Jordan joins world in celebrating International Women’s Day

AMMAN — Jordan and the world will celebrate International Women’s Day, which annually marked on March 8, on Monday under the slogan “Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World” and with the hashtag #SheChoseToChallenge.

This day aims at celebrating the huge efforts women and girls make all over the world in creating a more equal future and recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, as women such as healthcare workers, caregivers and innovators are on the frontlines responding to the pandemic. This is also because women are the most model and effective national leaders in responding to this pandemic, according to a statement from the Higher Population Council (HPC).

HPC Secretary General Abla Amawi said that the council is attaching special attention to this occasion. 

The council’s strategic goals are related to sustainable development goals, specifically the fifth goal “achieving equality between the sexes and empowering all women and girls” and the 10th goal “limiting inequality within and between countries”, she said in the statement.

This is along with the council’s focus on empowering women economically and scaling up their involvement in the labour market, as well as strengthening women’s reproductive health to achieve the best investment of demographic opportunity.

Amawi also said that around 47 per cent of Jordan’s total population is made up of women, yet their economic participation is still low. 

Jordanian women’s economic activity rate reached only 14.9 per cent compared with the 53.1 per cent activity rate of males. Female unemployment rate is at 33.6 per cent compared with males’ 21.2 per cent, according to Labour and Unemployment Survey of the third quarter of 2020 issued by the Department of Statistics.

Amawi drew attention to the results of the elections to the 19th House of Representatives, which showed a decrease in female representation. 

Parliament has seen “a big absence” in women’s roles, and women were unable to gain any parliament seat through competing and were only confined to the 15 quota seats, the statement said. 

This is on the contrary to the 2016 election, where women gained five seats through competing in addition to the quota seats, which brought the number of seats held by women to 20, according to the statement.

Amawi also said that the coronavirus pandemic has hit all societies at their cores, and threatened them on medical, social, political and economic levels. Women were also the most affected by the pandemic, being on the frontlines responding to the pandemic as healthcare workers as according to the Jordanian Nurses Association there are over 36,000 female and male nurses affiliated with it. 

Women also make up 60 per cent of the workers in the nursing sector according to the report on the condition of nursing in the world in 2020. 

A study conducted by the Economic and Social Council titled “The Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic in the Areas of Health, Domestic Violence and Economics in Jordan According to Gender 2020” has shown that the percentage of women who temporarily or permanently lost their jobs reached 5.1 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively. 

The percentage of women were forced into leave without pay reached around 2.7 per cent, and this is considered a high indicator that women working in the private sector “do not enjoy any decent working conditions”. 

Women also have borne the brunt of taking care of the children and domestic chores during the pandemic, as well as struggling to keep their jobs under the consequences of the outbreak of this pandemic. 

The study has also shown that 34 per cent of women have had household chores affect their remote work.

Amawi noted that in spite of Jordan’s international commitments to the advancement of women and achieving gender equality, including the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, “there is still a weakness in equality on both economic and political levels”. 

This has reflected on Jordan’s position in the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which is issued by the World Economic Forum. Jordan obtained 138th place out of 153 countries, and on economic participation and opportunity it reached 145th place. On educational attainment, Jordan reached 81st place, 103th place on health and survival and 113th place on political empowerment.

The Human Development Report 2019 titled “Inequalities in human development in the 21st century” showed that the index number for human development in Jordan in 2019 was 0.723. This makes Jordan a high human development country, numbering 102 out of 189 countries. 

The index for gender development in Jordan reached 0.868 compared with the international 0.941, while the inequality index reached 0.469 compared with the international 0.439.

The HPC also indicated that Jordanian women still face a number of challenges, as a big percentage of women are still outside the labour market despite their education and academic excellence. 

Women’s participation percentages in decision-making positions in both the private and public sectors are also modest, which requires the necessity for the operationalisation of comprehensive governmental policies and legislations that support community efforts made to change the typical image for women’s roles in society. 

The council also added that the weakness in empowering women economically and politically, and the inequality between the two sexes are considered to be one of the most important challenges that face Jordanian women, especially under the coronavirus pandemic. 

Empowering women is a motivator to build more inclusive societies and a means to achieving sustainable growth rates, and it is impossible to discuss a society’s economic, political or social growth development without the effective participation of women, read the statement.