal logistic regression and is reported for each of the eight countries in Table 7. R2 was also obtained for each country in the OLS regressions. These were: Algeria 0.1005, Egypt 0.0151, Iran 0.0524, Iraq

0.0165, Jordan 0.0616, Morocco 0.0533, Saudi Arabia 0.0313, and Turkey 0.1263.

71 Jordan does not have significant variation on the religiosity scale. While all of the Middle

Eastern samples are skewed towards high religiosity, 98.5% of respondents in Jordan say that God is very important in their lives (10 on a 1-10 scale) and 99.7% of respondents respond ―yes‖ to the question on whether they get comfort and strength from religion.

The item on how important religion is in their lives has a slight bit more variation (96% of respondents fall in the highest category). In order to retain Jordan in the within-nation analyses, only this item is used as a measure of religiosity. However, regression results show that this measure of religiosity is not significant in Jordan, nor is the scaled measure of religiosity.

Conclusions

Findings show that the Middle East should not be considered uniform in terms of attitudes towards women‘s right to employment. Not only do attitudes towards women‘s employment vary by country, they also vary by individuals‘ position in the social structure of each society. Overall, findings show that the model tends to operate the best in the same countries in which individuals are the most supportive of women‘s right to employment. Individuals in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq express the most egalitarian attitudes, and these countries (along with Morocco) are also the countries in which the model has the most predictive power. The literature on individual factors influencing gender egalitarianism has been primarily conducted in western democracies, which has a higher regional mean in terms of support for women‘s right to employment. The models appear to operate better in those Middle Eastern countries that have more egalitarian attitudes.

72 The models operate less well in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The population of these countries are less supportive of women‘s right to employment, with a smaller percentage of individuals disagreeing with the idea of men having greater employment rights during periods of job scarcity.

Chapter 4. Discussion and Conclusions

The role of Middle Eastern women has changed dramatically over the last fifty years.

Some of these are changes in the constraints that have historically prevented women from gaining equal employment status across the globe. Most notably, women‘s average age at marriage in the Middle East has risen significantly and totally fertility rates have dropped.

Other changes reflect increased opportunities, with women making remarkable gains in educational parity with men. The gap in boys and girls‘ primary and secondary enrollment rates have narrowed or closed in most Middle Eastern nations. Women are also enrolling in college at much higher percentages than have been seen before (Roudi-

Fahimi and Moghadam 2003).

Despite these dramatic decreases in the constraints on women‘s employment, and new opportunities for women to gain education that should make them competitive in Middle

73 Eastern labor markets, women‘s employment in the Middle East remains lower than in any other world region. Thus, this study seeks to illuminate this trend by examining attitudinal support for women‘s employment in the Middle East, and the characteristics of individuals and nations that influence ideas about women‘s right to work. The study draws both on the literature on women‘s employment in the Middle East and the literature on gender egalitarianism in developing a theory and models of the factors predicting attitudes towards women‘s equal right to employment in the Middle East.

This study combines a global analysis in which the Middle East is examined as a region with regression analyses of individual Middle Eastern countries. A theoretical examination of the factors shaping attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle

East is drawn from in creating the global and individual-nation models. The influence of culture, demographics, economics, politics, and individual personal characteristics are examined. While all of these factors are found to influence attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East, cultural is found to play a particularly important role.

Previous studies have often attributed low gender egalitarianism in the Middle East to

Islam, once other factors have been taken into account. However, these studies have not specified the exact linkages between a Muslim society and less gender egalitarianism.

While a number of previous studies have pointed to other factors that may affect women‘s status in the Middle East, such as economic trends pertinent to the region

(Moghadam 2003), recently the claim that Islam is responsible for women‘s status in the

Middle East has been contested in studies claiming that other factors are more important,

74 such as oil (Ross 2008), or gender quotas that increase women‘s share in parliament

(Kang 2009). Other studies have argued that the Middle East has a unique conservative effect, rather than Muslim societies (Frank et al 2010), or that it is high levels of religiosity that lead to more patriarchal attitudes, rather than a specific denomination

(Seguino 2011). This study contributes to understanding women‘s employment and gender egalitarianism in the Middle East by explaining how individual socio- demographics and national context shape attitudes. Recognizing that the Middle East is not homogenous in gender ideology, I also conduct examinations of how individual socio-demographics operate to shape attitudes in eight Middle Eastern nations.

