How COVID-19 is pushing MENA companies to embrace flex work

How COVID-19 is pushing MENA companies to embrace flex work

While hard data on individual MENA countries does not exist, local companies repeatedly report that many female employees quit their jobs after having children. This aligns with global research from the universities of Bristol and Essex, which found that  17 percent of women leave employment completely in the five years following childbirth, compared to only four percent of men. Meanwhile, the South Korea Institute of Child Care and Education found that 40 percent of mothers quit their jobs for childbirth or childcare. Less than one percent of fathers did the same.But COVID-19 has proved a watershed moment for redefining how and where we work. Thanks largely to the connecting power of the Internet, the world is learning to adapt to home-based work and other flexible working arrangements, creating new opportunities including for women in MENA.I am based in Istanbul, Turkey and work online with far-flung colleagues sitting in Beirut, Cairo, Rabat, Washington, and elsewhere. Over the last year, cities around the world have applied various degrees of lockdown to help contain the spread of coronavirus.  In Istanbul, there are mandatory stay-at-home orders. To adjust, we had to be agile and flexible. This new way of working at a distance requires