Girls' and Women's Education
The General Administration of Girls' Education was established independently from Ministry of Education in 1960 and was put under the administration of the ministry in 2002.
The percentage of women receiving an education has increased since the 1960s. However, women are prevented from taking some subjects such as engineering, journalism, and architecture. In Saudi Arabia, women in the labor force are mainly in the education sector. The first group of women graduated from a law program in 2008. Women are not able to practice law, but the government has indicated that they are able to work in courts to assist female clients. This has still not happened. According to the World Bank report, female students in higher education in Saudi Arabia out number those in Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and West Bank and Gaza.
Because government has much paid attention to girls' education, the number of girls' schools increased faster than boys' schools. According to the World Bank, gross enrollment rate for female is 36.1 percent, gross enrollment rate for male is 24.7 percent, and gross enrollment rate for total was 30.2 percent in 2006. There are thousands of female professors throughout Saudi Arabia.
Around 2009, an expert on girls' education became the first woman minister in Saudi Arabia. Nora bint Abdullah al-Fayez, a US-educated former teacher, was made deputy education minister in charge of a new department for female students. In addition, Saudi Arabia provides female students with one of the world's largest scholarship programs. By this program, thousands of women have earned doctorates from Western universities.
The building of colleges and universities for women, which was recently announced by the government, is critically important. Women comprise 58% of Saudi Arabia's college students but only 14% of its labor force, much lower than in neighboring Islamic countries. 85% of employed Saudi women work in education, 6% in public health, and 95% in the public sector. Princess Nora bint Abdul Rahman University (PNU) is the first women's university in Saudi Arabia and largest women-only university in the world, composed of 32 campuses across the Riyadh region.
Read more about this topic: Education In Saudi Arabia
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