Findings show that national context plays an important role in explaining the attitudinal disparity between the Middle East and other nations. Globally, those factors that have the most importance in shaping gender attitudes appear to be one‘s own socio-demographics and personal religiosity, as well as living in a nation with greater representation of women in politics and higher education. While living in a highly religious society also has a negative impact on attitudes, more detrimental is being a highly religious individual and residing in the Middle East. While women‘s representation and religiosity have the greatest impact on attitudes, this does not mean that other factors are not important in explaining attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East. As theorized, cultural, demographic, economic, and political factors all contribute to shaping attitudes towards women‘s right to employment globally, and to explaining less egalitarian attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East. However, religiosity and those factors that are most proximate to women‘s status (their representation in education

75 and politics) have a greater impact than less direct indicators, such as democracy. As found in previous studies, level of economic development also has a significant impact on attitudes, supporting Inglehart and Norris‘ theory that modernization does tend to bring with it some degree of attitudinal change.

The significant impacts of personal and national religiosity on attitudes are an important finding, considering that in the Middle East region as a whole, personal religiosity holds a greater importance in individuals‘ lives than in other world regions. The highest levels of religious devotion out of the fifty-seven nations included in hierarchical linear analysis are found in Iraq, Jordan, and Morocco. However, these findings also provide support for the idea that high levels of religiosity have negative impact on attitudes, not just specific denominations (Seguino 2011). While religiosity is high in the Middle East, findings from the hierarchical analyses show that even after controlling for the regional effect of residing in the Middle East, individuals living in nations with high mean levels of religiosity are significantly less likely to support women‘s equal right to employment.

This shows that even outside the predominantly Muslim Middle East, high religious devoutness continues to promote more conservative ideas about women‘s roles and rights. The negative effect of high national religiosity on attitudes towards women‘s employment remains after controlling for demographic factors pertinent to women‘s status (fertility rates and tertiary enrollment) and disappears only after economic factors

(oil wealth and gross domestic product) are taken into account.

76 Even after the effect of mean level of religiosity is no longer significant in the models, an individual‘s own religious devoutness continues to negatively influence attitudes towards women‘s employment. Highly religious individuals are less likely to support women‘s equal right to employment after all relevant individual and national characteristics are taken into account.

When the Middle Eastern nations are examined individually in separate regression analyses, one‘s personal religiosity is found to negatively impact attitudes towards women‘s employment in Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. It might be thought that because the overall mean level of religiosity is so high in the Middle East, individual religiosity would not vary enough to be a determining factor in attitudes towards women‘s employment. This shows that even when the mean level of religiosity is high, religiosity remains an important determining factor in individual attitudes towards women‘s right to employment. However, the fact that personal religiosity has no effect on individual attitudes towards women‘s right to employment in Algeria, Egypt, and Jordan is an interesting anomaly that warrants future attention. Differences in the impact of religiosity on attitudes across the region may be due to varying correlations between religiosity and highly predictive socio-demographic factors, such as education.

Secondary to culture, political and demographic characteristics that are particularly pertinent to women‘s status play a strong role in the formation of attitudes towards women‘s employment. Those individuals living in nations where women have greater representation in parliament and in tertiary education are much more likely to feel that

77 women have an equal right to employment. National wealth also has a strong influence on attitudes, with individuals in wealthier nations being much more likely to support women‘s employment.

Finally, both the global analysis and the examinations of specific Middle Eastern nations show that individual‘s own socio-demographic characteristics and where those place them within the stratification systems of their own societies also shape their attitudes towards women‘s employment. Single women express favorable attitudes towards women‘s employment, which might be expected since they are a population that stands to gain from equal employment rights for women.

