Education has been deemed as both a basic human right and a key to economic stability. Despite being a necessary stop on the road to a successful life, education has not been as easy to attain for all people. Over the years, education has had drastic gender gaps that disadvantage girls in the Middle East and North Africa.
The conservative culture of the Middle East and North Africa create gender gaps that favor the men of the society. Discriminatory laws based upon gender can be found in civil codes or in family laws (prb.org). For example, there are many countries within this area make it a requirement for women to get approval from a male in their family before they are able to seek employment (pbr.org). To add onto the social standards of the Middle East and North Africa, there are not a wide variety of jobs that are socially acceptable for a woman to have (pbr.org.). All of these factors cause families inside this region to have a tendency to make greater investments on the education of their sons(pbr.org).
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One study showed that the women in this region are two times more likely than men to be illiterate(pbr.org). In fact, women make up two thirds of the area’s illiterate population (pbr.org). In the middle eastern country of Yemen, the illiteracy rate for women is an astonishing three times larger than that of men(pbr.org). Fifty four percent of the women in Yemen are illiterate, but only seventeen percent of the country´s men are(pbr.org). All of these studies and more have been able to prove that women in the Middle East and North Africa are not receiving the education they