Short-Term Policy Recommendations
Societal roles, resources, and system structures present obstacles to women’s education in many different ways in countries in the Middle East. In Egypt, the lack of an effective pension program reinforces the role of women as wives first, while lack of government resources has created underfunded schools with underpaid teachers who use corruptly their positions to make schooling expensive. Each of these phenomena, both individually and together, affect girls’ easy access to quality education. In Saudi Arabia, traditional social roles have led to low employment for women, and inferior educational standards and funding. Though schooling is provided, it is at a lower quality and with smaller funding than for males. This phenomenon is ensured by strict gender segregation, though separate can never be equal. Segregation and lack of female teachers for female students limits their educational opportunity and quality. Finally, in Syria, low female participation in the workforce combined with the relative prevalence of child marriage give societal cause for girls to drop out after the primary level. Furthermore, the lack of government spending on higher education makes the option of staying in school unprofitable for girls who could reduce their family’s economic burden by working or marrying instead. Additionally, the prevalent political narrative embedded in Syrian curriculum has the effect of sending the message to girls that their talents are best used in the workforce, which they are highly unlikely to enter; meanwhile, their society preaches the importance of females as wives and mothers. This renders much of their schooling useless, which means their parents and families encourage them to drop out, especially if they are poor.
How can we begin to solve these problems? The actors that enact, encourage, and explain these issues are both everywhere and nowhere. Much of the time, it is simply tradition or religious belief that reinforce some ideas such as child marriage or gender segregation. Traditions and religions must be respected, and their ideas honored; however, all people are entitled to their universal rights. This means that women are entitled to equal education, and equal pay for equal work (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Though the official constitutions of all three countries examined treat women as equal to men, their laws and codes do not. In Egypt, it is legal for women to receive a lower pension than men; in Saudi Arabia, women still owe their obedience to their fathers and husbands (UNESCO). Syrian women sometimes must marry their rapists, who can then take them away from their families, friends, jobs, and schools (Save the Children 5). Therefore, the laws and codes of these nations, and therefore their governments and legislative bodies, can be identified as enactors of the obstacles that face girls’ equal education. Furthermore, those people who hold political power are the ones to whom these issues should be brought; they are the ones who can affect the positive changes needed to clear the path for girls to go to school.
There are a number of actions that policymakers could take, both long-term and short-term, to aid the schooling of the girls in their countries. For the purposes of these recommendations, long-term changes would be enacted during time period between ten and thirty years. Short-term changes could be enacted in ten years or less. However, the amount of time that each adjustment could take is entirely dependent on the popular support that it receives. As previously stated, much of the current situation in regards to societal roles and structures has traditional or religious derivations, and therefore garners a fair amount of popular support. In 2006, 86 percent of Saudi women agreed that they should not work alongside men; 89 percent agreed that they should not be allowed to drive (“Unshackling themselves”). However, in 2010, 61 percent of Egyptians thought that women should be allowed to work, but a greater 75 percent responded that “when jobs are scarce, men should have more right to work” (El-Naggar). Though more women have joined the workforce in Egypt, “a lot of the younger generation do not want to work,” says the chair of the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women, in Cairo (El-Naggar). Without popular support, no reform can truly be effective. The reason these reforms are suggested, though they may be initially unpopular, is because education should be guaranteed to all people as their universal rights.
Short-Term Recommendation #1:
Build more schools, and make them cheaper
In the short-term period, one of the most effective means of increasing girls’ access to education is to basically build more schools, and make them cheaper. Though in all three countries examined female attendance has steadily increased in the past twenty years, if there are no affordable schools for girls, they can never attend them. Furthermore, it is important that the schools that are available be tailored to the cultural and social standards that exist for girls in the community: “[f]emale enrollment depends heavily upon schools not being too far away, upon the provision of appropriate sanitation facilities, and upon the hiring of female teachers[…] Flexible hours and the provision of care for younger siblings can also be helpful in some cases” (Summers 16).
Of course, building more schools that fulfill all these requirements and offering free public education within them would have a substantial financial cost to the state. Therefore, as previously mentioned, the new private schools that are cropping up with cheap tuitions and big-name investors like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are a feasible new alternative (“The $1-a-week school”). A study on educational investment in Peru found that “rules requiring students to pay for textbooks had a large negative effect on female enrollment, but almost no effect on male enrollment” (Summers 16). The cheap private school option bypasses expensive tutoring and textbooks required by state schools to provide education whose quality “ranges from top-notch international standard to not much more than cheap child care. But the alternative is often public school that is worse – or not school at all” (“The $1-a-week school”).
The effect of this is to make educating girls more economically attractive by “reducing the costs to parents of sending their daughters to school” (Summers 16). Investing in these private schools which are aimed at low-income families could be one way to increase the number of schools, increase their effectiveness, decrease their cost, and get girls to school. Though many governments generally do not support these private schools because they see education as the duty of the state, and teachers’ unions oppose them due to their lower wages, in developing countries in the Middle East they present an answer that must be considered (“The $1-a-week school”). Therefore, encouraging these cheap private schools to increase their numbers, or even providing incentives for them to do so, would be a cheap short-term policy solution to bring more girls to school and help them complete their educations.
Short-Term Recommendation #2:
End gender segregation
The last policy recommendation offered by this study is to end gender segregation. Separate education can never be truly equal. Furthermore, systems like the phone-in learning system such as used in Saudi universities is an example of how educational quality and classroom efficiency are sacrificed for gender segregation. This reform would likely be highly unpopular among religious communities and traditionalists. Therefore, the cost of this policy would not only be the financial cost of integrating schools and enforcing the change, but also the political unpopularity that could be garnered. However, the benefit would be, in the long-run, lower educational costs since two different facilities would not need to be built and maintained at each location.
Additionally, gender integration would inherently mean increased gender equality, and in some cases would improve educational quality. This recommendation is classified as short-term, as gender integration could be implemented effectively in under ten years with popular support; however, it is likely that in traditionally conservative countries such as Saudi Arabia, popular support will be initially scarce. However, change and gender integration are already coming quickly in Saudi Arabia: women are more visible, more represented in their government, and have begun working in a mixed environment. One male Saudi businessman said: “The first women we got jobs for in a supermarket in Riyadh last year had to be sacked after a week—thanks to the public outcry. But soon people got used to the idea” (“Unshackling themselves”). The same can be true for mixed environments in school, for the sake of equality and learning.
