Working Women in Jordan: Education, Migration, and Aspiration

A surprising look at the meaningful social changes in Jordan as lived and navigated by educated women.

Jordan has witnessed tremendous societal transformation in its relatively short history. Today it has one of the most highly educated populations in the region, and women have outnumbered and outperformed their male counterparts for more than a decade. Yet, despite their education and professional status, many women still struggle to build a secure future and a life befitting of their aspirations.

In Working Women in Jordan anthropologist Fida J. Adely turns to college-educated women in Jordan who migrate from rural provinces to Amman for employment opportunities. Building on twelve years of ethnographic research and extensive interviews with dozens of women, as well as some of their family members, Adely analyzes the effects of developments such as expanded educational opportunities, urbanization, privatization, and the restructuring of the labor market on women’s life trajectories, gender roles, the institution of marriage, and kinship relations. Through these rich narrative accounts and the analysis of broader socio-economic shifts, Adely explains how educational structures can act as both facilitators and obstacles to workforce entry--along with cascading consequences for family and social life. Deeply thorough and compelling, Working Women in Jordan asks readers to think more critically about what counts as development, and for whom.

Fida J. Adely is the Hala and Clovis Maksoud Chair in Arab Studies and associate professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University. She is the author of Gendered Paradoxes: Educating Jordanian Women in Nation, Faith, and Progress, published by the University of Chicago Press.