Offshoring and the Availability of Female Labor in the MENA Region

Nadereh Chamlou and Désirée van Gorp

Chapter 15 in Women, Work and Welfare in the Middle East and North Africa:The Role of Socio-demographics, Entrepreneurship and Public Policies, 2016, pp 409-442 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: This chapter explores the attractiveness of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) relative to other regions for trade in services by European firms. Businesses no longer just search for low-cost labor but also seek to tap into the talent markets of emerging countries in knowledge-intensive core business functions. The availability of large talent pools that can be trained and retained is a key deciding factor in the choice of an offshore location, as is the size and the depth of the female labor force. The study finds that the MENA region has the necessary market and labor fundamentals to become a viable near-shoring destination for European firms and that it has a significant advantage associated with its female talent pool. Nonetheless, it also has highly significant disadvantages, due to impediments that women face in joining and staying in the labor market. Overall, the findings suggest that MENA may lose the competition to attract jobs in this growing global sector.

Keywords: Middle East and North Africa; Women's Welfare; Gender Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9781783267347_0015 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9781783267347_0015 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:wschap:9781783267347_0015

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().