The individual analyses also demonstrate that the Middle East is not homogenous in terms of gender attitudes, and models based on Western data and theories of how socio- demographic factors affect gender ideology tend to operate better in those nations that are more ―western‖ in terms of overall percentages of the population supporting women‘s equal right to employment. Support for women‘s equal right to employment ranges from nearly a third of the population in Turkey to a low of less than 1% in Egypt. The models operate best in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Morocco. With the exception of Morocco, where only 12% of the population supports women‘s equal right to employment, these are nations where at least one-fifth of the population supports women‘s equal right to a job.

One avenue for future research would be focusing on the factors that predict gender attitudes in the least gender egalitarian societies in the Middle East.

78 Looking at the individual country-regressions as a whole reveals that the findings generally align well with the findings from the global analyses. Being female, single, having at least some higher education, and being less religious predict egalitarian attitudes across the Middle East nations, although being a woman is the only characteristic that is significant across all eight nations. It is interesting to note that personal religiosity predicts less egalitarian attitudes across five of the nations (Turkey,

Iran, Iraq, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia), despite the fact that there is limited variation in religiosity in the Middle East, with it having a high importance in all societies. This suggests that a more nuanced measure of religiosity may capture even more variation.

Although such a measure is not available in the WVS, it should be explored in future research. It is also notable that although personal religiosity does predict gender ideology, there is certainly not a perfect correlation between the two across the Middle East.

Religiosity is highest in Iraq, Jordan, and Morocco. Rather than these being the societies where there is the greatest support for women‘s equal right to employment, they fall somewhere towards the average of the eight nations.

This study also has implications for the debate over whether Islam or oil is more important in explaining women‘s status in the Middle East. While this study cannot be directly compared to Ross‘s work; (it is an examination of attitudes rather than of women‘s share of the labor force, and the focus is on developing a comprehensive theory rather than on focusing on the competing effect of two factors), it does join the body of research suggesting that attributing women‘s status to oil is too simplistic (see Charrad

2009, Kang 2009). This study finds that economic development plays a role in

79 explaining attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East, but other economic factors (men‘s employment rates and oil wealth) do not. And overall, economic factors appear to be out-weighed in importance by women‘s representation in higher education and politics and by level of personal religiosity (especially when residing in the

Middle East).

Limitations

In discussing the implications of this study, it is also important to discuss its limitations.

The sample used in the hierarchical analyses would ideally be representative of the globe.

Instead, Europe (both Eastern and Western) is over-represented, composing about half of the sample. East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are both underrepresented. This means that the sample has a larger number of democracies, a wealthier sample of nations, and a less religious sample than would be predicted with a representative global sample of nations.

A larger sample of democracies might be thought to increase the differentiation between highly democratic and more authoritarian societies, inflating the effect of democracy.

However, I do not find democracy to be significant in this study; thus, the overrepresentation of democracies does not appear to be a concern. Similarly, having a slight overrepresentation of economically developed countries does not appear to be a concern; I find individuals residing in more economically developed societies to hold more egalitarian attitudes, a finding in accordance with previous research (Inglehart and

Norris 2003, Price 2008). The fact that more secular nations are over represented in this

80 study suggests that the effect of national religiosity may be stronger with a more highly representative sample.

In addition, it does not appear that sample size is producing the non-significant effect of oil wealth. This sample does not include three of the countries Ross (2008) mentions as nations with relatively high oil wealth and high representation of women in the workforce and in parliament (Norway, New Zealand, and Australia). However, the addition of these countries would be expected to reduce the already insignificant effect of oil wealth on attitudes towards women‘s employment, suggesting that their inclusion would not impact the direction or significance of the results.

Data limitation also preclude this study from examining all twenty-one Middle Eastern nations. However, this study does include an economically diverse selection of Middle

Eastern countries, both Arab and non-Arab countries, and countries that are very diverse in terms of the dependent variable, support for women‘s equal right to employment.

