Statistical Analysis of Perceptions of Jordanian Women's Access to Parliament from the Perspective of Female Members of Jordanian Political Parties

Objectives: This study aimed to explore the political impact of His Majesty King Abdullah II's Second Discussion Paper on the development of the democratic system in Jordan, with a focus on the state of political parties during the period from 2013 to 2024. The Second Discussion Paper served as the primary concept (independent variable), and its influence on the evolution of political parties (dependent variable) within Jordan's democratic system was critically examined. The study was divided into two sections: the first addressed key concepts and the trajectory of democratic development in Jordan, while the second analyzed the impact of the Second Discussion Paper on political parties and their role in Jordanian political life. Methodology: A political analysis approach was employed to understand and interpret the influence of the Second Discussion Paper on political parties in Jordan, framed within the context of democratic theory. The analysis focused on the direct effects of the Discussion Paper on Jordan's political system, specifically examining the evolving role of political parties. Findings: The study found that the Second Discussion Paper significantly strengthened the role of political parties in Jordan by fostering national dialogue and supporting political pluralism. The Paper contributed to increased political participation by parties, enhanced their influence within the democratic process, and encouraged the development and reshaping of party roles within Jordan's political system. Conclusion: The study concluded that there is a strong correlation between the Second Discussion Paper and the development of Jordan's democratic system. The Paper contributed to empowering political parties, increasing their impact on political life, and reflecting the political leadership's commitment to ongoing democratic reforms.

Gender Inequity in Jordanian Higher Education Leadership:Analysis and Recommendations Richard Savior (bio) Introduction The higher education system in Jordan has experienced significant growth over the past 25 years as a series of government-led reforms have sought to help the country transform from a predominantly agrarian to an industrialized nation. The focus of these changes was to bring the country's educational policies and programs in line with the demands of a 21st century knowledge-based economy.1 These reforms strengthened the institutional [End Page 1] capacity of the country's Ministry of Higher Education in terms of policy formation, strategic planning, quality of curriculum, and student assessment but failed to address the goal of gender equity in the country's higher education leadership.2 Women in Jordan have made great gains in higher education and are now earning more degrees than men. According to UNESCO, women now make up 54 percent of the total enrollments at Jordanian colleges and universities.3 While advancements in educational attainment are important, women continue to face significant barriers in higher education employment and advancement: women hold a small fraction of senior leadership positions and are also underrepresented in tenured and full professorships, which in turn limits opportunities to advance into formal leadership positions at colleges and universities.4 Barriers to women's advancement are complex as women are not simply denied top leadership opportunities but lack the critically needed institutional and government support required to build a pipeline to such advancement.5 Even when women do all the right things to prepare for such opportunities, they face challenges embedded within institutional structures and cultural systems that require transformative change. Women often must balance the responsibilities of life with their educational and career aspirations that men may not be aware of or acknowledge.6 These imbalances in equity and opportunity have consequence not only to emerging female leaders in higher education but as role models to their students. The purpose of this study was to assess the demographics of Jordanian college and university faculty and senior leadership and examine how gender specifically influences perceptions related to gender inequity in higher education leadership. The study follows a quantitative research design that incorporated data collected from surveys with senior Jordanian higher education leaders. The findings of this study reveal differences in how the issue is perceived, the factors that contribute to those inequities and offer recommendations for progressive measures and serve to highlight [End Page 2] the strategic implications for higher education policy and practice. The research is however limited by the absence of longitudinal data to review longer-term outcomes. Literature Review A review of the existing literature determined that while there have been ample studies on the factors that limit employment opportunity and advancement of women in the Jordanian labor market,7 studies focused on the higher education space were quite limited8 and did not examine potential measures that might serve to address the underlying inequities. Gender inequities in Jordanian higher education are manifested on multiple levels. The country has never had a female minister of education, women make up less than a fifth of its workforce, and women hold just 4 percent of board of trustee seats.9 What is perplexing is that while in school, Jordanian females outperform their male counterparts in just about every subject and at every age level. To cite one example, at the University of Jordan, the country's largest university, women outnumber men by a ratio of two to one and earn higher grades in science, technology, engineering, and math as well in a range of other subjects.10 Although Jordan has achieved parity in access to education in both primary and secondary schools, Jordanian women's educational achievements are not being reflected in their participation in the economy. Despite earning higher grades and more degrees than men, women in Jordan are unlikely to put their degrees to paid use for very long-only one in five workers in Jordan are female.11 In general, women do not go on to have long professional careers after graduating, but rather spend much of their lives working at home as wives and mothers. Specific to employment in...

