Ready to Lead: Understanding Women's Public Leadership in the Middle East and North Africa

This report introduces The Middle East Women Leaders Index (MEWLI), a first-of-its-kind data tool designed to quantify women’s representation in leadership in the public sector in the MENA region. This index introduces the Pipeline-Participation-Authority Framework (PPA) that seeks to measure gender parity beyond descriptive representation which limits measures of representation to reaching a set proportion of positions. This framework expands on the meaning of gender parity in public institutions by also considering enablers and barriers for women to reaching such positions as well as the authority a women leader can effectively wield once in power. This framework addresses contextual factors and data limitations, and employs the Ascending Leaders categorization launched in this report by placing 21 MENA societies in one of four categories based on the extent of women’s representation in public leadership (Glass Ceilings score), as well as the distribution of women leaders across policy functions (Glass Walls score).