In the new millennium, with the increased interest in the role of gender empowerment in economic development, much has been written on the status of women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The MENA region continues to see the lowest female labor force participation rates in the world (approximately 25 percent), and one of the largest gender wage gaps, estimated to be between 20 and 40 percent (International Labor Organization 2012; Shalaby 2014; World Bank 2015). Michael Ross in his 2008 paper, “Oil, Islam, and Women,” argued that oil, not Islam is to blame for lower levels of women’s labor force in the MENA and, in turn, their political participation. Upon closer examination, however, it appears that oil may not be the most compelling argument to explain Arab women's low levels of participation in the workforce in some MENA countries. Female labor force participation in the four of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the Untied Arab Emirates) was significantly higher than the average for the Arab World between 1990 and 2013, and female labor force participation in Oman has steadily climbed above the average since 2000. Rather, our analysis suggests that oil-driven development could actually boost female labor force participation through public sector employment opportunities, which are available to both men and women. To this end, we combine dis-aggregated data on female labor force participation in the GCC with elite interviews in Oman and Qatar to show how women have benefited from oil-driven development and large public sectors.