Education and Empowerment of Women in the GCC States

Abstract

According to the popular view, 21st century is regarded as an era of women. The rising tide of educating and empowering women has considerably influenced the lives of women in every walk of life throughout the world. Education has been recognized as the most important tool for the empowerment of people and it is particularly emphasized as key towards achieving women's empowerment by the Human development reports of UN. So, to answer the overdue international demands to empower women to sustain their growth as well as development, the initiatives taken by the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) States in the recent decades is to empower their women through education in order to satisfy the aspirations of youth and women of the region. As part of the GCC, though all the six states (Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and UAE) share many similar historical and cultural ties, but individually every state has its different profile. Each state is trying to establish a distinct political and social profile from that of other states and thus has responded to the gender related challenges in education system and in empowerment process in a distinguishable way. Human development is a multifaceted progress and social and economic development are parts of this huge sphere. Economists tend to believe that if the economic prosperity and development is not matched with the human development then this type of growth cannot be sustainable for long time and eventually, slow human development may even put an end to fast economic growth. A characteristic of the GCC States is that one can easily mark the rapid growth of the economy of these oil rich states but with regard to the human development index, particularly, considering the Gulf women's development, horizontal expansion of women's struggles have been achieved to a certain considerable extent and it is still improving day by day but as of vertical expansion is considered into leading positions and for the leadership roles, women are still lagging far behind. Therefore, to assess how much progress has been achieved in overall empowerment of the GCC women is a critical question. To cover the important aspects of education and its translation into women's empowerment, this paper shall give a general view of education in the Gulf States then focuses on its role in the empowerment of the GCC women.