Saudi Arabia's Educational Structure: Gender Segregation
Another phenomenon in Saudi Arabia that distinctly limits women’s access to quality education is gender segregation due to Islamic law. This issue also faces Egyptian girls, as all Egyptian state schools are segregated as well. However, in Egypt, females may attend classes taught by male teachers; in Saudi Arabia, this never happens after the primary level, except in medical school (Somers 49). Even the coeducational universities in Saudi Arabia are not truly gender integrated: there are separate campuses for women. This creates many administrative problems for the school, and personal problems for the students: “inadequate numbers of women teachers for girls' schools and faculty for their higher education, a shortage of educational facilities, problems in administrative communication because male and female administrators do not meet in person for discussion” (Somers 53). The most pressing obstacle presented by this segregation is the lack of female teachers. As females may only be educated in the classroom by female teacher, the dwindling number of female teachers at each level of education deters women from continuing their studies.
While all pre-primary teachers are female, the percent of female teachers at the tertiary level dips to about 33 percent, as evidenced in Table 9 (UIS). At the primary and secondary levels, near equal amounts of male and female teachers are employed. However, the extremely high and low figures at either end are troubling. At the pre-primary level, all jobs are given to female teachers and there is little to no opportunity for males; at the tertiary level, many more males are employed. This could indicate that while women’s education and teaching positions are widely accepted at low levels, as the complexity of the content increases, more positions are available to males. It could also indicate a self-reinforcing structure: as there are not many female teachers, many Saudi women are forced to drop out before the tertiary level, and thus do not receive the necessary credentials to become teachers at the tertiary level.
However, when there is a lack of female faculty, it does not necessarily mean that classes for girls are cancelled. However, the solution that has been implemented in Saudi Arabia is far from conducive to a high-quality education: "When there are no qualified female faculty, a male professor may teach a course using one-way closed circuit television. Each female student has a telephone on her desk and may call the faculty member, usually in a studio on the men's campus, to ask questions. However, while the women see, they are not seen by the male professor. About thirty percent of the women's courses are offered in this manner" (Somers 55).
This form of learning cannot provide a high-quality education, as the teacher is not even in the room with the students. This style of teaching encourages lecturing, memorization, and rote learning, which then become the cornerstones of the female curriculum. This curriculum equips Saudi girls only with the skills for careers that are suitable to them, or as homemakers, which are not equal to the opportunities offered to male students. Saudi girls “are raised to be mindless, like babies. Even the most intelligent woman is told she cannot take care of herself, she isn't able” (Somers 49). As a result, the lack of female teachers means a barrier to accessing education in the first place, as well as contributes to making that education low-quality because of its limiting curriculum. Islamic-inspired gender segregation also acts as an obstacle to women’s education, as separate can never be equal.
