learning the preferred method, and evaluation generally based entirely on end of year examinations. Creativity and independent thinking are neither encouraged nor rewarded.6
The challenge of finding suitable employment on completing education is profound for most Arabs and especially females, who constitute the majority of students in universities in most Arab countries and in the secondary systems of many. Female participation in labor forces, however, is lower than in any other region. Polling data reveals that wasta, personal connections, are considered by the majority of Arabs as the principal or only means of getting a job. Jobs themselves are rarely secure and rewarding. In Egypt, for example, some three-quarters of them in the private sector are informal, so lowly paid, with no contract, social security or health insurance, and typically in micro-enterprises with less than five employees that have inadequate capital and access to credit. Almost one third of Egyptians work for the government in secure, but largely mind-numbing, unfulfilling jobs, typically in overcrowded offices with inadequate technical infrastructure.
Low labor productivity plagues all Arab economies, a consequence of which since the 1980s has been stagnating GDP per capita. The Arab world’s share of manufactures in world trade has been dropping steadily since then and at some 2 percent is now well below the level predicted by its GDP. Its spending on research and development is in proportion to GDP the world’s lowest. These conditions encourage emigration, especially among the educated. In Lebanon, for example, more than half of university graduates have emigrated, the highest proportion in the world. About half of Egypt’s doctors work abroad.
These maladies of Arab public spheres are not offset by rewarding private lives. Traditional bonds are eroding but not being replaced by new ones. Religiosity, as measured by polls conducted by Pew and the Arab Barometer, is in significant, sustained decline, especially among younger Arabs.7 A poll by the latter organization in late 2020 reported that more than half of Lebanese want a secular government.8 High rates of divorce, which for example in Egypt affects about half of all marriages, are suggestive of stress on families. Reconciling global norms of gender relations with traditional subordination of females in the Arab world poses ever greater challenges as Arab women become more assertive in claiming their rights. As extended families have weakened their various roles are not being picked up by say vocational organizations. Professional associations are typically tightly controlled by governments. They offer little more than nominal pensions to their members. They do not foster professional solidarities, such as through peer group evaluations. Labor unions are even more tightly controlled and limited almost entirely to employees of state owned enterprises, which are in decline throughout the Arab world. It is difficult for either professionals or those working in trades to gain a sense of fulfillment through recognition from colleagues because such horizontal solidarities are discouraged by nervous regimes.
Arab political thought also reflects the dignity deficit. It has bounced from one orientation to another as each has proven unable to substantially and in sustained fashion guide effective Arab development. Arab nationalism failed to unite the Arabs, contain Israel, overcome inequality, or propel rapid economic growth. After the calamitous defeat in 1967 by Israel, ideological commitment to the broader Arab world was eroded by both state-based nationalisms and Islamism. In recent years the former has been eroded by sub-state loyalties, such as those among Amazigh in North Africa, Nubians in Egypt, or Kurds in Iraq, which arise because of the manifest economic and political shortcomings and anti-pluralistic nature of the Arab states under which they live. Islamism’s star has faded in light of its failures in briefly democratic Egypt and its violent excesses throughout the region which repelled most Arabs and invited strong countermeasures by external and internal actors alike. The brief apperance of Arab neo-liberalism from the late 1990s quickly faded in light of the realities of crony
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