Abstract
Women in Middle Eastern and North African countries continue to report low levels of agency, despite their increasing educational attainment and declining fertility rates. We address this paradox by considering how women’s agency is linked to parenthood in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia and how this association is moderated by their level of education. We study three dimensions of instrumental agency: involvement in decision-making, financial autonomy, and freedom of movement using data for married women aged 18–49 from the Integrated Labor Market Panel Surveys: Egypt 2012 (n = 7622), Jordan 2016 (n = 4550), Tunisia 2014 (n = 1480). Results from multivariate regression models of these different dimensions demonstrate that married women who are mothers generally exhibit higher levels of agency than their counterparts who are childless, though this does not hold for every dimension and the strength of the association between parenthood and agency differs by dimension and country. We find a notable exception to this pattern of positive association in the Egyptian sample: parenthood decreases agency among Egyptian women with post-secondary education. Our results suggest that parenthood may only increase women’s agency in settings with deeply entrenched patriarchal norms that imply little education for women.
Highlights
Most countries in the world have recognized the importance of women’s agency (Klugman et al 2014), as it has been found to be a relevant predictor of societal development as well as women’s and their children’s health and well-being (Doan and Bisharat 1990; Kishor 2000; Shroff et al 2009, 2011; Yount et al 2014)
The present study extends present knowledge from Samari’s (2017a) findings in two ways: First, using cross-sectional data from the Integrated Labor Market Panel Surveys (ILMPS; OAMDI 2018b), it confronts the Egyptian case of parenthood and women’s agency with two other Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries, Jordan and Tunisia
The present study was the first to explore the association between parenthood and women’s agency in different countries of the MENA region
Summary
Most countries in the world have recognized the importance of women’s agency (Klugman et al 2014), as it has been found to be a relevant predictor of societal development as well as women’s and their children’s health and well-being (Doan and Bisharat 1990; Kishor 2000; Shroff et al 2009, 2011; Yount et al 2014). The persistence of low empowerment can be framed with the notion of the “MENA paradox” (Assaad et al 2018) This concept describes the “peculiar” (Obermeyer 1992) demographic situation that female labor market participation is very low (International Labour Organization 2018) and does not correspond to women’s increasing educational attainment and declining fertility rates in the region (World Bank 2013). Women are ascribed a reproductive role in the MENA region (Miles 2002) and motherhood is regarded as important for a woman’s social position (Kandiyoti 1988; Yount 2005). This societal invariant puts the discussion about women’s agency directly into the context of parenthood.
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