Problem statement: Women in Jordan and Arab world in general and in the world received basic secondary education and entered the realm of secondary and university education, this development has taken time, effort and struggle. Approach: To Give historical background of the development of women's education in Jordan, analyze the legal legislation related to the education of Jordanian women, analyze the Jordanian educational efforts for the development of women. Summarize the most important prerequisites for increasing the effectiveness of the women's role in the educational process within the Jordanian society efforts in the development of women from the perspective that women constitute half of society and in line with humanitarian, civilized and global propounding related to women's affairs and to address issues related to learning, a prelude to enable them to take its course in all fields and levels. Results: The educational system in Jordan focused its attention on women seeking to make a quantitative and qualitative aspects quantum leap that matches or even surpasses the development that had taken place for male education. Conclusion/Recommendations: The study highlights the importance and the need to increase the effectiveness of the role of women in Jordanian society through a number of proposals including, support women requesting and working towards self-development to meet the challenges and difficulties impeding progress in different educational institutions.

This article presents Islamic women's framing processes in their campaigns to address women's political underrepresentation in Iran and Turkey. It argues that while Turkish women justify their claims through international human rights discourses, Iranian women frame their demands in religious terms to find resonance with political elites. Women's strategic framing processes demonstrate the extent to which women's demands for equal representation are shaped by the political and discursive opportunity structures that arise out of their secular or theocratic contexts.In many Muslim-majority countries, Islamic movements and parties tend to negatively view women's access to political leadership positions.1 The dominant gender discourse of these movements, which is often based on patriarchal interpretations of religious texts, views women's proper place to be within the domestic sphere as mothers and wives, and largely denies women an active presence in the public sphere, including in political decision-making. Scholarly analysis of women's activities and involvement in political parties that arise out of Islamic political movements has persuasively argued that despite the high level of women's political participation on behalf of such parties, women tend to have low levels of political representation.2 For instance, a number of scholars have pointed to the fact that many Islamic political parties have mobilized and politicized women to serve merely as campaigners and grassroots organizers to help bring the party to power, or have used women's bodies and dress as public markers of their identity claims. But once in power, the male elites of such parties have often denied women any real power or influence in formal politics.3 Although this kind of discrimination is not exclusive to religious movements and parties, it is often assumed that religiously motivated parties are more detrimental to women's political representation than are their secular counterparts. The works of scholars such as Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris and Steven Fish fall within this line of argumentation by emphasizing religious and cultural barriers, namely Islam and patriarchal attitudes, as the primary reasons for women's limited access to positions of political authority.4A surprising recent trend that challenges the current literature's overwhelming emphasis on the religious/cultural obstacles that keep women out of political decisionmaking is the modest increases in the percentage of women in political leadership on behalf of some religious political parties in various Muslim-majority countries. For instance, Clark and Schwedler have observed that in Yemen and Jordan the percentage of women assuming political office has modestly increased in the wake of and forces' rise to power.5 This trend is also present in Turkey and Iran, the two case studies of this research. Regardless of Turkey's secular or Iran's theocratic political frameworks, women's access to political leadership positions increased under the watch of and religious forces, and (unexpectedly) not under liberalreformist or secular parties. In Turkey, the recent notable increases in the percentage of female parliamentarians (currently at its highest ever at 17.5%) coincides with the 2002 rise to power of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, henceforth AKP, but often called the AK Party by supporters). The AKP was founded in 2001 by members of defunct Turkish parties (Refah, the Welfare Party; and Fazilet, the Virtue Party). Since its landslide victory in 2002, the AKP, which identifies itself as a conservative democratic rather than Islamist party, has steadily increased its percentage of popular votes in general elections, although it significantly underperformed in the June 2015 general elections and lost its parliamentary majority.6 Due to the AKP's official support of a secular system in which public displays of religion have a place, I identify this party as pro-religious. …

