AMMAN –– Over 5,000 job opportunities for women between the ages of 18 and 32 will be created in the second quarter of this year, a Jordan Forum for Business and Professional Women (JFBPW) official announced recently.
“JFBPW provided training for more than 80,000 women in the Kingdom in the last four years,” JFBPW CEO Rania Khatib told The Jordan Times during the launching of a businesswoman’s export guidebook on Sunday.
Organised in cooperation with the USAID-funded Sustainable Achievement of Business Expansion and Quality Programme (SABEQ), the booklet includes guidelines for various sectors including marketing, investment and international business practices.
Senator Wijdan Saket Tal-houni, who opened the event, said the initiative will open doors for businesswomen to the international market and is part of JFBPW efforts to build economic life in Jordan. She added that it constitutes a way of broadening the minds of businessmen and women to target external markets and help increase domestic exports.
She added that beneficiaries included owners and managers of small-business enterprises, investors, potential businesswomen, doctors and lawyers and self-employed women, noting that the forum has signed a MoU with a national investor based in Dubai who intends to relocate his investments to Jordan.
According to JFBPW studies, women’s participation in the workforce has increased to 27.8 per cent over the past three years compared to 10 per cent in the entire 1960s.
Over 90 per cent of Jordanian businesses are small- and medium-sized enterprises, 4 per cent of which are owned by women.
Women business owners and entrepreneurs still face several obstacles such as gender-related issues, and access to finance and social misperceptions of working women, the studies revealed.
Khatib stressed that despite the challenges, some businesswomen in the Kingdom have been working hard to export Jordanian products to international markets.
She noted that a women-owned Dead Sea products manufacturing company successfully has penetrated the Chinese market.
She indicated over 8,000 businesswomen are registered with the Ministry of Industry and Trade and that the forum is lobbying to have women involved in the decision-making process and elected to the chambers of commerce and industry.
The forum, which was established in 1976, is a non-profit business association with Her Majesty Queen Rania serving as honorary president.
By Omar Obeidat, The Jordan Times
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