Thus, the sample seems representative of the region as a whole.

In sum, although the sample limitations do not suggest that any of the findings would be altered with a more globally representative sample, future analyses should utilize a more representative sample as data allows. However, the sample is larger than the sample used in other multilevel examinations of gender ideology; for example, Norris‘s 2009 study of gender attitudes in Arab societies had a total sample size of 33 nations.

81 There is also a certain limitation of detail inherent in cross-national quantitative analyses.

Although such analyses have strengths in terms of generalizing findings to a larger population and hypothesis testing, it does limit the study to variables that can be measured quantitatively. Unique histories of individual nations likely contribute to gender ideology in ways that may be best captured in qualitative and historical examinations of nations, such as Charrad‘s (2001) examination of family law in post- colonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco . However, some of these historical factors—such as communist and colonial legacies—are at least somewhat captured by more proximate indicators, such as level of democracy and economic development.

Opportunities

It is difficult to predict changes in women‘s status in Middle Eastern nations. In the 2005

Freedom House report on women‘s status in the Middle East, Sameena Nazir predicted that, ―The need for change in women's status will grow increasingly urgent as the demands for broad-based democratic reform are felt throughout the Middle East.‖ With such demands now occurring and creating differing degrees of conflict and change in

Egypt, Libya, and Jordan, changes in women‘s status may follow.

The findings of this research also suggest other avenues for change in attitudes towards women‘s right to employment in the Middle East, beyond popular protest. Women‘s tertiary enrollment has been rapidly increasing in the Middle East, and women‘s representation in higher education is an important factor countering less egalitarian

82 attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East. As more of these highly educated women graduate, their own attitudes regarding women‘s employment, and the attitudes of those they come in contact with may change. Just as women‘s higher education (and support for it) has grown globally over the last half-century (Schofer and

Meyer 2005), a critical mass of highly educated women in the Middle East may lead to an attitudinal shift about women‘s role.

The findings of this study suggest a number of possibilities for future research. While this study focuses on attitudes towards women‘s employment in the Middle East, comparing these to analyses predicting support for women‘s higher education and political representation could provide insight into how gender conservatism differs across domains of the public sphere. Longitudinal analysis could also provide insight into the potential for change in the region. Women‘s tertiary enrollment has increased dramatically and future analyses using multiple waves of the WVS could examine how women‘s increased education has impacted attitudes about their right to employment.

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Appendix A: Tables

Factor Loadings Pooled Country Specific Data Items Mean Std. Dev Range Highest Lowest

How Important is God in 7.555 3.119 1-10 0.8929 0.9440 0.4254 your Life? Get Comfort and Strength 0.969 0.173 0-1 0.9173 0.9220 0.6741 from Religion How Important is 3.053 1.063 1-4 0.8900 0.9029 0.3871 Religion in your Life? Model Fit

Eigenvalue 2.43065 2.53133 1.09318

Table 1. Personal Religiosity

Variable Operationalization

Outcome Women's Right to Employment Measure of agreement with the statement: "When jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job than women." Recoded so agreed=1, neither=2, disagreed=3

Contextual Level Variables Middle East Indicator Interest group =Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, referent =all 50 other nations National Mean Religiosity The national mean on the scale of personal religiosity is included for all countries. This is constructed from the World Values Survey (1999-2004). National Fertility Rate Total fertility rate for 1999 for each nation is taken from World Development Indicators Percent Women in Parliament The percent women in parliament in the lower or single house for 2000 comes from the Inter- Parliamentary Union‘s ―Women in National Parliaments‖ dataset Women's Economic Rights The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset is used to measure women‘s economic rights as assured by law in each country in 1999. Scores range from 0 to 3, where a higher score indicates greater legal economic rights for women. Male Employment Ratio Ratio of the total male working-age population that is employed to the total working-age male population for each country in 1999. Data comes from the United Nations Millenium Development Goals Database. Level of Democracy Freedom House's Index of Democracy (2002) was used to measure each country's level of democracy (based on the 2001-2002) Scores range from 1-7 and are reverse-coded so a greater score indicates greater personal rights and civil liberties. Women's Share Tertiary Education Women's tertiary gross enrollment rates for 1999 are taken from the World Bank's edstats Oil Wealth A measure of oil rents per capita created by Michael Ross (2008). This is the country's annual rents in oil and gas standardized by itsmid-year population, expressed in 2000 dollars, from 1993-2002. National GDP Gross domestic product for each nation for 1999 comes from the World Bank.