The long running-battle for equality in sports has now reached a new peak in women’s soccer. An increasing number of countries newly add women’s soccer programs and several existing national teams fight for a further professionalization and equal payments. This demand is part of an empowerment process. In soccer, women still form a marginalized group, but they increasingly gain more scope within the social subsystem “soccer”. In this context, sports have a considerable social and spatial significance on the individual, socio-cultural and structural level. This article focusses on one aspect of this multi-layer empowerment process and deals with the influences related to international cooperation, like traveling of delegates and teams as a form of sports tourism. The main goal is to carve out the increasing importance of such travel activities for a further development of sports and through sports. Therefore, the article raises the question, which role do international cooperation and associated travel activities play within the sports development context and do they foster structural and social developments in a certain regional context? What are the most common ways of exchange within the sports sector? Which role do particular settings and regional backgrounds play? With regard to women’s football in Arab countries, this article deals with the developments in Jordan. In Jordan, the deregulation of the ban on headscarves and the support by HRH Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, president of the Jordan Football Association (JFA), former FIFA vice-president and half-brother of King Abdullah II, have achieved a decisive boost. Prior to the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup 2016 and the Asian Cup 2018, JFA has signed several Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with different associations. These MoU play a vital role because they are important for the transfer of knowledge, the structural developments in Jordanian women’s football and include several travel activities.

This study investigates the correlations between indicators of good governance and human development in Jordan during the period (2010-2019). The study relies on the indicators of the World Bank for good governance and the Human Development Index for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) about Jordan. It analyzes the indicators of the two variables in Jordan by employing statistical analysis. The study found that there are no statistically significant correlations between the indicators of good governance and human development at the significance level (0.05). It also found a weakness in the levels of good governance, and that there is a decline in the growth rates of human development during the studied period which may due to the negative impact of regional conditions related to the Arab Spring and its direct and indirect repercussions on the human development in Jordan. This indicates that human development in Jordan is affected by the consequences of regional conditions rather than just internal factors such as good governance. The study recommends the Jordanian government to build a productive national economy in a manner that reduces vulnerability to regional and international conditions, and provide support for education and health sectors, as well as to control high population growth rates.
 
 Received: 26 May 2022 / Accepted: 17 August 2022 / Published: 2 September 2022

Jordanian womens participation in public policy dates back to 1950s. However, political activism came to a halt in the period between 1956 and 1992. In 1992, the new Political Parties Law granted women the right to participate in political parties. Since then, women became an active member of political parties, but their participation remained largely symbolic and not influential. Women did not seek to join parties. As a result, women are still largely unrepresented in the state. In addition, and the number of women involved in these parties remains low. There are a number of challenges that prevent womens participation in political life in Jordan, such as social restrictions resulting from the traditional structure of Jordanian society. This article discusses the political participation of women in Jordan and addresses the most prominent challenges facing the political work of women in Jordan.

