Gender Attitudes and Trends over the Last Decade

Date & Time: Wednesday, January 28, 2026 | 5:00 – 6:30 PM (UAE) |1:00 – 2:30 PM (UK)
Location: Online | Language: English
Registration Link: Click Here to Register

Abstract
Female labour force participation in MENA has been and continues to be quite low when compared cross-nationally. There are many structural factors that shape this outcome, including the state of the economies across MENA and other factors like the cost of adequate daycare alongside patriarchal norms that also disadvantage women in the labour force. Using data from the Arab Barometer, this presentation will examine approximately 20 years of data capturing societal attitudes from across MENA on female employment and empowerment. What progress has and has not been made over the last two decades?

About the speaker
Prof. Amaney Jamal
Dean, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

Amaney A. Jamal is Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. She is also the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton. She directs the Workshop on Arab Political Development and the Bobst-American University of Beirut Collaborative Initiative. Dr Jamal’s scholarship covers the Middle East and North Africa, mass and political behavior, political development and democratization, inequality and economic segregation, Muslim immigration, gender, race, religion, and class. Her book Barriers to Democracy won the 2008 American Political Science Best Book Award in the Comparative Democratization section. She is an author/editor of three other books and several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Dr Jamal earned her PhD from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s from the University of California-Los Angeles. She was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2006 and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.