Of course, needs and opportunities also have an influence in changing the values in society, but here I do not mean

that values determine needs and opportunities in such a causal way, but that the values in society change the way society is perceived.

In Figure 2.2, these three conditions are depicted by the different parts and shades of the circles and background. As will be elaborated below, these conditions partly overlap: Values can constitute an effect on their own (the light gray top segment of the circle), but they also shape what is considered a Need or an Opportunity (all concentric circles are placed on top of the background light gray of Values; in a sense, Values form a prime coat);17 _{both Needs and}

Opportunities influence women’s employment, with Values as an underlying condition (the segments in medium gray at the left and right of the concentric circles); and societal Needs and micro-level Opportunities are different sides of the same coin (the dark grey segment of the circles where all three conditions come together).

2.6.1 THREE CONDITIONS

NEEDS

At the core of this condition is the question: What must be done? ‘Needs’ refer to the things or actions that are considered necessary in order to reach the goals people or groups of people have set for themselves. These needs can either stimulate employment or prevent women from seeking employment.

At the micro level (individual and household), the two core needs in understanding women’s employment are material needs and care needs, both related to the goal of survival and reaching a certain level of well-being. Material needs include money, food and clothing, all of which require some sort of income that most of the time will be acquired through labour. Care needs refer to the reproductive and social aspects of household life: taking care, physically and emotionally, of other household members. Considering the usual time constraints, care needs interfere with other activities, and increasing care needs therefore hinder the entrance to the labour market. Especially in contexts where care roles are heavily gendered and considered to be exclusively feminine, care needs limit women’s employment.

At the macro level, the goals of growing prosperity and state or group survival are most relevant in understanding employment-related needs. To reach these goals it can be necessary that more people enter the labour market, or that people (mostly men) join the armed forces and are to be replaced by others (women) in the labour force, for example. At this level, the core need is the need for additional labour, which especially influences women’s employment decisions if this societal need is internalised by women; if they consider it their duty to help their country or group, the need for labour will stimulate a woman to enter the labour market.

OPPORTUNITIES

Opportunities are captured in the question: What can be done? Needs might drive women to enter the labour market, but this does not necessarily mean that they will get employed. A woman’s employment status ultimately depends on whether her characteristics match the available jobs.

At the societal level, this has to do with the presence of accessible and suitable jobs. In this respect it is important that there are vacancies. Moreover, these jobs need to be open to women. Employers have to be allowed and be prepared to hire women, or customers have to be prepared to buy from a woman. Here, norms about what jobs are considered suitable for women as well as the perceived comparative advantages of hiring women are both important. In addition, the accessibility of jobs depends on the jobs’ location, the place where the women live, and women’s mobility. The presence of suitable and accessible jobs as an opportunity overlaps with the societal need for female labour (the darkest segment in Figure 2.1): a perceived need for women as employees can result in opportunities for women to find jobs (once they are on the labour market).

At the micro level, women’s skills and the household’s resources to find and secure a job shape the opportunities of women to become employed. The job requirements need to match the skills of the potential employee. In addition, a woman must have access to the jobs that suit her. If there are jobs in the vicinity and a woman’s skills match their requirements, it is necessary that the woman and the job ‘find each other’. Opportunities therefore also depend on the resources that women and their households have that can be applied in finding a job.

VALUES

The values condition is reflected by the question: What should be done? Value patterns, for instance on gendered household roles, are first translated to norms that influence which needs are considered most important for women, which jobs are suitable to women, and which can be institutionalised in policies creating opportunities for women. It is in this sense that values underlie needs and opportunities.

Secondly, not every woman who is in need of an income, has no care duties, and can easily find a job will actually seek employment. She can always decide not to. Certain values she or her social environment holds or that are dominant in society can prevent her from seeking or finding employment because it would be considered inappropriate and undesirable. The opposite also holds true: values can stimulate her to find a job. At the individual level, women can have internalised such values and act accordingly. However, a woman might also consciously anticipate how others will judge her behaviour, what values other people hold and which societal norms are dominant. The costs of going against family or societal norms may outweigh the perceived personal benefits of employment. These direct influences of values are reflected by the light gray top segment in Figure 2.2.

On the issue of women’s employment in Muslim countries, at least two broad sets of values should be considered. The first concerns ideas about the general role of women in the public sphere: are women and men supposed to live separate from each other or not? A norm of seclusion restricts the employment of women to working environments in which only women are active. The second includes more specific values about the existence and extent of complementary roles of women and men: are women primarily seen as care providers? If so, they will be less likely considered as potential employees, but ‘feminine jobs’ may still be acceptable and open to them.

These two types of values do not automatically influence women’s employment, as they are only the normative content. Only if this normative content is embodied can it influence women’s behaviour (see also Badran, 2001; Spierings, 2007). Such an embodiment can be found in the above-mentioned societal norms, institutionalised in policies and politics and in internalisations.

2.6.2 NOV – A CONDITIONS APPROACH

The choice to make conditions the underlying frame for identifying factors that influence women’s employment contradicts the common practice in the literature. Most studies start by identifying dimensions, spheres or domains such as economics, politics or culture. For instance, the GAD perspective and Moghadam’s framework have drawn attention to (groups of) factors that are often neglected in mainstream theories. Both stress the importance of political structures and policies, class differences and gender systems (Moghadam, 1996, 1998; 2003; Rathgeber, 1990). Doing so, they complemented existing ideas on the influence of religion (Islam) and economic characteristics. Walby’s more general theory also emphasises the importance of different groups of factors. In Walby’s terms, employment is part of the economic domain (including domestic labour) that coevolves with the other domains, such as the polity and civil society (a label Walby prefers over culture), and different inequalities (class, gender, and so on) shape social relations in each of these domains (2009: Chapter 2). GAD, Moghadam, and Walby justifiably argue for a comprehensive approach that takes into account the cultural, political, and economic domains, and that considers both the productive and reproductive roles of women. However, adding dimensions or domains to a theoretical framework is insufficient for creating a truly holistic framework.