Investment is one of the most important economic activities that enjoy great importance and attention in most countries of the world. The aim of this research is to shed light on the factors affecting the growth of investment in achieving economic development in Jordan. This study is based on a sample of 116 investment companies using the stratified random sampling technique, which is exploratory in nature and depends mainly on primary data and uses quantitative methods to analyze the data. This study aimed to identify the factors driving investment, which play an important role in the development of the Jordanian economy during the era of the Fourth Kingdom. The study revealed the presence of seven main important factors that encourage investment and include, according to their importance, security and political stability, incentives and facilities, guarantees, legal environment and stability of legislation, modern infrastructure, stability of the financial and banking system, openness of the country and easy access to global markets. As for the unimportant factors from the investors’ point of view, which are not important in determining the decision to invest or not in Jordan, according to the study, they included quality of life, labor and workforce efficiency. The study also aimed to determine the most important benefits and obstacles to investing in Jordan from the point of view of investors. Where the results of the statistical analysis showed that the strong desire to increase income is one of the most important benefits desired from investment and contribute to improving the standard of living of individuals as the least benefit. While the most important obstacles to investment were the administrative bureaucracy and the least influential was the monopoly of feasible investment opportunities by a specific group of investors.KeywordsInvestment factorsEconomic developmentEconomic stabilityInvestment benefitsInvestment obstaclesJordan

To explore the relationship between various levels of academic achievement and the spectrum of initial specialty placements for graduates. The authors studied the initial specialty placements of all 1984-1994 graduates of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Statistical analyses were used to determine the nature and strength of the relationships between initial specialty selection and students' achievement indicators and changes in that relationship over time. Students tended to aggregate across time into discernible levels of achievement. The relationships between academic achievement levels and initial specialty placements were highly variable. Although students with higher levels of achievement had broader choices available to them, graduates at every level of achievement entered a wide variety of specialties. Thus, the authors believe that academic achievement should not be used to the exclusion of other performance characteristics in determining how students and residencies should be matched.

Law No. 7 of 2022 represents a significant shift in the legal framework for political parties in Jordan, aiming to modernize the political environment and enhance democracy. This new law sets out the conditions for the establishment and membership of political parties, regulates their financing and activities, with a strong emphasis on transparency and accountability. Additionally, it seeks to enhance active citizen participation in political life by simplifying registration procedures and providing government financial support contingent on adherence to legal standards. The law also includes provisions to protect the rights of political parties and their members, and aims to strengthen the role of parties in parliament by encouraging alliances and presenting comprehensive political programs. Despite potential challenges in its implementation, Law No. 7 of 2022 provides a comprehensive legal framework aimed at developing the party system in Jordan, thereby promoting political stability and democratic development.

Political liberalisation in Jordan was launched as a regime survival strategy in 1989 by the late King Hussein. In spite of his efforts, 18 years later the Jordanian monarchy is considered as a semi-authoritarian system. This article explores the prospects for further political liberalisation under King Abdullah II, whose vision on the development of Jordan is full of enthusiasm. The author argues that Jordan is one of the most-advanced countries in the region in terms of political reform, but it has performed poorly in comparison to other developing states. King Abdullah promotes the “Jordan model” in order to win the support of the international audience: Western-oriented foreign policy, economic liberalisation allowing multinational companies to invest in Jordan, launching the Ministry of Political Development, and holding general elections in 2003. Political developments in Jordan echoed with the so-called “developmental state” paradigm, prioritising economic reform first, while postponing political transformation. National elections are expected to be held at the end of this year under a controversial election law. The recently passed political parties law is a proof of a de-liberalising monarchy, which is trying to preserve the loyalty of independent candidates, while marginalising the role of political parties. This paper deals with the external and the internal factors of political liberalisation in Jordan.

<b>Aims:</b> To describe the level of depression and social support experienced by pregnant Jordanian women and assess the role of support and other factors on depression level among a sample of Jordanian women during pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic.<br /> <b>Method</b>: The study invitation and link to an online survey were shared during November 2021 via social media and through word of mouth. A convenience sample of 434 pregnant women completed the study questionnaire, which included questions on their COVID-19 status, demographics, depression, and social. Depression was assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depressive Scale (CES-D).<br /> <b>Results</b>: The prevalence of depression among women during pregnancy was 28.3%. The mean of depression score among women during pregnancy was 24.3±4.4. The prevalence of social support among women during pregnancy were (63%). The mean social support score among the participants was 39.3±9.1. Factors associated with a higher depression score included not get influenza vaccination, not having insurance, described life as poor, having pressure, and not having social support.<br /> <b>Conclusion:</b> This is a national study among women during pregnancy in Jordan. The study found that people who took influenza vaccination, having insurance, described life as poor, and having pressure, they experience more depression than other people. Moreover, our study found as social support increased, the depression decreased.

