By

Joshua Pringle

The math is simple. If a post-conflict country in the Middle East-North Africa region (MENA) wants to develop its institutions and grow economically, it is better off utilizing all of its human capital. Leaving women out of the equation is like building a house and leaving half your tools behind.

Unfortunately, across MENA, the picture is bleak for women. According to the 2012 Economist Intelligence Unit report, female labor participation in MENA is the lowest in the world—below 30 percent.[1] This is of course directly attributable to the difficulty women have accessing quality education, as the region also has some of the lowest female enrollment and literacy rates in the world.

However, even when women are able to get a university education, they still find it far more challenging than men to find a decent job. In Lebanon, 54 percent of university students are women, and yet women make up only 26 percent of the workforce, according to the United Nations Statistics Division.[2] When it comes to senior management and legislative positions, they hold only 8 percent of those jobs. In Qatar, women make up 63 percent of the university population, yet only 12 percent of the workforce.[3] In Iraq, 68 percent of women with a bachelor’s degree were unemployed in 2011, according to an Iraq Knowledge Network survey.[4]

Religious and cultural mores inhibit women’s progress in a number of ways. Many girls are encouraged to drop out of school and get married at an early age. In some countries, such as Yemen, mixed-gender classrooms are discouraged, which often leaves communities without enough schools for girls.[5] Other communities in the region view female education negatively in general. Women also have fewer protections against violence, and are allowed less of a political voice.

Even in countries where the government has made an effort to support female education and employment, socio-economic discrimination has been stubborn to budge. In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has invested massively in providing scholarships and creating jobs for women, realizing the boost this could give the Saudi economy. Yet unemployment in the country is still five times greater among women.[6] Maybe Abdullah would have better luck moving things forward if he started letting women drive and vote. We dare to dream.

Some of these issues are evolving, but it’s an uphill battle. Abstract arguments about economics or human rights are unlikely to unmoor the mores that have been in place for generations. Change requires engagement on a number of fronts, ranging from subversive political activism to simple community dialogue. One can see a certain circle of irony in the dynamics at work: For women to become more empowered, cultural transformation is required, and for cultural transformation to occur, women need to become more empowered. And it’s in everyone’s best interest to utilize all of the population’s brainpower, but part of the population doesn’t have the brainpower to see that.

Several initiatives are doing important work in the region. In Egypt, Save the Children’s Ishraq helps girls who have dropped out of school learn math and literacy, understand sexual and reproductive health, boost self-confidence, and re-enroll in school.[7] In Lebanon, Media Supporting Women Leaders encourages professional women to participate in public debates concerning the country’s future.[8] In Jordan, Women in Technology provides women with IT and professional development training.[9] Clearly these are just a few examples.

Non-governmental organizations often have the resources and the expertise to make real progress on the ground, while social media and technology have given women the ability to organize and create little fissures in the status quo. I imagine that fighting for women’s empowerment must feel like a Sisyphean task, but day by day the boulder climbs the hill.

Joshua Pringle is the senior editor of Worldpress.org, an online publication that covers international affairs. 

Further Reading:

Empowering Women, Developing Society: Female Education in MENA

Women Empowerment Initiatives for the Future of the MENA Region

By Kimberly Foulds

If to the victors go the spoils, then a sense of anxiety clouds the hope around education in states emerging from conflict. Many countries emerging from conflict-Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guatemala, Germany, Rwanda, South Africa, and South Sudan for example-have looked toward a revised history curriculum as the foundation for new directions in national narratives and sustained peace. As is often the case, education is the silver bullet to a nation’s ills. Admittedly, while education can offer students a sense of stability in the midst of conflict and during post-conflict reconstruction, the development of revised textbooks to address the changing environment, and curriculum, is given cursory consideration.

The timing around curriculum revisions is a major concern. Of the examples offered above, all revised curricula during the period following the conflict. The Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies [INEE], however, advocates for curriculum revisions during emergencies. The drive behind this suggestion is the concern that curriculum reform will not be addressed until the transition to a post-conflict society, particularly problematic during protracted conflicts. The situations among stateless peoples, like Palestine, Kashmir, Kurdistan, and Tibet, complicates these dynamics, though this issue remains under-researched. Nonetheless, reform is a contentious and slow process during times of peace. In the midst of conflict, the process is even slower and becomes more controversial, possibly exacerbating existing tensions.

