Quick Facts
In the past two decades, more Middle Eastern girls have attended school than ever before at the primary level.
So why do they drop out?
Why isn't female schooling a priority?
In every country in the Middle East except Qatar,
at least
40% of women are illiterate.
In 2010, 35% of Egyptian high school graduates were illiterate, due to "lenient assessment" by corrupt teachers.
Middle Eastern girls are going to school more than ever before... and they're excelling. Why they need to stay in school:
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A child whose mother is literate is 50 percent more likely to live past age five, and “each extra year of a mother’s schooling reduces the probability of infant mortality by five to ten percent” (UNESCO).
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Many studies have evaluated the effects of subsidizing early childhood through secondary education in the Middle East, and the consensus has been that “education, in general, has a positive effect on economic growth,” and that “the investments in all levels of education contribute to the economic development in the MENA region” (Deniz 13, 18).
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A “recent study of 19 developing countries, including Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, concluded that a country's long-term economic growth increases by 3.7 percent for every year the adult population's average level of schooling rises” (Roudi-Fahimi 4).
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Female students in the Middle East “show higher performance and more ambition than their male counterparts—as measured by exam results, school completion rates, and willingness to move into new job fields” (Bernard 39).
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Equal education for females ought to, in turn, increase female participation in the labor force, and: "[f]emale employment delays the age of marriage and child-bearing, which […] improves the health of the mother and child, reducing public health care costs. It also lowers fertility rates and reduces the cost of welfare. Higher levels of female education, higher female employment, and a later age of marriage each contribute to smaller family sizes" (Bernard 39).