Improving female labor force participation in MENA

The economic gender gap in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remains one of the largest in the world. Female labor force participation in MENA is the lowest globally, estimated at 20 percent (2019). The article presents arguments related to women’s participation in the job market, including men’s perceptions, along with practical realities of child care, commuting, low salaries, and lack of access to information. Emerging evidence from randomized evaluations in Egypt suggests that a range of programs to support women finding and getting to the work site, and interventions to update men’s perceptions, can increase women’s labor force participation

Addressing Food Insecurity in Egypt: Towards Sustaining Food Access for All/ الأمن الغذائي في مصر نحو استدامة وصول الغذاء للجميع

This policy paper sheds light on the current challenges that Egypt faces to ensure food access for all. In attempts to underscore the root causes of food insecurity in Egypt, this paper looks at the country’s geographical and agricultural national policies, food pricing, household expenditures on food as well as the challenges imposed on the country by climate change. These factors directly challenge the country’s ability to achieve food security for all by 2050. Although the Government of Egypt (GoE) launched pro-poor policies that aim at reducing the economic burden on vulnerable groups, the government needs to explore other feasible strategies to avoid food insecurity. To address the aforementioned challenges, the current policy paper proposes a list of policy alternatives that- if efficiently implemented- will prevent the approaching threat of food insecurity. The suggested policies include adopting the use of technology to increase food availability, reducing food waste, building communal resilience of small-scale farmers, and developing low-cost nutritional meal plan

Can media campaigns empower women facing gender-based violence amid COVID-19?

Women’s exposure to gender-based and intimate partner violence (GBV and IPV) is particularly acute due to COVID-19, especially in the Global South. We test whether edutainment interventions that have been shown to success-fully combat GBV and IPV when delivered in person can be effectively de-livered using social (WhatsApp and Facebook) and traditional (TV) media. To do so, we randomized the mode of implementation of an intervention con-ducted by an Egyptian women’s rights non-governmental organization seeking to support women while accommodating social distancing amid COVID-19. We found WhatsApp to be a more effective way to deliver the intervention than Facebook, but no differences across outcomes between WhatsApp and TV dis-semination. Our findings show that these media campaigns had no impact on women’s attitudes toward gender or marital equality, or the justifiability of vi-olence. However, the campaign did increase women’s knowledge, hypothetical, and reported use of resources available to those exposed to GBV and IPV

Can media campaigns empower women facing gender-based violence amid COVID-19?

Women’s exposure to gender-based and intimate partner violence (GBV and IPV) is particularly acute due to COVID-19, especially in the Global South. We test whether edutainment interventions that have been shown to success-fully combat GBV and IPV when delivered in person can be effectively de-livered using social (WhatsApp and Facebook) and traditional (TV) media. To do so, we randomized the mode of implementation of an intervention con-ducted by an Egyptian women’s rights non-governmental organization seeking to support women while accommodating social distancing amid COVID-19. We found WhatsApp to be a more effective way to deliver the intervention than Facebook, but no differences across outcomes between WhatsApp and TV dis-semination. Our findings show that these media campaigns had no impact on women’s attitudes toward gender or marital equality, or the justifiability of vi-olence. However, the campaign did increase women’s knowledge, hypothetical, and reported use of resources available to those exposed to GBV and IPV