Conclusions

 

     In conclusion, Middle Eastern women face many barriers to their access to an equal and quality education; however, these obstacles can be overcome with strategic reform, popular support, and state commitment to improvement.  The major categories of obstacles to education are societal roles, lack of or inefficient use of resources, and the structure of educational systems.

 

     Female enrollment in public schools has been increasing across the Middle East for the past two decades; however, the education that they receive is not always one that enhances their knowledge and skills and prepares them to work.  This is often due to the fact that Middle Eastern women are unlikely to enter the workforce; their unemployment rates have decreased, but remained substantially higher than males’, since 1995.  Women must enter the workforce for their education to be profitable.  However, all unemployment in the Middle East has risen in the past ten years.  How to educate Middle Eastern youth effectively for jobs that do not exist is a major problem that faces the entire region.  For more jobs to be created, these Arab states must open their markets more to foreign companies and private ventures, rather than relying on the rentier state structure to employ all of their citizens.  States that do not employ the rentier state structure need to improve their social status protection measures through increased pensions, so that mature adults do not fear their fate if they retire, and therefore open their positions to a younger workforce.  These large-scale measures will open the labor market to female workers, which will contribute to economic development for these states. 

 

     Once women join the workforce, their schooling will become more important and prioritized not only to their employers and the state, but also to individual families.  Reducing the cost of girls’ education to parents must also be considered in the scope of the opportunity cost: whether it would be, in the long-term, more profitable to allow girls to drop out of school to get married, or to continue their studies for a higher-paying career.  Once the latter becomes more economically attractive, female access to education will increase. 

 

      Finally, Middle Eastern schools themselves need to be reformed: irrelevant curricula, abuse, cheating, exploitation, overcrowding, underfunding, and high stakes all plague various educational systems in the region, drain the resources of families, and degrade the quality of education.  Schools must teach males and females equally; their curricula must reflect the genders equally and teach them both the same useful and important skills that will be relevant to jobs that will be available to them.  The cost of education must be lowered so that sons and daughters will have equal opportunity within their families to go to school.  Private schools could be a solution to this issue.  However, in state-funded schools, male and female education must have the equal funding, and equal amounts of male and female teachers must be employed at every level. 

 

     Males and females are equal and have the same universal human rights, including the right to work, to equal pay for equal work, and to education.  Until these rights are guaranteed, Middle Eastern nations are doing their citizens a disservice.  It is vital that females everywhere can attend school as easily as their male counterparts, while within their cultural, social, and religious requirements.  It is also important that this education has high quality, and does not rely solely on memorization, but teaches knowledge and skills that Middle Eastern youth need for their futures.  An educated population, whose labor market is open to young people both male and female, will advance the economic development of the Middle East.  Government investment, popular support, and international commitment to education can achieve this goal.

 

     This study has primarily considered three countries in the Middle East: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria; however, complex individual problems face every country.  Further research could delve into the specific obstacles that face girls in other parts of the Middle East, or how Syrian girls’ education has been affected during the ongoing civil war and international conflict.  Additionally, this study has primarily focused on large-scale problems such as pensions, unemployment, corruption, and the like.  A more detailed and focused study could evaluate how one of these issues alone affects girls’ education, or how individual obstacles such as distance, siblings, or individual preference affect girls and their schooling.  This issue is a broad and long-term puzzle that will continue to change as the Middle East grows as a region, as individual states make decisions that impact their schools, and as regional traditions and practices evolve with time.