This event, co-organised with the Department of International Development at LSE, will be a discussion with Professor Naila Kabeer and Professor Ragui Assaad based on their co-authored report 'Women's Access to Market Opportunities in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa: Barriers, Opportunities and Policy Challenges'.
Despite this paper being written in 2019, the situation of women's access to market opportunities in MENA and South Asia remains a challenge. Kabeer and Assaad will reflect on their findings and discuss the puzzles and paradoxes of women's employment in these regions, which have the lowest rates of women's labour force participation in the world. The conversation will also explore how to unlock the potential of women in these communities.
Meet our speakers and chair
Naila Kabeer is Emeritus Professor of Gender and Development in the Department of International Development at LSE. Naila is also a Faculty Associate at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute and on the governing board of the Atlantic Fellowship for Social and Economic Equity. She has done extensive advisory work with international agencies (World Bank, ADB, UNDP, UN Women), bilateral agencies (DFID, SIDA, CIDA, IDRC) and NGOs (Oxfam, Action Aid, BRAC, PRADAN and Nijera Kori). Her most recent projects were supported by ERSC-DIFD Funded Research on 'Poverty Alleviation: Gender and Labour Market dynamics in Bangladesh and West Bengal'. She is on the editorial boards of Feminist Economics and Gender and Development and on the international advisory board of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies. Naila is author of Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the ‘Bangladesh Paradox' (2024).
Ragui Assaad is the Freeman Chair in International Economic Policy at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. He researches education, labor policy, and labor market analysis in developing countries with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. His current work focuses on inequality of opportunity in education, labor markets, transitions from school-to-work, employment and unemployment dynamics, family formation, informality, labor market responses to economic shocks, international migration, including the effects of forced migration. Assaad is a Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum in Cairo, Egypt and has served on its board of trustees. He is also Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. He served as Regional Director for West Asia and North Africa for the Population Council, based in Cairo, Egypt, from 2005 to 2008.
Irene Selwaness is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University, Egypt. Irene is Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum in Cairo and the Global Labour Organization (GLO). Her research examines economic development issues with interests in social protection, social policy, labour market analysis, and gender issues. Her current projects include work on social protection, expansion of social insurance coverage, social policy and employment regulations, gender and labour markets, and the future of work, with a focus on the Middle East.
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