The United Nations Millenium Goals

The United Nations has articulated the Millennium Development Goals that include ambition to attain gender equality, women education and empowerment. The essential role from this is to build democratic nations and sustained economic growth.

The UN initiated the move to allow girls the opportunity to receive education without discrimination and to enlighten their minds. Girls have been neglected for centuries in the developing nations especially in the Arab world, all in which fell negatively on girls and women. Illetracy and ignorance have pulled the nations and the poor of the poorest down with no rescue.

Thus the MD 15 year plan is to eliminate gender disparities. Indicators if this goal: ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary, and tertiary education; the ratio of literate females to males among 15-to-24-year-olds; the share of women in wage employment in the nonagricultural sector; and the proportion of seats in national parliament held by women.

How will women education help?

As female education rises, fertility, population and infant and child mortality falls and so family health improves. Among married Egyptian women ages 25 to 29, for instance, those with no education had married at age 18, on average, and had their first child by age 20; those with a secondary or higher education married at an average age of 23 and had their first child by age 25. Turkey’s 1998 DHS showed that 22 percent 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 percent of girls who had completed secondary or higher education.

Additionally, the increase in girl’s secondary school enrollment is associated with increase in women participation in the labor force and better decisions regarding marriage. Only 20% of the women ages 15 and above in the MENA region are in the labor force. Among the highest levels of native female labor participation in the MENA are Lebanon, Morocco, Turkey and Yemen where women constitutes 25% of the labor force. But these statistics are really low compared to France women participation 45%.

The majority of women who live in agricultural lands like Egypt and Yemen participate in this sector only, unlike other nations like Tunisia and Turkey where women engage in the export-manufacturing sectors.

Also daughters of educated women are more likely to live a healthy life and receive higher education that their parents due to development.

Needless to say that educated women can be more political active and better informed about their legal rights and how to exercise them.

Further more, the rate of return of investing in education is high due to several reasons such as higher income, better family planning, lower population growth and high economic growth.

Yet there is no plan without challenges.

The results of Egypt’s 2000 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) provide insights into families’ preferences for investing in their children’s education. Women with children ages 6 to 15 were asked, “If parents have one son and one daughter and can send only one child to the university, which child should they send?” While 53 percent of the women said that the decision should depend on the children’s capabilities, 39 percent said that the son should go to the university, compared with only 8 percent who said that the daughter should go. The survey also found that mothers of children who had never attended school were more likely to cite the cost of education as a reason for not educating their daughters than for not educating their sons.

Men of the Arab world are not accepting gender equality especially in the work field. So they hire women for simple works as secretariats. As a result, mismatch between market needs and graduates skills occur due to unfairness.

Cultural beliefs frustrate women pretensions to work and rule remarkable positions as it will lead them to independency which is totally against men will. Taking part of labor force will make women more aware of their rights and more powerful, while the Eastern culture shapes women as creatures who should obey their husbands, cook and clean for their family and beaten if objected.

To frustrate women ambitions to take the lead, men offer lower wages than it should to keep gender inequality.

More countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development,” by Kofi Annan

Gender inequality, which remains pervasive worldwide, tends to lower the productivity of labour and the efficiency of labour allocation in households and the economy, intensifying the unequal distribution of resources. It also contributes to the non-monetary aspects of poverty – lack of security, opportunity and empowerment – that lower the quality of life for both men and women. While women and girls bear the largest and most direct costs of these inequalities, the costs cut broadly across society, ultimately hindering development and poverty reduction,” by Gender and Development Group -World Bank

"Male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents,” by Olympe de Gouges.

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves,” by Abraham Lincoln