Women may have difficulties keeping to fixed schedules because of family responsibilities. Management could be persuaded to be flexible on working hours. For example, core working hours of six hours per day could be arranged with flexible working hours on either side, as long as a certain number of hours are worked per week. In other cases, there could be an averaging of annual hours. One should be careful when introducing flexible working time schemes for improving productivity that these do not have a disproportionally negative effect on women. Very few companies in the Arab region favour flexible working time.