Empowering Women, Developing Society: Female Education in the Middle East and North Africa

This 8-page policy brief offers an overview of education's benefits to women, families, economies, and societies and highlights the ongoing concerns about education in Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. It also looks at education's links with fertility and employment, two important elements in women's empowerment.

"Education is a key part of strategies to improve individuals' well-being and societies' economic and social development. In the Middle East and North Africa, access to education has improved dramatically over the past few decades, and there have been a number of encouraging trends in girls' and women's education. Primary school enrollment is high or universal in most MENA countries, and gender gaps in secondary school enrollment have already disappeared in several countries. Women in MENA countries are also more likely to enroll in universities than they were in the past.

But great challenges remain. Many people - especially girls - are still excluded from education, and many more are enrolled in school but learning too little to prepare them for 21st-century job markets. In some countries, access to the secondary and higher education that helps create a skilled and knowledgeable labour force continues to be limited; even where access is not a problem, the quality of the education provided is often low. 'The most worrying aspect of the crisis in education is education's inability to provide the requirements for the development of Arab societies,' according to the 2002 Arab Human Development Report."

Education: A Social Right and a Development Imperative

The Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, recognised that women's literacy is key to empowering women's participation in decision-making in society and to improving families' well-being. Additionally, the United Nations has articulated the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which emphasise education's essential role in building democratic societies and creating a foundation for sustained economic growth.

• According to recent studies, education contributes directly to the growth of national income by improving the productive capacities of the labour force.
• As female education rises, fertility, population growth, and infant and child mortality fall and family health improves.
• Increases in girls' secondary school enrollment are associated with increases in women's participation in the labour force and their contributions to household and national income.
• Women's increased earning capacity, in turn, has a positive effect on child nutrition.
• Children - especially daughters - of educated mothers are more likely to be enrolled in school and to have higher levels of educational attainment.
• Educated women are more politically active and better informed about their legal rights and how to exercise them.

Cultural and Economic Factors That Reinforce the Gender Gap

According to the authors, "MENA countries generally have lower levels of women's education and labor force participation than other regions with similar income levels. The interaction between the region's economic structure and its conservative culture, in which traditional gender roles are strongly enforced, is largely responsible."

• Gender discrimination in the MENA region is sometimes codified in law, frequently in family laws or civil codes. In many countries in the region, women must obtain permission from a male relative, usually a husband or father, before seeking employment, requesting a loan, starting a business, or travelling.
• The situation in the region is slowly changing. Women activists, who generally come from the educated segments of society, are challenging the status quo; demanding equality in the family and society; and calling for women's economic, political, and social empowerment.

Education's Effects on Reproductive Choices and Employment

"Education helps women take advantage of opportunities that could benefit them and their families, preparing women for the labor force and helping them understand their legal and reproductive rights."

Fertility

"Education is the single most important determinant of both age at marriage and age at first birth in MENA countries, since women in the region tend to give birth soon after marriage."

• Among married Egyptian women ages 25 to 29, those with no education had married at age 18, on average, and had their first child by age 20; those with a secondary or higher education married at an average age of 23 and had their first child by age 25. Turkey's 1998 indicators showed that 22 percent of girls 15 to 19 years old who had no education or who had not completed primary school were already mothers or pregnant, compared with only 2 percent of girls who had completed secondary or higher education.
• Women with more education also tend to have healthier families. In Egypt, for example, children born to mothers with no formal education were more than twice as likely to die as those born to mothers who had completed secondary school.

Employment

As women's educational attainment in MENA countries has increased, more women have moved into the job market. But women's participation in the labor force is still low. According to the authors, improving the quality of education, providing more vocational training, developing job-creating programmes, and removing obstacles to women's entrepreneurship can help alleviate the high rates of female unemployment.

Ongoing Concerns

Despite many improvements in access to education, illiteracy remains high in some MENA countries, there are still wide gender gaps in parts of the region, and the quality of the education is a major concern throughout the region.

Illiteracy

Although all MENA governments require that all children receive at least five years of schooling and all provide free education at least through high school, the rapid growth of school-age populations in the region is posing a challenge for many governments.

Gender Gaps

Regardless of urban or rural location, women in MENA countries are twice as likely to be illiterate as men are and make up two-thirds of the region's illiterate adults.

Quality of Education

"It is not enough to make education more widely available; the quality of the education also needs to be improved."

In conclusion, the authors recommend that "efforts to improve female education in MENA countries need to go beyond rhetoric and should involve policies and programmes with measurable results. Governments can start by making the MDGs part of national development plans and monitoring progress toward those goals. Governments also need to make an extra effort to ensure that education is more accessible to low-income families and rural populations, with special attention to the quality of the education provided and the need for girls to complete school."