Explaining the Lack of Progress in Yemeni Women’s Empowerment; Are Women Leaders the Problem?

Despite existence of women’s empowerment policies and the appointments of women leaders to oversee the implementation and sometimes design of those policies, the Republic of Yemen has repeatedly ranked last in the WEF Gender Gap Index since 2006. Is this a problem of capacity? Are the women leaders, who are driving the national women’s development agenda forward, lacking in this field? This article investigates this question through a mixed-method research by surveying and interviewing Yemeni women leaders who were involved in empowerment policies in health, education, economic participation and political empowerment between 2006 and 2014. Findings from this research show that the women leaders were highly qualified in terms of expertise; education and professional skills. Furthermore, findings show that the patriarchal system punishes women leaders when they challenge it, which forces many of them to refrain from antagonising the patriarchy. Those who do, risk their professional and even personal wellbeing in their plight against practices that negatively affect women’s empowerment of the larger women community. This finding has significant implications on women’s empowerment policies in Yemen and countries of similar contexts, by directing funding and support from the traditional individual capacity building efforts to those concerning harnessing the collective power

Of ambition, opportunity and pretence: the politics of gender in Yemen

Yemen has continuously been one of the worst places worldwide in terms of women’s rights in education, health, and the economy, according to international development indicators. It is puzzling that this is the country’s reality despite the fact that during the last two decades, Yemen witnessed a surge of high-level appointments of women in key decision-making positions, the creation of several women-related national institutions, and the implementation of various women’s empowerment policies. This research attempts to address this puzzle by investigating the failure of women’s empowerment policies in Yemen between 2006 and 2014 in health, education, and the economy, from the perspectives of the women leaders themselves, who are at the forefront of the women’s empowerment efforts in the country. To demonstrate their failure, I first review the state’s gender policies, using policy mapping, to identify trends and measure their success drawing on existing policy evaluation approaches. Next, I present empirical findings collected through a mixed-method approach, which notably include descriptive-statistical analysis of surveys and qualitative examination of elite interviews. This research investigates feedback from leading Yemeni women, who are the main drivers behind gender equality in Yemen, and who were directly involved in women’s empowerment efforts in the researched time frame. Using women’s empowerment’s agency-structure framework, I investigate the relevance of: lack of capacity of women leaders, political and economic instability, and the culture of political support, to policy success. I argue that all three factors contributed to the failure of women’s empowerment policies through sub-mechanisms, however, the culture of political support – or lack thereof, had the highest explanatory power of the three factors. This research departs from existing scholarly work on Yemeni women’s empowerment in that it focuses on the experiences of the women leaders as champions of the empowerment agenda, while also acknowledging the importance of the socio-political context in which they operated. This research provides gender policy makers with insights into the practical implications of gender policies in conservative societies such as Yemen, by addressing sustainability and impact of women’s empowerment efforts

Explaining the Lack of Progress in Yemeni Women’s Empowerment: Are Women Leaders the Problem?

Despite the existence of women’s empowerment policies and the appointments of women leaders to oversee the implementation and sometimes design of those policies, the Republic of Yemen has repeatedly ranked last in the WEF Gender Gap Index since 2006. Is this a problem of capacity? Are the women leaders, who are driving the national women’s development agenda forward, lacking in this field? This article investigates this question through a mixed-method research by surveying and interviewing Yemeni women leaders who were involved in empowerment policies in health, education, economic participation and political empowerment between 2006 and 2014. Findings from this research show that the women leaders were highly qualified in terms of expertise, education, and professional skills. Furthermore, findings show that the patriarchal system punishes women leaders when they challenge it, which forces many of them to refrain from antagonising the patriarchy. Those who do, risk their professional and even personal well-being in their plight against practices that negatively affect women’s empowerment of the larger women community. This finding has significant implications for women’s empowerment policies in Yemen and countries of similar contexts, by directing funding and support from the traditional individual capacity building efforts to those concerning harnessing the collective power

The Politics of Women’s Empowerment in Yemen

Despite the existence of women’s empowerment strategies since the late nineties and qualified women in decision-making positions in charge of implementing them, these strategies failed to significantly improve women’s conditions and the situation of Yemeni women in the Republic of Yemen remains dismal. This article attempts to explain this failure through a mixed-method approach, surveying and interviewing Yemeni women leaders who were involved as authority figures or people of influence between 2006 and 2014 in said strategies. Findings from this research have strong policy implications on future development and gender equality policies in the country placing the experiences of women as policy makers, activists, advocates at the center of the analysis

Yemen's women and the quest for change : political participation after the Arab revolution

Nadia al-Sakka