were family attitudes relating to gender roles and responsibilities. For example, parents (both mothers and fathers) who believed in girls’ intellectual ability to achieve academically tended to support their daughters’ continued attendance in school. Moreover, parents who believed in the possibility of women working outside of the home tended to support their daughters’ education” (Fincham 2017, 369). If education is needed to acquire the knowledge and skills to access the labor market, and if higher education is needed to climb within the labor market, Sudan’s patriarchal customs are inhibiting many girls and women, though by no means all, from both accessing and rising within the labor market, irrespective of, for example, the number and quality of the schools and universities in their areas.

# **Importance of** **_wasta_ for access to economic opportunities**

## **Box 2. A context of low levels of social capital and trust in Sudan**

**Social capital is a term that political theorists, sociologists, and social workers, among others, have been using for over a century to describe the nature, strength, and utility of the bonds that members of a society form.** According to Francis Fukuyama, “[S]ocial capital is an instantiated informal norm that promotes co-operation between two or more individuals. The norms that constitute social capital can range from a norm of reciprocity between two friends all the way up to complex and elaborately articulated doctrines like Christianity or Confucianism. They must be instantiated in an actual human relationship: the norm of reciprocity exists _in potentia_ in my dealings with all people, but is actualised only in my dealings with _my_ friends. By this definition, trust, networks, civil society, and the like, which have been associated with social capital, are all epiphenomenal, arising as a result of social capital but not constituting social capital itself.” The last sentence of Fukuyama’s definition is especially important, because it underscores the relationship between social capital, on the one hand, and trust, networks, and civil society, on the other.

**Trust and networks uphold institutions and formal economies in many liberal democracies.** They have been similarly demonstrated to uphold informal economies in many African countries. According to the Arab Barometer (2018), interpersonal trust is low in Sudan; only 14 percent of the Sudanese surveyed believe “most people can be trusted.” About 84 percent felt “I must be very careful in dealing with people.” The Sudanese who were surveyed were equally wary of their country’s institutions. For example, when asked about their trust in the Parliament, 68 percent reported “not very much trust” or “no trust at all,” and for civil service, this figure was 64 percent. The trust in local governments is equally low with 63 percent reporting not much or no trust at all. When it comes to the private sector, the situation is similar with 65 percent of respondents claiming to have not much or no trust at all in domestic business people and 61 percent for private banks. Of the 16 institutions that the Sudanese who were surveyed were asked to assess, people had by far the greatest trust in the army: 31 percent reported “a great deal of trust,” while 33 percent reported “quite a lot of trust.” _Sources_ : Fukuyama 2001, 7; Odera 2013.

An important informal institution that affects women’s and youth’s ability to access the labor market in Sudan is _wasta_ . _Wasta_ is an Arabic term that means having a connection to someone who can ‘get things done’. Whereas patriarchal customs appear to exert more constraints on the acquisition of human capital, _wasta_ appears to exert more constraints on the acquisition of social capital and, by extension, individuals’ ability to access networks for economic and other gain. According to academic Laura Mann, “[ _Wasta_ ] signifies both the possession of ties (a person can ‘have _wasta’_ ) and the person who intermediates on behalf of someone (a person can be ‘one’s _wasta’_ .)” Simply put, _wasta_ is, “loyalty plus access to power” (Mann 2014, 563) (italics in original). _Wasta_ is widely acknowledged to play a role in the functioning of many Middle Eastern and North African countries’ bureaucracies. “ _[W]asta_ is not perceived as corruption across MENA [Middle Eastern and North African] societies and is not criminalized in the same way as in 32