Dr. Ahmad “Jordan” Al-Zu'Bi

Jordan Daily - Jordan has spent generations building female human capital. Women have reached some of the country’s most important institutions. Yet one office remains untouched. Why?

Jordan has changed enormously over the past century. Governments have come and gone. Institutions have been built and rebuilt. Generations have changed. Jordanian women have become ministers, senators, diplomats, judges, executives, academics, physicians, engineers and leaders across public life.

Yet one chair has remained exclusively male: the chair of the prime minister.

 Why has Jordan never had a woman prime minister?

It is a simple question, but after more than a century, it deserves a serious answer. Jordanian women do not need another test to prove that they can lead. They have already done that. Nor is the argument that a woman would necessarily govern better than a man. The more interesting question is why all the education, experience and professional capability accumulated by Jordanian women has never travelled all the way to the country’s highest executive office.

The relevant question is no longer whether Jordan produces qualified women. It demonstrably does. The question is why the mechanism that converts qualifications into authority has never converted one of them into a prime minister.

Jordan may not have a female talent problem at all. It may have what I would call the economics of the missing promotion.

The Economics of the Missing Promotion

Economists call education, experience, skills and accumulated professional knowledge human capital. Families invest in it, governments invest in it, and individuals spend decades building it. But producing human capital is only half the economic equation. A country must also know how to identify it, use it and allow it to reach positions where it can generate the greatest return.

Jordan’s Economic Modernization Vision makes this question particularly relevant. Its 2026–2029 executive program explicitly seeks to “at least double female economic participation.” That is not merely a social objective. It is an economic one: making greater use of productive capacity that already exists within Jordan.

Women can acquire education, build careers, enter public institutions and assume substantial responsibility. Yet no woman has crossed the final threshold into the premiership. Jordan may therefore face a last-mile problem in human-capital allocation: the country has succeeded in producing highly qualified women, increasingly succeeded in placing them inside important institutions, but has never completed the final conversion from accumulated capability to the highest executive authority.

Familiar Faces. But Never This Face

Last week, in my article Mr. Prime Minister, Why Does Jordan Keep Recycling the Same Faces? I asked why Jordan so often returns to familiar political figures when filling senior public positions. But hidden inside that question was another one. Among all the faces Jordan has recycled, why has the face forming the government never been a woman?

There is an economic logic behind familiarity. Appointments are decisions under uncertainty. With someone already known to the political system, decision-makers know more about that person’s experience, relationships, governing style, strengths and weaknesses. Familiarity therefore carries what we might call a familiarity premium.

But that creates another question: what happens when women become familiar too? Jordanian women have accumulated decades of experience across public institutions and professional life. If experience and familiarity matter when governments are formed, the question is no longer whether women have entered the pipeline. It is why that pipeline has never ended at the premiership.

The economic cost of repeatedly searching among familiar candidates is not only whom a country appoints. It is also whom it never discovers. King Abdullah himself connected modernization with this idea in his 2022 Speech from the Throne, calling for the empowerment of women and youth and for “new leadership” capable of contributing to future governments. Perhaps new faces and the missing female prime minister were never two separate questions.

When Leadership Changes What a Little Girl Can Imagine

There is another economic effect, one much harder to put into a national account. My little niece Maria says she wants to become prime minister. To an economist, that innocent ambition raises a serious question about expectations. People invest in education, careers and difficult professional paths partly according to what they believe is possible. What we see around us helps shape what we imagine for ourselves.

Queen Rania has long emphasized the importance of successful women serving as examples for others. The economics is straightforward: precedents can alter expectations. Seeing a woman in a position that no woman has occupied before does not determine what a young girl will become, but it changes what she knows she can become.

Economists may call that belief updating. Maria would probably just call it possibility.

Women Do Not Need to Prove They Can Lead

I have lived and worked across five continents, and one observation about Jordan has followed me surprisingly far: people know Queen Rania. Across countries and cultures, I have repeatedly encountered admiration for her international presence, her advocacy and the way she represents Jordan abroad. For many people beyond our borders, she is among Jordan’s most recognizable figures.

That matters because Jordanian female leadership does not need to be imagined theoretically. Queen Rania once described King Abdullah as one of the strongest believers that “capability is not defined by gender.” She has also celebrated accomplished Jordanian women and the responsibilities they carry across their professional and family lives.

Economists have documented differences in the experiences, information and perspectives that men and women can bring to leadership in particular settings. The larger point is simpler: narrowing the search for leadership carries an opportunity cost. The economic question is not whether a woman can outperform a man. Women should not have to pass a test we do not impose on men before being considered capable of governing.

And perhaps this principle does not end at the premiership. Jordanian women already serve across the Armed Forces and security institutions. Over time, why should the highest positions in the military, intelligence or public security remain unimaginable for women too?

What If Jordan Made History Twice?

Imagine Jordan making history twice at once: its first woman prime minister forming its first broadly gender-balanced cabinet. Imagine new faces alongside experienced ones, younger and mid-career professionals alongside institutional veterans, and people chosen not because they satisfy a demographic spreadsheet but because they bring the expertise the country needs.

The economics is talent matching: search more widely for qualified people and put them where their expertise is most valuable. There could also be a diversity dividend, including what risk economists might call information diversification. The argument for a broader cabinet is not that demographic diversity mechanically produces better decisions. It is that broader search can diversify the information entering the room. Different professional, generational and lived experiences can reveal different constraints, risks and policy responses. Diversity is valuable when it expands the government's information set, not when it merely improves the photograph.

Jordan does not have to choose between experience and renewal. It needs them in the same room, working together. Keep the experienced hands at the table, but make the circle bigger and pull up more chairs for exceptional new faces. After all, today's newcomers, if given the opportunity to serve, become tomorrow's experienced leaders.

And perhaps that is the real sequel to my previous article: can a new face travel all the way to the premiership?

The Palace Has Already Set the Benchmark

None of this sits outside Jordan’s own modernization agenda. King Abdullah has repeatedly connected modernization with empowering women and producing new leadership. In a Speech from the Throne, he put the principle particularly plainly, calling on institutions to support young people and women “in deeds, not words” and make way for their progress.

Queen Rania has offered an even simpler benchmark: “capability is not defined by gender.” Jordan’s Economic Modernization Vision, meanwhile, explicitly seeks to at least double female economic participation.

Taken together, the direction is clear. If Jordan wants new leadership, greater female economic participation and better use of its human capital, what does the century-long absence of a woman from the premiership tell us about the final stage of that process?

The Last Door

Jordan does not need a woman prime minister to prove that Jordanian women can lead. They have already answered that question themselves. Nor would one woman at the premiership automatically solve low female economic participation, childcare constraints, workplace barriers or the other structural problems women encounter. Those require policy, institutions and sustained implementation.

But firsts matter for another reason. Eventually, they stop being firsts. What once seemed exceptional becomes ordinary. What once required explanation becomes part of the institutional landscape.

My little niece Maria says she wants to become prime minister.

I hope that when Maria is old enough to understand this article, Jordan’s first woman prime minister will already be history.

And the question in this headline will no longer need to be asked.