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Disagreement amongst Arab writers, researchers, politicians, and others exists regarding the Arab woman's struggle to take on a leadership role traditionally dominated by Arab men. For many, discussions on whether Arab women should work and lead, be a housewife or work with restrictions are continually under controversy. The purpose of this paper is to examine Arab women leadership style based on transformational, transactional, and laissez‐faire styles of men and women.

The main research instrument is the multifactor leadership questionnaire.

The findings reveal that women in the Arab world exceed men on four transformational scales: the attributes version of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Arab men exceed Arab women on two transactional scales: management by exception passive and management by exception active, whereas women exceed men on contingent rewards. Laissez‐faire leadership style goes to Arab men.

Although the paper provides a useful overview of the traditional thinking and abilities of Arab women leadership and their effectiveness in the Arab world, the sample is limited in size. Further research can be done with larger sample to test the findings.

The paper offers inputs for researchers and writers.

This paper aims to explore the position of Arab women in management by examining the existing research on gender and management in the Arab region in order to obtain an overall picture of the advancement of Arab women in their professional lives, point out coherent clusters of research and identify knowledge gaps in existing research.

The study conducts a content analysis of academic articles in order to provide a quantitative as well as qualitative thematic overview of the topics emerged from the literature.

The statistical analysis of researches shows that, the topic of women in management is gaining more importance. The thematic overview of researches shows that authors have concentrated only on few and very broad topics, without much diversity or depth.

The paper provides practitioners some understanding of the position of Arab women in management and factors that influence their professional lives. The paper sets a solid base of previous studies for future researchers studying women in management in the Arab region.

The paper might be considered as the first study to give a systematic overview of the literature on women in management in the Arab region.

Outlines important changes in the role of women in Arab societies, particularly in urban areas. Considers what factors impede or contribute to women’s work in all economic sectors in an attempt to explain and determine the relationship between their activities and social, educational, economic, cultural and health factors. Suggests that findings are related to family size, fertility rates, illiteracy and population per nurse. Recommends increasing job opportunuties and more labour saving technology as ways to increase opportunity for Arab women.

This study aims to investigate whether perceptions about female workplace participation in a number of Arab countries has changed during or after the Arab Spring.

Data are from the representative harmonized cross-sectional World Values Survey. Descriptive measures and regression approaches are applied. Different dimensions of perceptions about female emancipation are presented, while also a composite index derived from these dimensions is analysed.

There was some change for the better (job and education gender equality), but not uniformly across countries, e.g. generally good development in Egypt and Iraq, but a standstill in Jordan, and backsliding was seen in Morocco. Applying the composite index of female emancipation using regressions confirm these results – even when male and female respondents are analysed separately.

More Arab nations in the study would have been good such that the extent and consequences for an even larger part of the Arab world could be presented. Unfortunately, these data are not available. This implies that the representativeness of the results for the whole of the Arab world is perhaps reduced.

The results can inform policymakers and non-governmental organizations, etc., regarding areas where more focus is needed such that women’s rights will not merely be statements on paper but also mean that females are also emancipated in practice.

New evidence is presented based on comparable data for Arab nations analysing the possible effects of the Arab Spring on perceptions about female emancipation.

Many factors influence the participation of women in political life in Arab societies. Some of these factors contribute to women’s participation in political life, while others have a negative effect. In this study, the reasons for limited participation of women in Arab parliaments, ministers, and governmental councils are investigated. Its aim is to identify, explain, and determine the relationship between women’s participation in political life in Arab societies and social, educational, economical, cultural, and health factors. Secondary data from several sources are used. Social, educational, economical, cultural, and health factors are assumed to be independent variables. Women’s participation in political life is the dependent variable. The sample includes all Arab societies (22 countries). The results of correlation analysis indicate that family size, number of children in family, and fertility rate had a significant and negative association with women’s participation in political life, while percent of family in urban areas was significant and positively related to the same variable. The results of path analysis show that the percent of women in Arab parliaments and in governmental organizations had significant direct effects on women’s participation in political life, while life expectancy of women, GNP per capita, and families in rural areas had significant indirect effects. The most important recommendation, one that can be used as a plan for women’s future in Arab societies, is to improve the social condition of women and increase their participation in decisionmaking at the local and national levels and to create conditions that will enhance the position of women. This can be accomplished by following a comprehensive method aiming at deepening women’s consciousness of their political and legal rights.

