Female participation and advancement in majority Muslim countries, or nations in which more than 50% of the population identifies as an adherent of the Islamic faith, have traditionally been areas of controversy. Several Western nations,Thompson, William; Joseph Hickey (2005). Society in Focus. Boston, MA: Pearson. 0-205-41365-X. such as the United States and Western Europe, have criticised majority Muslim nations for the lack of involvement and opportunity for women in the private sector.http://www.waterandgender.net/share/img_documents/15_rep_so1.pdf . William Beach, Time Kane (15 January 2008) for reasons such as this.Andrews, Helena. "Muslim Women Don't See Themselves as Oppressed, Survey Finds." New York Times 8 June 2006: n. pag. Print.

Low levels of female labor participation, large wage gaps by gender, and few female executives in large companies in majority Muslim nations are common criticisms of these nations. Accordingly, significant data has been gathered by global institutions about female workers in majority Muslim nations to test these cultural beliefs. Development economists and multinational organizations, such as the United Nations, World Bank, and the International Labour Organization, have gathered significant amounts of data to study the labor contributions of and commercial opportunities for women.World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Rep. Washington DC: World Bank, 2011. PrintPerkins, Dwight H., Steven Radelet, and David L. Lindauer. Economics of Development. 6th ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2006. Print

Majority Muslim nations

There are fifty-one countries in the world in which more than 50% of the population identify as Muslims."Muslim Population by Country". The Future of the Global Muslim Population. Pew Research Center. Retrieved 22 December 2011. These countries spread from North Africa, to the Middle East, to the Balkans and Central Asia, to Southeast Asia. While many nations contain a strong Muslim presence, majority Muslim nations, by definition, have more Muslims as citizens than non-Muslims. Not all majority Muslim states, however, have Islam as their established religion. Turkey, for example, is a prominent Muslim country in which 99% of the population follows some form of Islam. However, there is no official religion. The state is secular. Nigeria is also a majority Muslim country which is officially secular.CIA Factbook -Nigeria.

Most majority Muslim nations, however, recognize Islam as the official state religion. Furthermore, many states identify a specific derivative of the Islamic faith as their official religion. For example, sunni Islam is the official state religion of: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Somalia, and the United Arab Emirates.CIA Factbook. Shia Islam is the official religion of Iran, which is a theocracy. Some minority Islamic sects are official state religions as well. Ibadi, a minority school within Islam, is the official religion of Oman.CIA Factbook -Oman.

Table 1: Selected Majority Muslim Countries Country Population % Muslim Dominant Sect Afghanistan 28,395,716 99% Sunni Egypt 97,343,000 90% Sunni Syria 22,505,000 90% Sunni Iran 76,923,300 98% Shia Iraq 31,234,000 97% Shia Turkey 73,722,988 99% Sunni Indonesia 228,582,000 86.1% Sunni Tunisia 10,383,577 98% Sunni Pakistan 172,800,000 97% Sunni Bangladesh 142,319,000 89% Sunni Saudi Arabia 27,601,038 99% Sunni Nigeria 155,215,573 50.4% Sunni

Not all states in the Muslim World institutionalize a distinction between the sects of Islam. In Pakistan and Iraq, Islam as a faith, is recognized as the official religion."Population: 190,291,129 (July 2012 est.)" Central Intelligence Agency. The World Factbook on Pakistan. 2012. Retrieved 2012-05-26. All sects or schools are included. In Egypt, freedom of religion is extended to the Abrahamic religions even though Sunni Islam is the state-sponsored religion. Similarly, Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim country, guarantees freedom of religion but only recognizes six official religions. Islam is one of and the most prominent of the six. Despite a common religion, majority Muslim nations are quite disparate in terms of size, population, demographic composition, and the legal framework of religion.

General female labor force participation

Table 2: Female Labor Force Participation Rate Country/Year Afghanistan Egypt Syria Iran Iraq Turkey Indonesia Tunisia Pakistan Bangladesh Saudi Arabia Nigeria 2008 15% 23% 14% 15% 14% 25% 51% 25% 22% 56% 17% 48% 2009 15% 24% 13% 15% 14% 27% 51% 25% 22% 57% 17% 48% 2010 16% 24% 13% 16% 14% 28% 51% 25% 22% 57% 17% 48% Source: Global Gender Gap Report 2012, World Economic Forum

A basic indicator of women's involvement in the formal economy is a statistic known as the labor force participation rate. This data point shows the percentage of women in a country who are either employed in full or part-time labor. According to the International Labour Organization, the labor force participation rate is defined as "the proportion of the population ages 15 and older that is economically active: all people who supply labor for the production of goods and services during a specified period." Table 2 lists the labor force participation rates of women in eleven majority Muslim countries. Majority Muslim countries are defined as states in which more than 50% of the population identifies with the Islamic faith.

