Search

This paper examines constraints to female labor force participation in Qatar, a country where state revenue from natural resource rents means any citizen can secure a public sector job should they seek employment. Using data from an original survey and focus groups, we find that although Qataris are generally in support of female labor force participation – both in principle and for their own relatives – concerns remain about the impact of women working for marriage, family, and traditional values. These concerns may be especially salient for younger Qatari men – a constituency particularly impacted by erosion of traditional gender norms at a time when they are establishing their own households. We also find that Qataris with a larger percentage of male children tend to be less supportive of women working outside of the home, suggesting forms of family-level variation in investment in patriarchal values and child rearing practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of migrant domestic workers—the vast majority of whom are women—are employed in households across Arab Gulf societies. Despite the ubiquitous presence of these foreign workers in Gulf households, little systematic information exists regarding the working conditions and treatment of this population. Findings from a survey of Filipino and Indonesian women who were previously employed as migrant domestic workers in the Arab Gulf states suggest that more than half of households subjected workers to at least one form of mistreatment. The most common forms included excessive working hours, late payment of salary, and denial of one day off per week. A smaller percentage of women reported limited access to food and medical care, mistreatment that is correlated with physical and emotional abuse. Understanding more about the extent of mistreatment—and the correlates of abuse—assists in the development of remedies aimed at improving workplace conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long argued that leaders manipulate foreign policy, sometimes even initiating wars in order to enhance their domestic political position. But diversionary wars are relatively rare given the high costs of conflict. In this project, we examine data from major Syrian daily newspapers over a 30-year period (1987–2018) to explore how autocratic regimes use diversionary rhetoric. We find that before the 2011 Arab Uprisings, Syria's state-controlled media concentrated on Israel as a security and political threat. Emphasis on Israel as a diversionary threat decreased during peace negotiations between Syria and Israel, probably in a bid to prepare the Syrian public for normalization of bilateral relations. After 2011, scrutiny of Israel—and other long-standing topics of state discourse—was displaced by discussion of foreign plots and conspiracies against the Syrian state. Our analysis illustrates how authoritarian regimes make use of diversionary strategies as well as how political shocks generate discontinuities in authoritarian rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long sought to understand when and why the Middle East fell behind Europe in its economic development. This article explores the importance of historical Muslim trade in explaining urban growth and decline in the run-up to the Industrial Revolution. The authors examine Eurasian urbanization patterns as a function of distance to Middle Eastern trade routes before and after 1500 CE – the turning point in European breakthroughs in seafaring, trade and exploration. The results suggest that proximity to historical Muslim trade routes was positively associated with urbanization in 1200 but not in 1800. These findings speak to why Middle Eastern and Central Asian cities – which had long benefited from their central location between Europe and Asia – declined as Europeans found alternative routes to the East and opened trade opportunities in the New World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the World Values Survey, we analyze the extent to which value consensus exists within countries. To do this, we introduce a statistical model which allows us to generate country-level measures of cultural heterogeneity. Our statistical approach models each country as a mixture of subcultures that are shared across the world. Our results demonstrate that value consensus varies substantially across countries and regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]