Women Employment amid Austerity: A Widening Gap

Ahmed ElSayed

AUC School of Business Research Associate Professor and Director of Research

J-PAL MENA at AUC

Ahmed Elsayed is a Research Associate Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and the Executive Director of J-PAL MENA at AUC. Before joining AUC, Ahmed was a Senior Researcher at the IZA- Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany. He was also the Deputy Director of the IZA’s research program, Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries; (G²LM | LIC) and the research program Labor and Development Ahmed’s main research interests are labor, migration, and development economics. His work has been published in top academic journals, including, among others Journal of the Europen Economic Association, the European Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and the Journal of Population Economics. He also published 2021, an Oxford University Press book on opportunities and challenges of Labor markets in Low-Income Countries.

Ines Ayari

Chief Technical Advisor - Decent Work for Women in Egypt, Tunisia & Morocco at the International Labour Organization

Ines is the Chief Technical Advisor for the ILO's Decent Work for Women project, working at the intersection between gender and climate change. She is a Senior Gender Advisor with an accomplishment of almost 15 years of overseeing interventions, providing strategic advice and programming priorities in support of gender equality and women empowerment. She is an influential international communicator with extensive experience in results-based management, policy dialogue, resource mobilization, advocacy, and a proven capacity to articulate focused messages on gender and development. She also has extensive partnership development experience; she has established strong linkages with and liaised between governments, international organizations, research institutes, foundations, the private sector and civil society by organizing networks in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Europe. She has worked with the ILO, ITC (UN/WTO), UNDP, UN Women, the World Economic Forum (WEF), the OECD, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Union and a wide range of NGOs. She holds a BA in International Affairs focusing on law and diplomacy from the University of Nevada, Reno, and an MA in International Relations focusing on development cooperation from Sciences Po. Paris.