INEE’s Guidance Notes offer a number of recommendations, arguing that potentially conflict-inducing elements remain in curriculum. In practice, however, this is rarely the case. There is a hunger for a simple, even universal, remedy independent of conditions. The contemporary trend appears that this hunger has revealed itself as an avoidance of critical discussions on conflict.

In Rwanda, for example, a superficial peace reigns and the official narrative leaves no room for ethnic identification. Those currently in power are primarily Tutsi who grew up outside of Rwanda, only to return after the rebel army they supported ended the 1994 genocide and took control. Though the minority, their representations of Rwandan history are not in line with the majority of Rwandans. Discussions of the genocide are forbidden. Further, Rwanda banned the teaching of history for more than a decade after the 1994 genocide. With its reintegration, only the official narrative is allowed in schools to support the creation of a unified Rwanda. With perpetrators and victims often coming from the same neighborhoods, even from under the same roof, the absence of the space to critically engage national history produces an uneasy peace, reminding us that the absence of war is not a symbol of peace.

Bosnia-Herzegovina offers an example on other end of the spectrum. The state operates as two distinct entities under one national identity: Republika Srpska and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the war, each local area created its own curriculum and textbooks. This system persisted post-conflict. The Bosnian curriculum saw Bosniaks as victims, the Croat curriculum offered no history outside of Croatian history, and the Serbian curriculum ignored Bosnians and Bosnian-Croats. International interventions led to a number of changes, including the use of non-transparent markers to black out inappropriate text in lieu of revised textbooks because of time and cost considerations.

There are many, many more examples of how post-conflict states have moved forward with textbook reform. Postcolonial states also offer a number of examples of the challenges emerging governments face. Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina are used here to show that the two ends of the spectrum are ineffective and unsustainable. Moving forward, though the need for a revised history curriculum will certainly remain, post-conflict states appear to prioritize preparing student for the global marketplace over history. The driving need to craft a unified, albeit imagined, community under one national identity through a history that either obscures conflict or reinforces incomplete histories will ensure that peace remains artificial at best. In their study of history curriculum in Rwanda, Freedman et al (2008) put forth the idea of empowering teachers to mediate history curricula and accompanying textbooks by framing history as a democratic process:

We are going to look at history as a series of choices . . . We’ll look at the decision to be a bystander. We will look at the decision to be a perpetrator. We will look at the decision to be a rescuer. And we will look at the decisions of everyday citizens to make a positive difference (681).

The benefit of this framework is in its recognition that there is a significant need to move away from a binary history of aggressor/victim, and an awareness that through major political transformations, the next generation is there, waiting to be educated.

 Kimberly Foulds is a lecturer in International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. 

References:

Freedman, Sarah Warshauer, Harvey M. Weinstein, Karen Murphy, and Timothy Longman. 2008. Teaching History after Identity-Based Conflicts: The Rwanda Experience. Comparative Education Review 52(4): 663-690.

Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies. 2004. INEE Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies, Chronic Crisis and Early Reconstruction. New York: INEE.

 For further reading on textbooks and post-conflict transformation, the following list offers a few starting points:

Barnes, T. 2007. ‘History has to Play its Role’: Constructions of Race and Reconciliation in Secondary School Historiography in Zimbabwe, 1980-2002. Journal of Southern African Studies. 33(3): 633-651.

Chisholm, L. and R. Leyendecker. 2008. Curriculum reform in post-1990s sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Educational Development 28(2): 195-205.

Cole, E, and J Barsalou. 2006. Unite or Divide? The Challenges of Teaching History in Societies Emerging from Violent Conflict. Special report. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace.

Hodgkin, M. 2007. Negotiating Change: Participatory Curriculum Design in Emergencies. Current Issues in Comparative Education 9(2): 33-44.

Low-Beer, A. 2001. “Politics, School Textbooks and Cultural Identity: The Struggle in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Paradigm 2 (3): 1–6.

Pingel, F. 2010. UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision. Paris: UNESCO.

Weldon, G. 2009. Memory, identity, and the politics of curriculum construction in transition societies: Rwanda and South Africa. Perspectives in Education. 27(2): 177-189.

Woolman, David C. 2001. Educational reconstruction and post-colonial curriculum development: A comparative study of four African countries. International Education Journal 2(5): 27-46.