Middle East Women's Initiative

Women and Entrepreneurship in the MENA Region aggregates datasets from various national, regional, and global sources to better explain why women entrepreneurship in the MENA region continues to lag behind, despite striking progress in education, particularly tertiary education.

This report introduces The Middle East Women Leaders Index (MEWLI), a first-of-its-kind data tool designed to quantify women’s representation in leadership in the public sector in the MENA region. This index introduces the Pipeline-Participation-Authority Framework (PPA) that seeks to measure gender parity beyond descriptive representation which limits measures of representation to reaching a set proportion of positions.

In partnership with the Wilson Center’s Asia Program and Vital Voices, Middle East Program Director Merissa Khurma had the opportunity to interview two Afghan women. Marwa Dashti and Hilai Barakzai were forced to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, yet are determined to fight for women’s right to work and access to education.

In this edition of Wilson Center NOW we are joined by Merissa Khurma, Project Manager for Middle East Special Initiatives. We discuss the latest edition of the Middle East Women’s Initiative blog Enheduanna. The blog provides a platform for a diverse group of women contributors from the Middle East and North Africa to voice their thoughts and express their ideas about the state of women in their respective countries. We also preview the soon-to-launch Middle East Women Leaders Index.