The literature on women’s employment in the Middle East often speaks of patriarchy, but weknow little about which family structure reflect the negative influence of patriarchy onwomen’s employment. By combining the concept of a classic patriarchal gender contract withthe ‘needs-opportunities-values’ framework, I derive several hypotheses about familystructures and their influence on women’s non-agricultural employment. These are tested onover 110,000 women from nine Greater Middle Eastern countries using logistic regressionmodels. Results show that not only being married and having children has a negative effect onwomen’s employment. The presence of more adult women, adopted children en being thehousehold head increases employment likelihoods. The presence of more adult men, elderlypeople, and for young girls more brothers have a negative effect on women’s employmentlikelihood