Female Education in the Arab World

Yarin Kiroglu, 09 Jun 2015

For the past decade, the Arab world has shown immense strides in increasing female education. It has been one of the most important indicators for assessing a country's development and a main route for eliminating inequalities in society. Starting from the early 1970s, the number of women in school in the region has been increasing.[1] After the 1990s, this trend shows additional increase in women attending secondary education. As the number of educated women has grown, so have the rates of female employees working in skilled labor.

 

However, inequality issues do not end with growing levels of educational attendance in the region. In most Arab countries, female education levels are also affected by the quality of education that women are receiving. As such, the quality of education in the past three years has significantly dropped and access to education remains limited. With the ongoing unrest in the region, the number of children without access to education was 8.5 million as of 2012, mostly populated by young girls. Although the number of women attending secondary and tertiary education in the Arab world has increased from 48% to 56% in the past decade, most of the female labor force reside in hard labor industries such as agriculture.[2] With an average of 30% of women employed in skilled labor, the Arab world as a whole should increase its efforts to integrate educated women into the work force.

 

Gender inequality based on social institutions, such as education, health and labor force, is mainly visible in countries with low education levels.[3] Since 2000, primary education attendance for women has increased, on average, by 9% for each Arab country.[4] This increase has been higher for secondary and tertiary enrollment at 13% and 17%, respectively.[5] With the increase in education levels, women become active outside their households and will be encouraged to start their own businesses. Today, the number of women-owned establishments is on the rise, at 12% as of 2013 in the Arab world.

 

Achieving gender parity in all education levels is an important goal for developing countries. Although many Arab countries established gender parity in primary education, there are still considerable attendance gaps between genders in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Syria and Yemen.[6] Despite the regional instability for the past three years, education remains one of the most prominent areas where gender parity actions have been visible and effective with clear positive payoffs.

 


[1] World Development Indicators data, 2012.

[2] For secondary level education, the increase was from 65% to 71% between 2000 and 2012. For tertiary level education, the increase was higher from 22% to 37%. The data excludes Somalia, Sudan, and United Arab Emirates.

[3] Johannes P. Jütting, Christian Morrison, Jeff Dayton-Johnson, and Denis Drechsler, 2008, "Measuring Gender (In) Equality: The OECD Gender, Institutions and Development Data Base," Journal of Human Development, pp. 65-86.

[4] Data are for 2000 to 2012 and do not include Somalia and Sudan.

[5] Data are for 2000 to 2012 and do not include Djibouti.

[6] UNICEF, 2011, "MENA Gender Equality Profile," UNICEF Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa.

 

 


Yarın Kıroğlu is a consultant for GGODR at The World Bank. His research interests include world politics, political demography, political economy of growth and development, economic and demographic implications of bilateral trade, econometrics, game theory, and computational analysis. He holds M.A. in Business Information Systems and M.A. in International Political Economy.

Yarin Kiroglu Yarin Kiroglu

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