Background: The COVID-19 lockdowns imposed new challenges to couples who were planning to conceive. In this research paper, we aimed to study the perceptions of women in Jordan during the pandemic regarding fertility behavior, the desire to use assisted reproductive technology (ART) and the awareness and beliefs of potential risks related to conception. Methods: A validated online-based questionnaire was distributed to women from April–May 2020, Statistical analysis was performed using the statistical software SPSS version 22 and R software (2020); p values ≤ 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: The total number of participants was 814 women, with 78.2% of the participants (58.7% fertile and 76.6% infertile) believing that pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic could be risky. Among them, 16% and 40%, respectively, were trying to conceive during the pandemic, and 97.4% and 89.9%, respectively, were not willing to use ART if needed during the pandemic. Young, nulliparous women who were married for less than one year were significantly associated with the desire to conceive during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: This study concluded that the fertility behavior of women in Jordan changed during the pandemic, and their desire for natural conception and for using ART declined, as they believed that there were potential risks related to conceiving during the pandemic. However, the effect was greater among the general fertile population than the infertile.

To compare pregnancy outcomes of Syrian refugee women and Jordanian women. In the past few years, thousands of Syrians fled Syria to neighbouring countries such as Jordan as a result of the continuing conflict in their country. Pregnant refugee women are facing many difficulties that increase the prevalence of antenatal complications. However, there is limited awareness of whether Syrian refugee women have different risks of pregnancy outcomes than Jordanian women. Using a retrospective cohort design, we examined pregnancy outcomes for Syrian refugee (N=616) and Jordanian women (N=644) giving birth at two governmental hospital in northern Jordan, between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2014. A checklist of 13 variables was utilized. The primary outcome measures were delivery by Caesarean section, maternal complications, low birthweight (<2500g), APGAR score and preterm delivery (<37weeks' gestational age). Statistical analysis revealed that refugee mothers had a significant increase in the rate of Caesarean section and higher rate of anaemia, a lower neonates' weight and APGAR scores when compared to their Jordanian counterparts. Results were congruent with findings from other studies in the region and worldwide. Minimizing inequalities in pregnancy outcomes between Syrian refugees and Jordan women is a healthcare priority. The findings could guide the planning and development of health policies in Jordan that would help to alleviate the situation regarding refugee populations. Action is required by policy makers, specifically targeting public and primary healthcare services, to address the problem of adequately meeting the needs for antenatal care of this vulnerable population.

This study purposed to assess the mediating role of social support between stress, depressive symptoms, and self-esteem among Jordanian pregnant women. Across-sectional study recruited a total of 538 pregnant Jordanian women using a cluster stratified random sampling technique, during the period from September 2019 to February 2020. The study used the following measures: The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and Multidimensional Social Support Scale (MSPSS). Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used to test the mediating effect of social support in terms of the association between depression and self-esteem. The results were considered significant if p ≤ .05. The findings showed that 75.6% of participants had moderate-to-high stress levels. High levels of stress, depressive symptoms, and low self-esteem were highly correlated with low social support (p < .05). Depressive symptoms predict the self-esteem (F(2, 537) = 158.631 p < .05). Social support significantly mediates the relationship between the depressive symptoms and self-esteem with p = .01. Thus, during the antenatal care, administration of screening tools to identify pregnant women with low social support levels and at risk of developing psychological difficulties would allow primary healthcare to promote for positive health outcomes for the mothers and the babies.