moreover female employment in the informal sector is characterised by a predominance of unpaid care work and a vulnerable job status however the lack of genderdisaggregated data makes it difficult to evaluate and monitor female entrepreneurship in the mena region this drops to during the early stage of the business life course and the decrease continues to just of established businesses the proportion is far lower than in other emerging and developed economies while tea gender gaps barely exist in other emerging economies eg indonesia malaysia or brazil the gap is significant in the six countries under review figure