Key Gender Resources

Women all over the world have been acknowledged for their important roles in providing livelihoods for their families, winning an enviable reputation for their economic contribution through food production, processing and trading. Yet in Nigeria, few research studies have been documented on the health and occupational hazards of rural women.

Increasing entrepreneurial opportunities for women can be an empowering process that contradicts and helps overcome established gender norms. This process can be aided by facilitating rural-urban migration for women, to access new job opportunities, networks, markets, and resources not available in rural areas.

Change in gender role attitudes is a neglected dimension of research on the transition to adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa that has broad implications for young people’s outcomes, as well as attitudinal change in the region over time.

Cross-nationally, having a working mother during childhood is associated with more egalitarian attitudes among both adult men and women. However, no previous studies have explored this relationship in the Middle East and North Africa, where women’s employment rates have remained persistently low.

In China, the employment rate among middle-aged and older urban residents is exceptionally low. For example, 27% of 55-64-year-old urban women were in work in 2013, compared to more than 50% in UK, Thailand and Philippines.