Drawing upon the disadvantage theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate patterns of entrepreneurship evolving under conditions of double discrimination characterizing the situation of Arab women entrepreneurs in Israel.

A comprehensive questionnaire was administered in 2006 to a sample of 405 Arab‐Muslim women entrepreneurs in the northern and southern “triangle” of Israel. The authors used a snowball convenient method, contacting business women in the “triangle” area by word of mouth. Based on data provided by the Center of Fostering Entrepreneurship (in Hebrew “MATI”) in Bakka el Garbia, it was assumed that about 80 percent of all Arab women business owners in this particular area had been reached.

In line with the literature, it was found that under conditions of double discrimination a rather traditional type of entrepreneurship evolves, but the authors' findings do not confirm that these businesses are necessarily marginal and illegal. Instead the authors found a variety of types; the majority of which the authors would call community‐based traditional micro‐enterprises.

The paper adds to the understanding of entrepreneurial patterns emerging under conditions of discrimination. It is believed to be one of the very first studies directly investigating a large group of Arab women entrepreneurs in Israel; therefore the understanding of the personal and business characteristics of these women is of major importance.

This paper aims to explore barriers to employment, problems caused by working, motivation to work and job satisfaction of women employed in hotels in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The study surveyed 385 women working in 75 hotels in KSA and UAE. The sample included citizens of KSA and UAE (n = 177), Arab and non-Arab expatriates (n = 208) and women with and without caring responsibilities for children or adults. The survey responses were analysed by stratifying the sample, using mean-comparison tests to consider sub-sample differences and regression analysis to quantify associations with job satisfaction.

Women in the sample with childcare or other caring responsibilities were more likely to report work-family conflicts which were in turn linked negatively to job satisfaction. These women were also the most positive about flexible employment practices. Nationals and expatriate Arabs reported higher levels of satisfaction with managerial aspects of their work. However, nationals in KSA recorded lower levels of job satisfaction in relation to pay and conditions and also said that low salaries were a barrier to taking up employment in the first place. Negative social attitudes towards women working in hotels were a particular concern for nationals and expatriate Arab women.

The sample is not representative of all females working in hotels in UAE and KSA, and the results cannot be generalised. However, implications include the need to examine the experiences of self-initiated expatriate women and consider women as part of a family system.

The analysis is based on original data collected through fieldwork. The findings generate new insights on the experiences of women working in hotels in KSA and UAE.

This paper aims to investigate how mobile phones can be used to support women’s entrepreneurship in Arab countries. The objective is to explore new ways to close the gender gaps in terms of entrepreneurship in these countries.

The methodology used in this research is an in-depth analysis of the existing literature and recent reports on women’s entrepreneurship and on the adoption and use of mobile phones in Arab countries.

The findings of this research indicate that female Arab entrepreneurs are interested in using mobile phones. However, they have not yet realised the full potential of mobile technology in empowering them beyond its basic use. Several challenges facing women entrepreneurship in the Arab countries were identified. Mobile phones can be used to overcome these challenges.

This research is based on the collection and analysis of secondary data rather than primary data to support the findings.

There is a need for collaboration between telecommunication companies operating in the Arab region and government initiatives to build a solid environment in which female Arab entrepreneurs can operate.

This research provides new insights and recommendations for reducing the gender gaps in terms of entrepreneurship by using new and improved techniques to address women’s needs for economic independence. This will also increase the profit gained by the telecommunication companies operating in Arab countries and bring additional income to this region.

This paper aims to analyze the discourse of Arab feminism social media pages as a form of real-time new media. This is to be conducted culturally to understand the Westernized character these pages tend to propagate and the politico-cultural significations of such a propagation.

Using visual and content analysis the paper analyzes both the written and visual contents of two popular Arab feminist Facebook pages, “Thory” and “Feminist doodles” to explore its culture relevance/Westernization via the categories of “re-employing the binary second wave feminism, the historical relevance and the Westernized tone of both pages.

The pages showed a tendency toward second wave, Westernized, anti-orient feminism. Such importation of feminism made the pages’ message not only a bit irrelevant but also conceptually violent to a large extent. Starting from alien contexts, the two pages dislocate the Arab women experiences of their situation for the sake of comprehending and adapting to heavily Westernized images.

The paper contributes to the ongoing debate over the gender issue in the Arab context after 2011, what it originally offers is discussing the cultural relevance of popular feminist Facebook pages claiming to represent the everyday struggles of the Arab women. In addition, it shows the impact of real-time media on identity formulation.