Courtesy: Wikipedia
According to statistics provided by the United Nations, two-thirds of Middle-Eastern countries have more women attending their universities than men.
This is encouraging news for the United Nations, which has proclaimed 2015 as the cutoff to eliminate the disparity of gender throughout all levels of education.
However, this level of education has not helped women to attain more positions in the workforce.
For example, while women make up 54 percent of the university students in Lebanon, they only account for 26 percent of the total labor force. In Qatar, a country with women comprising 63 percent of the university population, only 12 percent are included in the labor force.
In comparison, 60 percent of university graduates in the United States and Europe are women while over 40 percent of the workforce in these countries are comprised of women.
One reason for the higher attendance rate of women in Middle-Eastern countries is due to the fact that some men are expected to be the primary earner for a family, making the prospect of attending a university impossible. As soon as most men leave school, they are expected to enter the workforce.
Women take this opportunity to excel past most men.
The United Nations hopes that their efforts will change this gap in the near future.
