Muslim Women’s Employability — Barriers and Possible Solutions!
Moving to the United Kingdom after huge efforts to get the visa, and joining 50 business builders from different countries around the world at Zinc Mission 2 program was the best miracle ever.
Although I have spent the last few months doing research on AI and Machine Learning to see how they can be used to improve the decision making process, and while I was enjoying the strategic management the most and have spent the last two years working on improving my experience and knowledge in that, I found all my direction has changed once I have moved here!
After a long time of being on the top of Women’s Inclusivity and Empowerment building a safe community of women for a strong presence in the ecosystem in Gaza, and thinking of the barriers they suffer from to achieve all the goals and dreams they grew up praying the God to have them true; I gained the experience in working with the girls in different ages and I know how hard it is to convince a sensitive worried mom that her daughter is safe with us and we are taking care of her while we are improving her skills to a better future.
A small area in a Muslim country surrounded by the different closed borders and a community which is a very conservative according to everyone there, while I recently started thinking of the definition of this word a lot as I don’t see Gaza very conservative in the way they describe at all!
The achievements I have done and the social impact I used to feel proud of in all the projects and activities I have run for women in Business, Tech, Soft Skills, and Life Balance and being able to increase the presence of the women in tech to 48% from 2015 to 2018 was a strong motivation to me to grow out of the capacity I have reached in Gaza and think globally, from the States to the United Kingdom and a Glasgow visit this week!
At Glasgow, the place where I tried to come and study the last year of my MBA in 2017 when I couldn’t make it due to the closure there, back home, I had the chance to come and visit with my colleagues in London this week and continue the research I have started on the Muslim Women’s Employability in Europe focusing on the tech ecosystem as the first and biggest step!
Most of the Muslim women here are Pakistani and Bangladeshi, and most of them are highly educated and talented, but unfortunately, they are 71% more likely to be unemployed due to workplace discrimination.
What made me shocked other than the lack of having Muslim women in the workplace is the situation that they accepted without being able to raise their voices and say no instead of losing their confidence and being turned to house-wives spending the time learning too much wrong stuff that everyone relates to the religion while it’s not!
I wonder why Muslim people don’t learn Arabic to make sure they learn the religion in the right way instead of having it translated to English and Urdu and even more till the exact meaning getting lost!
Visiting one of the Muslim Academies at Glasgow to hear that most of the women come to learn the religion with their children as those children are not going to school due to the sex education is kind of a disaster! Can’t we come over this point in a different way?!
I am so happy that Muslim people in non-Muslim countries still care about their religion, but what about the other subjects of Education? Don’t we need to learn Maths? ( my fav subject! ) don’t we need to learn science and arts? How can we build a bright future without learning other stuff? Doesn’t our religion say that?
Although it’s only religious sessions, the women don’t join if their husbands didn’t give a permission to go! Surprisingly, the Muslim men think in the same way even in the UK!
Being a Palestinian girl from Gaza, born and grow, I can say that the community in Gaza is widely open more than other Muslim communities in the UK! While it’s a very small and closed area suffering from various types of closures and wars, still, it’s a holy thing for the parents there having their daughters educated.
The big concern for the parents is the long working hours especially in tech, as most of the tech companies are in Gaza which is 2 hours far of the people who live in the south.
Another barrier for the ambitious women there is having a good opportunity in tech to grow and being able to travel and learn from the other side of the world.
On the other hand, in the UK, a place where the women can find all the types of education and high-quality jobs; we find these conservative families who make the situation harder instead of supporting their daughters to be strong against the discrimination the women in general and the Muslim of them specifically suffer from.
Despite the side of the women who don’t think of education and work, we can find on the other side of the city a group of highly educated women who are trying hard to spread the word and do the awareness to help increasing the level of education of the women in their community and connecting them to the market.
In the UK in general, there is 1.5 million Muslim Women, two-thirds of them who aged between 16 and 64 are out of work despite the 24.5% of the skills level improvement.
As a tech socio-entrepreneur, the lack of Muslim Women’s Employability in tech in Europe is my problem that I have to solve in the coming few years!
Thinking of that, in the UK, I am building a strong team who believes in this problem to see how can we help thinking of the following points:
- Culture change and social mobility awareness for the Muslim communities
- Help graduates and other skilled women progress in their careers — and support their soft skills and networks early on
- Improve awareness and accessibility of formal childcare
- Work with employers to reduce religious discrimination
- Provide targeted outreach to connect women to job opportunities
- Use public sectors levers to influence employer behaviour
