Transitions to Adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa Young Women's Rising?

by Gebel, Michael; Heyne, Stefanie

• ISBN13: 9781137355553
• ISBN10: 1137355557
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-09-02
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book offers new insights on young women's situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Adopting a life course perspective Gebel and Heyne develop a general micro-macro theoretical framework for understanding the chances and barriers young women face in their most crucial life period, namely the transition to adulthood. Drawing on large-scale individual-level longitudinal data from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria, the authors describe the incidence, timing, and characteristics of central transitions in the education system, the transition from education to work and family formation. They find that there is no standard pathway to adulthood, yet rather a great variety of individual early life courses inducing a high level of social inequality among young women. The book identifies a set of individual-level, familial, and contextual factors that hinder or pave young women's way in the different life domains and shows strong interrelationships between early life course conditions and transitions.

Author Biography

Michael Gebel is Junior Professor of Labor Market Sociology at the University of Mannheim, Germany. His main research interests include transitions to adulthood, youth unemployment and temporary employment, international comparative research and quantitative methods. 
 
Stefanie Heyne is Researcher in the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research at the University of Mannheim, Germany. Her main research interests are social inequality, labor market sociology and women in society.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
PART I: WOMEN IN MENA COUNTRIES: THEORY AND BACKGROUND
2. A Micro-macro Theory of Young Women's Transition to Adulthood
3. The Context of Case Studies: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iran in Comparison
4. Data and Methodology
PART II: WOMEN'S SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM
5. Education Failures? The Problem of Limited Access to Education and Early Dropout Among Young Women
6. The Determinants of Young Women's Access to Higher Education
PART III: HOUSEWORK OR WAGE WORK? YOUNG WOMEN'S TRANSITIONS AFTER LEAVING EDUCATION
7. Back Home: Young Women's Transition from School to Inactivity
8. Stiff Competition for Privileged Jobs: Young Women's Transition from School to Work
9. A Polarized World of Female Employment? The Quality of First Employment
PART IV: FAMILY FORMATION
10. Young Women's Transition to Marriage and Household Formation in Difficult Times
11. Completing the Pathway: The Transition to First Birth
PART V: CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS
12. Ways to Social Integration of Women in MENA