Single-sex schooling is part of the problem
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskMuhammad is a graduate of Hands-on-Learning, a modest project aiming to drive down drop-out rates in Ras al Khaimah, one of the scruffier of the seven statelets that make up the United Arab Emirates . It is but one local effort to solve a sweeping regional problem. Across the Arab world, girls are less likely than boys to be at school.
Segregated schooling is part of the problem. Single-sex schools are common in Arab countries, especially in the Gulf, where boys’ failures relative to girls’ are worst. Boys’ schools tend to be crummier than girls’, in part because hiring male teachers is difficult. Whereas a job in girls’ schools can easily attract ten applicants, an opening in a boys’ school might get three or four, says an official in Saudi Arabia.
Parents contribute to this disparity, too. Muhammad in Ras al Khaimah says he often stayed out gallivanting with friends on school nights, while his sisters, kept indoors by their parents, spent more time studying. Arab parents are less likely than those elsewhere to say they “often” read to their children, and less likely to read with sons than with daughters—even though research suggests that boys’ literacy tends to suffer more than girls’ when parents don’t nudge them towards books.
Women are still largely locked out of workforces, despite having better school grades. Across the Middle East and north Africa only around a fifth of women have jobs. Poorly educated men are in no hurry to change that. Research outside the region confirms that less-educated males are more likely to hold sexist views, and that men who do not complete a secondary education are more likely than others to abuse a wife or partner.
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