The admission of women into the professions and formal labor markets is the second component of differential fertility. The Arab countries, like most of the Muslim world, have surprisingly low rates of urban female workforce participation-from 5 percent in the Arabian Peninsula to hardly more than 25 per-cent in Tunisia, while the world average is around 50 percent. Are women absent from the world of work, or simply from the statistics compiled by men? (It is men, not their wives, who generally reply to census questions, thus attesting to the fact that, at least in the minds of the men, women do not or must not work.) The rate of female workforce activity is in perfect negative correlation with average fertility.

There is nothing exceptional about this. In all societies, domestic responsibilities that weigh upon women increase with the size of the family and, at a certain point, impede them from practicing a profession or occupation outside the home. Another mechanism, more specific to Arab societies, also seems to be operating. It appears that a large proportion, sometimes a majority, of Arab women working outside the home before marriage leave their jobs upon getting married.