WOMEN, WORK, AND ECONOMICS

Is womenomics taking root in the Gulf enough to break the region’s glass ceiling?

THE PARTICIPATION RATE OF women in the global workforce has historically been negligible if even growing gradually. However that paradigm has been changing rapidly over the last few years with the global female demographic transforming itself into an economic engine.

Experts have called this paradigm shift in economic influence as womenomics, a term coined by journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman to explain the newfound power that women exert and the leverage they bring to a business and subsequently the economy.

In the UK, for example, figures revealed that women are responsible for 83 per cent of all purchases, with 60 per cent of the female population playing a dominant role in purchasing a car and 55 per cent found to control the purchase of home computers.

But womenomics is not a concept that is taking root in just developed western nations – it has been prevalent in the Islamic world, especially the Middle East, too.

GROWING ECONOMIC POWER

“There are 1.7 billion people in the Islamic world – half of them are women – about 900 million and the rate of change in terms of empowerment is quite incredible. What the US achieved in 50 years, the Muslim world is doing in 10 to 20 years,” Tariq Qureshiy, CEO of Vantage Holdings, a UAE-based boutique consulting firm, said in his opening remarks during a panel at the Women In Leadership (WIL) Forum in Dubai.

A major factor spurring this change is the popularity of higher education among women in the region, especially within the 15 to 35 age group. In the UAE alone, about 70 per cent of college graduates are women, while 60 per cent of the government workforce is female, a third of which are in senior positions.

But what has tilted the scales in favour of women in the region further is their growing economic power.

According to a report by research firm