Individual Level Variables Age Individual age in years. Ranges from 15 to 99. Married Marital status is coded as a dichotomous variable where married is the interest group and single status (divorced, never married, widowed, or cohabiting) is the referent. Employed Employment is measured by a dichotomous indicator: currently employed full, part time, or self- employed (1) and the referent is those who are unemployed, students, retirees, or other (0). At Least Some Tertiary Education Education has eight categories; values range from 1, inadequately completed elementary education, to 8, university with a degree or more. Recoded into dichotomous: at least some tertiary education (1) all else (0) Female Female (1); Male (0) Pesonal Religiosity Three item scale to measure religiosity. The items included are: How important is God in your life? (scale of 1 to 10, where a higher score indicates greater importance); How important is religion in your life? (scale of 1 to 4 where 4 equals greater importance); and Do you get comfort and strength from religion? (yes=1; no=0).

N=57 nations; 73,860 individuals

Table 2. Operationalizations of All Variables Included in Hierarchical Analyses (World Values Survey, 1999-2004)

Variable Mean Standard Deviation Range Outcome Women's Right to Employment 1.91 0.94 1–3 Contextual Level Variables Middle East Indicator -0.20 0.82 -0.51–0.97 National Mean Religiosity -0.14 0.97 -1.97–1.30 National Fertility Rate -0.08 0.96 -0.90–3.37 Percent Women in Parliament 0.09 1.03 -1.30–2.86 Women's Economic Rights 0.05 0.97 -2.08–2.16 Percent Population Employed -0.02 1.02 -2.35–2.26 Level of Democracy 0.110 0.99 -2.12–1.08 Women's Share Tertiary Education 0.150 1.00 -1.55–2.07 Oil Wealth -0.04 1.00 -0.31–6.95 National GDP 0.07 1.06 -0.86–3.37 Individual Level Variables Age 41.21 16.38 15–99 Married 0.59 0.49 0–1 Employed 0.51 0.50 0–1 At Least Some Tertiary Education 0.20 0.40 0–1 Female 0.52 0.50 0–1 Religiosity -0.02 1.00 -2.14–0.82 N=57 nations; 73,860 individuals

Table 3. Mean, Standard Deviation, and Range for All Variables Included in Hierarchical Analyses (World Values Survey, 1999-2004)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8 0.261 0.368* 0.097 0.060 0.078 0.104 0.102 0.204* Intercept (0.146) (0.180) (0.131) (0.115) (0.101) (0.100) (0.090) (0.094) 0.612‡ 0.644‡ 0.647 0.647‡ 0.647‡ 0.647‡ 0.647‡ 0.648‡ Threshold 2 (0.040) (0.042) (0.043) (0.043) (0.043) (0.043) (0.043) (0.043) Individual

-0.014‡ -0.014‡ -0.014‡ -0.014‡ -0014‡ -0014‡ -0014‡ Age (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)

0.595‡ 0.597‡ 0.597‡ 0.597‡ 0.597‡ 0.598‡ 0.598‡ Female (0.040) (0.041) (0.041) (0.041) (0.041) (0.041) (0.041)

0.611‡ 0.614‡ 0.614‡ 0.614‡ 0.613‡ 0.614‡ 0.605‡ At least some Tertiary Education (0.047) (0.047) (0.047) (0.047) (0.047) (0.047) (0.044)

-0.131‡ -0.132‡ -0.132‡ -0.132‡ -0.132‡ -0.132‡ -0.127‡ Married (0.027) (0.027) (0.027) (0.027) (0.027) (0.027) (0.026)

