Paris – Governments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) should create urgently needed jobs for the 2.5 million people entering the labour market each year and improve their policies to encourage women’s entrepreneurship in order to reduce structural unemployment, says a new OECD report.
“Women in Business: Policies to Support Women’s Entrepreneurship Development in the MENA Region” notes that while MENA governments have made progress over the past decade in closing the gender gap in education, more needs to be done to tackle gender inequality in business. Today, only 27 pc of women in the region join the labour force, compared to 51 pc in other low, middle and high-income economies, and only 11 pc are self-employed, against 22 pc of men.
“While MENA governments have made significant progress in addressing gender inequality in education, more needs to be done to unleash the full potential of women in the economy. Empowering women to contribute as employees and entrepreneurs in particular represents a major opportunity to boost competitiveness, growth and job creation in the region. This will require concerted policy action which the OECD stands ready to support” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurr?a.
While general reforms to improve the business climate will benefit all entrepreneurs, unleashing the potential of women entrepreneurs will also require concerted actions by governments, the businesswomen’s community and private sector actors to: Improve policy design and implementation, ease access to finance, increase access to information and business support services and close the data gap.
