This book investigates why the rate of female labor force participation in the Middle East and North Africa is the lowest in the world. The author argues that the primary reason for the low rate of female labor force participation are the strong institutions of patriarchy in the region and, using multiple proxies for patriarchy, quantifies the multi-dimensional concept of patriarchy in order to measure it across sixty developing countries over thirty years. The findings show that Middle Eastern and North African countries have higher levels of patriarchy with regards to women?s participation in public spheres compared with the rest of the world. Although the rate of formal female labor force participation is low, women across the region contribute greatly to the financial well-being of their families and communities. By defining a woman?s place as in the home and causing many women to work in the informal sector of the economy or work as unpaid workers, patriarchy has made women?s economic activities invisible to official labor statistics and simply created the illusion that women in the region are not economically active.
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