Cross Cultural Communication: Employment

Introduction

Women position is society has been a big debate in recent years, with a lot of conferences being held to support women and address their obstacles in attaining a respectable place in the society, and mostly havening equal rights as their counterparts “men.” In terms of employment, leadership, politics and other economic opportunities that women are less represented. For example, the Beijing world women conference in 1995, though there has been significant progress in almost every part of the world ever since the challenge for equal opportunities for all both women and men, the gap remains. In Egypt for instance, it was ranked among the first African nations with the highest discrimination rate towards women and also with the lowest women’s support in leadership roles. This including any religion, cooperate, or political responsibility (Musa, & Idembe, (2000).

According to Weeks, (2009), women are mostly viewed as wives and mothers from a general perspective, which becomes a challenge for any woman to take up the entrepreneurship role. The move comes with a lot of discrimination with some people pointing the move as unethical based on their culture. Although the government tries to put measures to include women into entrepreneurship, very little is implemented. With some institutions dismissing them, for example, the financial sector where it is hard for most women to gain access to financial support such as loans, limits their entrepreneurial opportunities. It is also noted that some men view businesswomen as a threat to their position in the society

For the business women in Egypt, it is not easy to operate, work or even open a company, this being evident where the country was rated 28^th among 30 most difficult countries for women to conduct business. Based on research done by the Global Entrepreneurship development institute which is located in United States, Washington. But the situation is not as worse as it was back in the days where only 3% of women were entrepreneur eight years ago, compared to the current 11%. This shows an increase of 8% which signifies that the society is changing its ideas on women role and stand in businesses, although the progress is slow it is a positive step towards a good direction. With a good example being Sally Sabry and Doaa Zaki, who makes and sells baby products in Cairo (Santos, et al. (2017)

Women in the country are also discriminated in the employment sector, where both the public and the private institutions, fear that women will most of the time be out of work compared to men. Furthermore, they perceive that women are less productive, efficient and less reliable in the workplace, which pushes the employment rate for women in Egypt lower.  With the biggest factor being that not most girls attain high education in the country crippling the gender equality rule more, as there are no professional women. This is evident as most of the profession jobs are less populated by women, for instant university lecturer are mostly male in the country (Zamberi Ahmad, S. (2011).

Reference

Musa, R., & Idembe, C. (2000). Promoting Women's Economic Empowerment Through Gender Responsive Trade Agreements: Experiences from Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zambia.

Zamberi Ahmad, S. (2011). Businesswomen in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Characteristic, growth patterns and progression in a regional context. Equality, diversity, and inclusion: an international journal, 30(7), 610-614.

Weeks, J. R. (2009). Women business owners in the Middle East ands North Africa: a five-country research study. International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, 1(1), 77-85.

Santos, J. L., Navarro, T. M., & Kaszowska, J. A. (2017). Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Middle East: An Analysis for Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Jordan, and UAE. In Entrepreneurship: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1666-1687). IGI Global.