Businesswomen, activists discuss women’s representation in labour market

AMMAN — Several Jordanian women organised a ceremony marking Women’s Entrepreneurship Day (WED) on Thursday and discussed methods to support women in the workplace, highlighting  achievements and challenges in the business world.

Fida Taher, the co-founder of Atbaki — an Arabic digital recipe platform, said some 98 per cent of the Jordanian economy relies on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and women lead only 5 per cent of these ventures.

“Women’s representation in the labour market has been deteriorating recently... currently standing at 12.7 per cent,” added Taher, who is also a Jordan WED ambassador. 

She called on participants to find solutions to this issue.

Taher also noted that WED is a UN initiative which 144 countries around the world celebrate annually.

During the event, Senator Haifa Najjar, director general of Ahliyyeh School for Girls and Bishop’s School for Boys, noted that only 7 per cent of women in Zarqa make economic contributions to their families, despite the high rate of educated women living there.

Majda Labadi, corporate vice president of human resources at Hikma Pharmaceuticals PLC, reflected on her job search after she left Lebanon for Germany to pursue her master’s degree in health economics and later returned to Jordan.

“In the mid-1980s, I went for an interview at Hikma and met with Samih Darwazeh, the founder of the company, who told me the only vacancy was at the IT department,” Labadi said, noting that she did not have any experience with computers at that time.

She returned to Darwazeh a week later and told him she would accept the job if the company provided her with the necessary training; he agreed, and she started working at Hikma where she gradually rose to her current post.

Salma Nims, secretary general of the Jordanian National Commission for Women, also recounted obstacles she faced after receiving her master’s degree in sustainable development from London in 1998.

“I chose to focus on water in my degree due to its importance to Jordan,” she said, adding that she applied for a job at all the relevant ministries at the time and did not receive any replies, which led her to work in graphic design.

In 2004, Nims completed her PhD degree in development planning, but could not find a job until she saw a small advertisement that the Planning Ministry needed a project coordinator.

Former ICT minister Nadia Al Saeed, now CEO of Bank al Etihad, spoke about a women’s market programme dubbed “Shorouq” that the bank launched in 2014 to empower women, underscoring the importance of having a supportive environment for women.

“Empowering women economically includes providing them with access to financing, information and markets, in addition to improving legislative and legal environments,” Saeed said.