Of these eleven countries, Bangladesh and Indonesia had the highest rates of female participation in the labor force in 2010 with 57% and 51%, respectively. Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan have the lowest rates of female labor force participation among these eleven nations with 13%, 14%, and 15%, respectively. However, numerically large discrepancies exist in the data for a couple of nations when drawn from different sources. Afghanistan's female labor force participation rate, for example, was 15% in 2010 according to World Bank figures. That percentage nearly doubles to 28.9% if data from UNESCAP is cited. The same discrepancy is true for figures for Iran for which the World Bank lists its female participation rate at 16% in 2010 and UNESCAP lists it as 26.9%. It is unclear why these two sources give significantly different numbers as their methodology and definitions of labor force participation were similar.

Female-to-male workers ratio Another statistic indicative of female participation in the formal economy of a country is the ratio of female to male workers. As nations develop and their economies both expand and diversify, the expansion of jobs and industries increases this ratio, pushing it toward 1, provided female workers have access to job opportunities and firms, collectively, do not systematically discriminate against female candidates.

Generally speaking, the closer the ratio is to 1, the more gender equal an economy is because neither sex has a disproportionate share of jobs. Bangladesh and Indonesia have the largest ratio of these eleven countries with scores of 0.73 and 0.61, respectively. Nigeria also has a relatively large ratio of female to male workers of 0.51. Despite having twice the percentage of females in the actual labor force, Turkey's female to male laborer ratio is far lower than Iran's, 0.35 to 0.44. Similarly, Syria's ratio is barely smaller than Egypt's (0.27 as compared to 0.30) whereas Egypt's female population has twice the percentage size of formal economic workers as Syria's female labor force. These ratios are compiled and published by the World Economic Forum.The Global Gender Gap Report 2012, World Economic Forum. By Ricardo Hausmann, Laura D. Tyson and Saadia Zahidi The median annual income for female workers in the United States was $36,931 in 2010.

The Forum did not, however, list this information for Afghanistan, Iraq, or Tunisia. It is probable that the ratios are small given the low labor force participation rate of women in these countries and high unemployment rates, but given the uncertain correlation between female labor force participation rate and the ratio of male to female workers, this cannot be stated with any certainty. One possible explanation for the seeming discrepancy is the ratio of females to males in the population. In Syria, for every woman between the ages of 15 and 65, there are 1.03 males."Syria." CIA World Fact Book. Central Intelligence Agency, n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2013.

Since there are more men than women for a limited number of jobs, more men, in absolute terms, are excluded from formal employment. Consequently, the ratio of female to male workers increases because women represent a larger percentage of those who work than they represent the entire labor force. Therefore, women would have a relatively higher ratio of female to male workers than its female labor force participation rate may suggest. The sheer size of the male component of the workforce may be sufficient to create a small ratio of female to male workers.

Table 3: Ratio of Female-to-Male Workers Country Afghanistan Egypt Syria Iran Iraq Turkey Indonesia Tunisia Pakistan Bangladesh Saudi Arabia Nigeria 2010 - 0.30 0.27 0.44 - 0.35 0.61 - 0.26 0.73 0.23 0.53 Source: Global Gender Gap Report 2012, World Economic Forum

Similar to the ratio of female to male workers in the labor force is the percentage of the actual labor force composed of women. This differs from the labor force participation rate of women because it shows female workers as a percentage of the total number of workers in the economy as opposed to the percentage of the population of women that are involved in the formal economy. A large female labor force participation rate does not necessarily correlate to a substantial percentage of females in the labor force. However, a high female labor force participation rate demonstrates high economic participation by women in a country regardless of the size of the labor market itself that these women compose. Demographics, particularly birth rates, and human capital formation through education, good nutrition, and access to infrastructure and institutions may play a role in the discrepancies between these indicators.

However, as one is a subsect of the other, the two figures generally move collinearly. Despite a lower female labor force participation rate and a smaller female to male worker ratio, Nigeria's female workers represent the largest component, in terms of percentage, of a nation's labor force when compared to the other ten countries. According to the International Labour Organization, 42.84% of the Nigerian labor force is composed of women. Bangladesh and Indonesia are a close second and third with 39.87% and 38.23%, respectively. Iraq, Syria, and Turkey's labor force's female composition rates (14.30%, 15.20%, and 28.69%, respectively) are quite close to their female labor force participation rates which suggests a population parity between men and women. This is interesting as many other Developing countries do not have population parity by gender."Sex Ratio". The World Factbook.

Female employment characteristics There are a variety of characteristics of female employment such as salary and employment type which are meaningful indicators of female economic participation and female economic stability. These indicators help clarify the economic status women hold in some majority Muslim nations and the permanence of their involvement in the economy. In development economics, great emphasis has been placed on salaried work because it provides a stable source of income.Chen, Martha, Joann Vanek, Francie Lund, James Heintz, Renana Jhabvala, and Christine Bonner. Women, Work, and Poverty. Rep. New York: United Nations Development Fund for Women, 2005. Print.

Salaried work