Empowering Women Through Public Sector Employment in Qatar: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Integrating women into the workforce is considered as part of the economic progress formula and modernization process leading to women’s empowerment. While this process has been internally driven in Western societies, it is globally imposed through policy diffusion, raising challenges for policy-makers to adapt the prevailing models to local cultures. Given the dearth of empirical studies in the context of Arab Gulf countries, this chapter offers compelling insights and qualitative evidence of women’s employment in Qatar. It focuses on the public sector as it represents the main employer of women providing many benefits and opportunities while presenting some constraints and challenges. Using an integrative multi-level lens and a culturally sensitive approach results from 50 in-depth semi-structured interviews with civil servants are analyzed to identify factors affecting women’s economic empowerment. The findings highlight the complexity of determining specific factors and provide policy recommendations based on women’s opinions and conveyed voices.