Recent research conducted by the Middle East’s number one job site - Bayt.com has found that just 59% of women in Jordan’s workplace feel that they are treated fairly compared to their male counterparts. Furthermore, more than a quarter of working women in Jordan felt that their gender had affected their career prospects, with a total of 26% of women citing that their gender has been a negative element in their career. The survey additionally revealed that working women in Jordan felt there was a disparity between the sexes in terms of their treatment in the workplace; with 44% of women feeling they have a lower chance of being promoted than their male colleagues and only one fifth of women – 20% - feeling that their chances of promotion depend entirely on their hard work. The Bayt.com Women in the Workplace survey is a measure of women’s perceptions, attitudes, experiences and satisfaction of various elements of their role in the workplace, especially in regard to their treatment compared to their male counterparts.
“The opinions of Jordan’s female employees towards their work and their treatment in the workplace are hugely authoritative tools for revealing the true nature of the business environment from a woman’s perspective in the region today. In tracking and monitoring this data, organisations and businesses across the entire region can benefit from the findings, allowing them to adjust, or develop new sets of measures or behaviours for promoting gender equality,” said Bayt.com’s CEO, Rabea Ataya. One way that female workers’ feelings about gender equality were measured was in terms of their financial remuneration and their level of reward and benefits. Opinions were roughly equally divided over whether women personally feel they receive more, equal, or less pay than their male counterparts: 43% feel they are equally paid, followed closely by 40% of women who feel they are paid less on account of being female. Just 3% of women feel they are paid more than their male counterparts. Despite 64% of Jordan’s working women believing that employers should provide preferential treatment or special benefits to them because they are responsible for the wellbeing of the family, 60% said that they do not receive any such special benefits on account of their gender. The majority of working women in Jordan at 42% could take between two and three months of paid maternity leave, with only 6% of women saying they weren’t permitted any. The figures however revealed widespread dissatisfaction with maternity leave entitlement: satisfaction wavered between indifferent and low, at 36% and 22% respectively. An overwhelming majority of Jordan’s working women at 72% indicated that their current employers do not provide any day care facilities for the children of female employees, however, other benefits were made available for working women: 46% receive family health insurance, 36% receive career training and 18% of women were allowed to work flexible hours. Yet when it came down to what women cite as the most important benefits in their career, 27% of women cited a higher salary, and 23% said opportunities for long term career growth, as the most important benefits an employer could give, as opposed to day care, or maternity leave. “Gauging the opinions of these women provides a valuable look at what provisions and services employers are currently making available for their female employees, and point to what employers could be doing to further improve the workplace for women – especially those that balance their work with a family,” commented Ataya. The research goes on to highlight the different reasons that Jordan’s women choose to work. The majority of women at 73% said they work because they want to achieve their ambition in life, closely followed by 68% that said they enjoy the monetary independence. Overwhelmingly, given the choice to work or not, 66% of the women currently employed in Jordan agreed they would want to stay employed. “Women have a more strategic role to play in the further economic development and growth of the Middle East than ever before. Data such as this offers a wide array of benefits to HR industry players, recruiters and online recruitment sites like Bayt.com, by providing detailed, considered insights into what it really means to be an employed woman in Jordan and the Middle East, while offering a highly interesting oversight of the reasons and meaning that women attach to their work. Overall, these insights serve to offer indications and drivers that can ultimately effect positive change for greater workplace equality,” concludes Ataya. The data for the July 2008 Women in the Workplace survey was collected online between the period of the 4th and 22nd of June 2008, with 1,515 working women from across the Middle East, 205 of which were based in Jordan. Females aged between 15 and 59 and a mix of Local, Arab Expat, Western and Asian nationalities were included in the survey. The survey and other Middle East human resources research is available on www.bayt.com.
