Gender Issues

Talking about sex no longer so taboo in the Arab world

Over the past year, I have criss-crossed the Arab world for the BBC, making a series of short films on some of the women and men who are rewriting the rules – in and out of the bedroom. It’s easy to look at the sexual landscape of the Middle East and North Africa and see only doom and gloom, from…

BBC Radio Scotland’s “Sunday Morning with…” INTERVIEW MICHAEL ROBBINS ON latest public opinion survey findings

BBC News Arabic has just published the results of a survey they commissioned to gain an insight into the views and lives of everyday people across the Arab world. The research collected opinions from over 25,000 people, on everything from religion and politics to sex, love and the status of women. Richard discusses the findings with Dr Michael Robbins, the…

Most Arab men would accept a woman as their country’s leader

Most Arabs would accept a woman as their nation’s leader but still believe men should have the final say in domestic matters, a major new study suggests. The research, commissioned by BBC Arabic, also revealed a rising number of Arabs in the Levant and Maghreb are turning their backs on religion. The research was carried out by the research network,…

Most Arab men would accept a woman as their country’s leader

Most Arabs would accept a woman as their nation’s leader but still believe men should have the final say in domestic matters, a major new study suggests. The research was carried out by the research network, Arab Barometer, between late 2018 and the spring of 2019. The places surveyed were Iraq, Tunisia, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, Libya,…

Arab spring protests and women’s labor market outcomes: Evidence from the Egyptian revolution

“We analyze the effects of the 2011 Egyptian protests on the relative labor market conditions of women using panel data from the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS). Using unique information from the Statistical Database of the Egyptian Revolution, we geocode each “martyr”, i.e. demonstrators who died during the protests, based on the location of the political incident. We construct…