Empowering women, developing society: female education in the Middle East and North Africa

This policy brief offers an overview of education’s benefits to women, families, economies, and societies and highlights the ongoing concerns about education in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It also looks at education’s links with fertility and employment, which the authors identify as two important elements in women’s empowerment.

The brief first discusses education as a social right and development imperative, arguing that education is a key strategy for reducing poverty in the MENA region where poverty is not as deep as in other developing regions. It examines the cultural and economic factors that reinforce the gender gap in MENA countries, and discusses the effect of education on women’s reproductive choices and employment.

While MENA countries have made progress in making education more easily available to women over the past few decades, there are still some ongoing concerns. Some of the main findings of this policy briefing include:

• 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.
• In Turkey, 22 per cent 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 per cent of girls who had completed secondary or higher education.
• Only 20 per cent of women ages 15 and older in MENA countries are in the labour force - the lowest level of any world region.
• 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.
• Gender gaps in education vary greatly across countries in the region but are generally wider in countries where overall literacy and school enrolment are lower.

The policy briefing recommends that MENA governments can improve efforts to improve female education by:

• making the Millennium Development Goals part of national plans and by monitoring progress towards those goals
• making 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.