Addressing Disparity in Middle East Female Labor Force Participation: Migrant Child Care in Jordan.

Women's economic empowerment and equality are issues in focus for nations across the globe. While many nations have made progress in raising their Female Labor Force Participation (FLFP), an important marker of women's progress, over the past decades Jordan's FLFP has remained largely stagnant. As of 2017, Jordan's FLFP is one of the lowest in the world, lower even than Saudi Arabia and Iran. This paper hopes to illuminate new ways to increase FLFP by focusing on migrant child care labor availability, instead of the often cited cultural or religious explanations. Immigrant child care labor had a notable effect on the FLFP of nations in the Global North, but has been applied less frequently to the Middle East. This paper, by comparing two predominantly Muslim countries, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, will explain how the differing availability of migrant child care has kept Jordan's FLFP below the rest of the region and the world, suggesting that further child care support would be a welcome step toward raising FLFP rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]