Arabic Women in Leadership Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Arabic Women in Leadership - Term Paper Example In order to find the position of Arab women as leaders within various organizations, this paper will first discuss the social and traditional mindset towards Arab women where they are viewed as primarily suitable for domestic work; then it will discuss gender discrimination in workplaces in Middle East, and explore to seek whether men have innately better leadership qualities then women. While studying these issues the paper will also discuss the fine thread balance that working women must maintain between their professional and family life, the various obstacles that they face while entering the line of businesses, the indicators that are signaling a change for the rights of Arab women and the training programs or ways for leadership development focused on improving the workplace situation of Arab women.    Discussion Traditional gender bias in domestic labor in the Arab countries: Increased participation of women in workplace (primarily after WWI and WWII) had led to a kind of re volution that broke down the age old notion of division of labor where it was believed that in a family, men were breadwinners, while women took part in the domestic chores (unpaid), and were dependent on their male members for support of a financial kind (Blau, 1964). The bargaining and contract models, social exchange models had once predicted that increased participation of women in the workforce would bring them more freedom and justice both in office, and in home as regards fair division of unpaid domestic labor (England and Farkas, 1986). However this did not take place in reality and women were still facing bias, where they were still being viewed as being more suitable... This essay discusses that there have been some perceivable changes in the Middle East countries in the area of private businesses, with more women are forming their own enterprises, thus slowly changing the equation of a woman role in the national economy (ibid). Here OECD presents encouraging figures, where it shows that in Bahrain, in the 1960s, women workforce comprised of only around 5% of the total labor force of the country, compared to an average 30% women workforce in the US during the same time.Similarly, inâ€Å"United Arab Emirates, where female-owned businesses faired considerably better than those in the US in 2007, with 33% of the Emirate companies surveyed earning annual revenues of more than US$100,000, compared to only 13% of women-owned businesses in the US in the same year†¦.and from 1990 to 2003, women's share of economic activity in the MENA region increased by a fifth. In the Arab countries, there is no doubt that the patriarchal mindset is still widely pr evalent and women still considered more suitable for unpaid domestic work. Women are treated with general bias at workplaces, and especially so while selecting candidates for top managerial posts in a company when they are overlooked simply for their sex without any consideration for their capabilities or efficiencies. To make complete use of the economic potential, both men and women in the Arab countries must be given equal opportunities at the workplace, or else, the economy of these regions would always remain underused.