0.228‡ 0.227‡ 0.227‡ 0.227‡ 0.227‡ 0.227‡ 0.226‡ Employed (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.025)

-0.214‡ -0.212‡ -0.212‡ -0.212‡ -0.212‡ -0.212‡ -0.327‡ Personal Religiosity (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.029)

Contextual

-0.584‡ -0.486‡ -0.485‡ -0.417‡ -0.370‡ -0.184*

Middle East (0.115) (0.116) (0.114) (0.103) (0.099) (0.110)

Culture

-0.435‡ -0.250* -0.067 -0.071 0.019 0.008 National Level of Religiosity (0.139) (0.112) (0.107) (0.099) (0.110) (0.110)

Demographic

0.158 National Fertility Rate (0.137)

Women's Tertiary 0.538‡ 0.409‡ 0.353‡ 0.337‡ 0.338‡

Enrollment (0.099) (0.090) (0.092) (0.077) (0.076)

Economic

0.324‡ 0.233† 0.133 0.136* Per Capita GDP (0.101) (0.102) (0.080) (0.079)

-0.028 Oil Rent (0.040)

0.220* 0.117 0.112 Women's Economic Rights (0.117) (0.105) (0.103)

0.011 Men's Employment to Population Ratio (0.096)

Political

-0.018 -0.018 Level of Democracy (0.107) (0.106)

Percentage of Women in 0.415‡ 0.415‡

Parliament (0.093) (0.093)

Personal -0.260‡

Religiosity*Middle East (0.051)

Tau Intercept 1.12947‡ 1.09706‡ 0.64558‡ 0.47736‡ 0.40161‡ 0.38851‡ 0.27032‡ 0.26872‡ N=57 nations; 73860 individuals *p<.05; †p<.01; ‡p<.001 (one-tailed)

Table 4. Hierarchical Ordinal Logit Models Predicting Attitudes Towards Women's Employment Cross-Nationally (World Values Survey 2000)

Albania Lithuania Algeria Luxembourg Argentina Macedonia Austria Mexico Bangladesh Moldova Belarus Morocco Belgium Netherlands Bulgaria Nigeria Canada Peru Chile Philippines Croatia Poland Czech Republic Portugal Denmark Romania Egypt Russia Estonia Saudi Arabia Finland Singapore France Slovakia Germany Slovenia Greece South Africa Hungary South Korea Iceland Spain India Sweden Iran Turkey Iraq Ukraine Ireland United Kingdom Italy United States Japan Vietnam Kyrgyzstan Zimbabwe Latvia

Table 5. All Countries Included in Hierarchical Linear Analysis

Female Age Employed Married Educ. Religiosity MiddleEast Nat.Relig. Fertility WomenPar. WomLegalRights EmployPop Democracy FemaleTert. Oil GDP DV:Wom.Employ DV:Wom.Employ 1.0000 Female 0.1122 1.0000 Age -0.0172 0.0120 1.0000 Employed 0.0817 -0.2470 -0.1769 1.0000 Married -0.1002 -0.0274 0.2562 0.0804 1.0000

