UN-ESCWA participated in the wrap-up workshop of the "Geographic Database for Arab Women" Project organized by the Arab Women Organization (AWO) in Cairo from 16 to 18 April 2007. During the workshop, the second phase of the project was launched. It will be jointly managed by UN-ESCWA and AWO and implemented within one year. UN-ESCWA provided a description of the second phase of the project which will focus on "Arab Women in Science and Technology" and proposed a preliminary list of indicators for monitoring the status of Arab women in this field. Participants in the workshop discussed this list and the mechanism needed for collecting the data in the different countries.
It is worth noting that two years ago, AWO launched the project which aims at building an observatory of the status of Arab women in different areas such as: education, social, economic, law, politics, labor and citizenship. A list of indicators related to these areas was identified and a geographic database established to monitor the status of Arab women. Fourteen Arab countries are participating in this project, namely: Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Oman, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, and Yemen.