Executive Summary

The Middle East Women Leaders Index (MEWLI) is a comprehensive data tool designed to quantify women’s representation in leadership in the public sector in the MENA region. This index introduces the Pipeline-Participation-Authority Framework (PPA) that seeks to measure gender parity beyond descriptive representation which limits measures of representation to reaching a set proportion of positions, i.e. women are 50% of the population and this should be reflected by 50% of women in leadership positions. This framework expands on the meaning of gender parity in public institutions by also considering enablers and barriers for women to reaching such positions as well as the authority a women leader can effectively wield once in power. This framework addresses contextual factors and data limitations, and employs the Ascending Leaders categorization launched in this report by placing 21 MENA societies in one of four categories based on the extent of women’s representation in public leadership (Glass Ceilings score), as well as the distribution of women leaders across policy functions (Glass Walls score).

The resulting analysis found that factors such as asset ownership and equality of inheritance is a strong predictor of women’s public leadership. This is a finding that warrants deeper study of the relationship between assets and legal frameworks regarding property and access to public leadership positions. Our analysis of the index results also confirmed the inverse relationship between women’s educational attainment and labor force participation in the region, a phenomenon also known as the MENA Paradox. Moreover, this index found a compelling relationship between the adoption of voluntary party quotas, women’s leadership, and the power they wield while in office.

Our analysis of the index results – as well as from insights collected through a survey conducted with women who have or are currently serving as women leaders in the MENA region – allowed us to arrive at a set of recommendations for MENA societies who seek to improve women’s representation in public leadership.

Firstly, we recommend that MENA governments should support and work with civil society groups, particularly those that support women’s capacity building in the public sector.

Governments in the region should adopt policies that promote women’s participation in the labor force such as affordable child care support and flexible working hours to alleviate the double burden working women often carry.

Government bodies and political parties should consider the adoption of quotas and other policies meant to overcome the structural barriers to entry that women have faced in entering public office.

And finally, we strongly recommend that all governments in the region and globally work to make sex-disaggregated data available for further study of the gendered aspects of public institutions.