Women obtained 35% of jobs created in second half of 2015 — advocates

AMMAN — Out of each 10 job opportunities created in Jordan, only 3.5 opportunities are available for women, a Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI) statement said Tuesday. 

A survey on created jobs for the second half of 2015 showed that a total of 31,000 jobs were generated, 28,000 of which were for Jordanians at 89.6 per cent, SIGI said, citing a Department of Statistics (DoS) survey.

In regard to the social aspect, the survey revealed that 84 per cent of the created jobs were taken by single people, 44 per cent were obtained by those with education below the secondary school certificate, while 41.5 per cent had BA degrees and above. 

SIGI attributed the salary gap between men and women and the hardship of harmonising work and family to employers’ failure to implement pro-women labour regulations, like crèches for the children, and the lack of a decent public transportation system. 

Women's work should mainly focus on achieving sustainable development and empowering women economically but this goal veered when husbands started depending on the income of their spouses, sometimes being unemployed themselves, SIGI’s statement said. 

Moreover, part of gender-based violence comes in the form of husbands taking their wives' salaries through blackmail, deceit and scams if not by force, to the extent that some husbands keep their partners’ ATM cards to withdraw their salaries as soon as they are paid. 

Empowering women economically does not only mean helping them contribute to the economic activity but also means being free to spend their money the way they wish and be able to possess property, SIGI said, adding that this freedom also secures a future for the family and children, especially in cases of divorce or abandonment. 

Another SIGI statement cited data, covering the first six months of 2016, by the Tourism Ministry, which showed that the total number of employees in the tourism sector reached 50,476, marking a 2.8 per cent increase from 2015, when the figure stood at 49,096.

SIGI said that 83.1 per cent of workers in the 2016 period were Jordanians, amounting to 41,961 people, with Jordanian and non-Jordanian women constituting some 10 per cent, totalling 4,870 employees.

Statistics revealed that 1,105 Jordanian women worked in the hospitality sector in the January-June period of 2016, of whom 782 worked in hotels in the capital, 186 at the Dead Sea and 63 in Aqaba, according to the SIGI statement.