4 Educ 0.1159 -0.0458 -0.0785 0.1416 -0.0378 1.0000

Religiosity -0.2908 0.1038 -0.0263 -0.1186 0.0707 -0.0684 1.0000 MiddleEast -0.3661 -0.0304 -0.1661 -0.0383 0.0512 -0.0285 0.3764 1.0000 Nat.Relig -0.3535 -0.0318 -0.2536 -0.0346 0.0243 -0.0140 0.6411 0.5817 1.0000 Fertility -0.2341 -0.0407 -0.2212 -0.0198 -0.0097 0.0099 0.3874 0.2994 0.6110 1.0000 WomenPar. 0.3406 0.0157 0.1553 0.0221 -0.0664 -0.0244 -0.3326 -0.5172 -0.5174 -0.2016 1.0000 WomLeg.Rights 0.3439 0.0230 0.1335 0.0314 -0.0502 0.0064 -0.3251 -0.5067 -0.5079 -0.4261 0.5557 1.0000 EmployPop -0.1245 -0.0322 -0.1379 0.0305 0.0385 0.0291 0.1966 0.1678 0.3160 0.2827 -0.1758 -0.1247 1.0000 Democracy 0.3596 0.0259 0.2019 0.0529 -0.0532 0.0197 -0.3749 -0.6811 -0.5911 -0.4439 0.6224 0.6623 -0.2332 1.0000 FemaleTertiary 0.3583 0.0524 0.2112 0.0622 -0.0679 0.0792 -0.4091 -0.4892 -0.6446 -0.5958 0.4267 0.4979 -0.2743 0.5809 1.0000 Oil -0.1139 -0.0029 -0.0754 -0.0066 -0.0126 0.0424 0.1401 0.3346 0.2156 0.2575 -0.2050 -0.3771 0.1740 -0.3678 -0.0533 1.0000 GDP 0.2917 0.0182 0.1358 0.0720 -0.0589 0.0480 -0.3475 -0.3351 -0.5361 -0.3345 0.5219 0.5694 -0.0038 0.5940 0.5253 -0.0385 1.0000

N=57 nations; 73,860 individuals

Table 6. Correlations of All Variables Included in Hierarchical Linear Analysis

Algeria Egypt Iran Iraq Jordan Morocco Saudi Arabia Turkey Odds Odds Odds Odds Odds Odds Odds Odds Predictor b Ratio b Ratio b Ratio b Ratio b Ratio b Ratio b Ratio b Ratio 0.004 1.004 -0.013** 0.987 -0.014*** 0.986 -0.003* 0.997 0.000 1.000 -0.010* 0.990 -0.005 0.995 -0.007** 0.993 Age (0.006) (0.005) (0.005) (0.004) (0.006) (0.006) (0.006) (0.003) 1.368*** 3.929 0.719*** 2.052 0.871*** 2.390 0.622*** 1.863 0.991*** 2.693 0.887*** 2.429 0.801*** 2.227 0.743*** 2.103 Female (0.134) (0.154) (0.124) (0.133) (0.199) (0.122) (0.152) (0.076) 0.057 1.059 -0.351** 0.704 0.144 1.155 -0.330** 0.719 -0.752*** 0.472 -0.03036 0.970 0.142 1.153 -0.399*** 0.671 Married (0.152) (0.131) (0.133) (0.121) (0.170) (0.128) (0.139) (0.076)

0.421*** 1.523 0.079 1.082 0.306** 1.358 0.247* 1.280 0.687*** 1.988 1.333*** 3.793 -0.016 0.984 1.018*** 2.768 Education (0.142) (0.155) (0.122) (0.138) (0.175) (0.170) (0.141) (0.109) 0.592*** 1.807 0.017 1.018 -0.023 0.978 0.2282295 1.256 0.083 1.086 -0.04363 0.957 0.248 1.282 0.1188365 1.126 Employed (0.136) (0.156) (0.128) (0.138) (0.217) (0.120) (0.158) (0.078) -0.034 0.966 -0.013 0.987 -0.186*** 0.830 -0.084* 0.919 0.064 1.066 -0.075* 0.928 -0.194*** 0.824 -0.525*** 0.592 Religiosity (0.059) (0.154) (0.049) (0.051) (0.092) (0.052) Log Likelihood -944.61 -1018.78 -1233.52 -1095.461 -650.967 -1218.41 -1098.64 -3502.942

N 1185 2991 1820 2122 1160 2220 1432 4249

Pseudo R² 0.0624 0.0288 0.0402 0.0182 0.0522 0.048 0.0215 0.0742

Table 7. Ordinal Logistic Regression Results Predicting Attitudes Toward Gender and Job Rights (World Values Survey, 1999-2004)

Figure 1. Conceptual Model

Figure 2. Attitudinal Map