To be able to identify all the important factors influencing women’s employment it is necessary to understand what general causal mechanisms are at work. From these mechanisms the more specific factors can then be derived, but the mechanisms are not domain specific and thus the collection of influencing factors cannot be fully understood when the focus remains on domains. Frameworks that start their reasoning in terms of domains do not go to the core of the phenomenon, which are the theoretical mechanisms, even thought they might pinpoint a large part of all important factors. In sum, starting with domains might lead to possibly neglecting important influences. This is not to say that the different domains are not important; as can be

• A woman’s decision to enter the labour market and whether she will be employed is fully based on a combination of the needs, opportunities and values of the woman and her surroundings.

Box 2.4

i To the extent that the material needs of a woman and her household increase, the greater the probability that a woman is gainfully non-agriculturally employed.

ii To the extent that the care needs of a woman and her household increase, the smaller the probability that a woman is gainfully non-agriculturally employed.

iii To the extent that the labour demand at the societal level increases, the greater the probability that a woman is gainfully non-agriculturally employed.

iv To the extent that a woman’s skills increase, the greater her probability to be gainfully non-agriculturally employed. v To the extent that the resources at the disposal of a woman increase, the greater the probability that she is gainfully non-

agriculturally employed.

vi To the extent that the number of suitable jobs in the vicinity of a woman’s residence increases, the greater the probability that the woman is gainfully non-agriculturally employed.

vii To the extent that the strength of gender seclusion and segregation values increase, the smaller the probability that a woman is gainfully non-agriculturally employed.

derived from the conditions discussed above, the different domains mentioned by Moghadam, Walby and the GAD approach are included in my framework, but this framework in itself is quite different from their approaches.

My approach is inspired by Hijab’s (1988, 2001). She argues that Arab women’s employment is shaped by many factors, such as education, wealth, cultural and social views, legislation and labour market structures. These factors are conceptualised as aspects of three conditions – needs, opportunities, and abilities – “which must be met before women (or men) can be fully integrated into the wage labor force” (1988, p. 73). Besides widening the scope of the framework from Arab women to women in Muslim countries and adding (the interrelatedness of) levels, my conceptualisation of conditions is also substantially different.

Hijab refers to needs as requirements or manpower at what she calls the state level and as income at the popular (micro; in my terms household and individual) level. She sees opportunities as encompassing the proper environment in terms of legislation at the state level as well as the cultural and social obstacles at the popular level. Abilities in her view include training facilities and skills. This classification has several weaknesses. Firstly, her concept of needs includes only economic needs and does not pay attention to broader needs such as care. Secondly, the difference between abilities and opportunities is unclear and both seem to tap into the fit between the labour market situation and women’s characteristics. Thirdly, Hijab includes values and societal norms as part of the concept of opportunities. She thereby conflates different influences and at the same time seems to neglect culture as a force on its own, a system of descriptive and injunctive norms (see Smith & Louis, 2009). Fourthly, she formulates the conditions as if they cannot have a combined effect, that they are mutually exclusive, while I have argued that only values might have an effect by themselves.

In this section, I have argued that each and every causal mechanism is based on (a mixture of) three conditions, which is summarised in Box 2.4. Subsequently – and within the framework of the other theoretical starting points discussed in this chapter – these three conditions have been translated to seven general hypotheses as given in Box 2.5. In the next chapter, these general hypotheses are further specified to factors influencing the likelihood that a woman is to be employed.

2.7 ConCLuSIonS: a HoLIStIC vIew of woMen’S eMpLoyMent deCISIonS and

poSItIonS

In this chapter, I have presented the basic premises on which my theoretical expectations are based and that will be used to formulate specific hypotheses or expectations in the next chapter and the thematic chapters (respectively Chapters 3 and 7, 8, 9 & 10). I have argued that the individual woman is the primary agent who is placed in a four-level context (household, community, country, globe), with different structures and other agents at each of these levels shaping her decision to enter the labour market and influencing whether she will succeed in finding a job. The probability that the woman in the end succeeds in becoming employed depends on the needs, opportunities, and values of herself and her environment. These conditions underlie factors that influence women’s employment at the different levels, whereby contextual factors are expected to manifest a stronger influence the closer they are to the individual woman. Moreover, some of these (contextual) factors will have direct effects, some will influence other explanatory factors at a lower level and thus influence women’s employment indirectly, some will shape the strength of relationships at the lower level, and some contextual effects might turn out to be caused by lower-level differences.

This framework combines insights from different approaches, such as the Gender & Development (GAD) approach (Rathgeber, 1990), Moghadam’s work on women’s economic position in the Middle East (Moghadam, 1998; 2003), Hijab’s approach to work and Arab women (1988, 2001), and Walby’s complexity theory for the social sciences (Walby, 2009). At the same time my framework transcends these approaches by explicitly theorising the multiplicity of the important levels and their interconnections, and by clarifying the relationship between structure and agent as well as the underlying causal factors. Applying this framework, I will formulate specific expectations in the following chapters that encompass the existing literature, point

towards unexplored influences on women’s employment, take position in existing debates, disentangle existing conflated explanations and contextualise explanations of women’s employment.

18 This pattern is not exclusive to Muslim countries; on the