Arab business doesn't need driven women...it needs them to drive themselves

There has been plenty of jaw-jaw on how to get more Arab women into the work place, now there is chance hard cash will be thrown at the issue. The women's advisory panel of the Islamic Development Bank is meeting in Bahrain to discuss ways of spending a $10bn poverty-reduction fund. How they will spend this windfall is anyone's guess. There are a myriad of problems and the size of the task is daunting. According to UN data, in 2001, the participation of women in the global economy was estimated at 55.2 per cent, with only 29 per cent of economic activity in the Arab region, one of the lowest in the world. In 2002, the latest figures available, 44 million adult women (aged over 15 years and representing almost half of the female population of the Arab region) could not read or write.

In Saudi Arabia, where 58 per cent of University students are women, only around 9 percent of the women of the working age are available to work. As Arab News reports today, maybe the best to get women contributing to the economy is allowing them to drive. $10bn will buy a lot of Nissan Sunnys.