It rained continuously for more than two hours on a sunny afternoon, during which I was supervising the implementation of one of the life skills programs for women in Taiz Governorate, and because of the rain, I had to stay for nearly three hours in the house of one of the female trainees.
Salwa used to live in her father's small mud house, taking care of her elderly parents, after her three brothers and their wives left for the city years ago. Salwa, a girl not exceeding eighteen years of age and deprived of education, married for nearly five years. On the story of her marriage, she says: "One of the sons of our village arrived from Saudi Arabia, after a ten-year period of expatriation, to search for a bride, and then I was the one who was chosen by his mother. So his mother told my father about that, and he agreed immediately and completed the marriage contract without my knowing. Then, in a simple marriage ceremony, I—the bride—was given away to the husband the next day as a "sheep", as she said. While she stopped here for a moment, and then added: "I have forgiven my father, because he was a poor man and had no source of income, and my dowry tempted him, though it was so little." Salwa says, "My husband stayed with me for a month when I was a child. As a matter of fact, I was not yet aware of any details about married life or women's obligations towards their husbands. After that, he traveled again to Saudi Arabia, and to this day he has not returned!"
Three months after her marriage, Salwa decided to return to her elderly father's house because of problems between her and her husband's mother. However, to this day, she has not asked for a divorce, despite the fact that her husband has never communicated with her or her family at all, but he has still, for the past five years, been sending her monthly expenses through his mother, as she says, in the amount of five thousand riyals, which is equivalent to 20 dollars at the time. She justifies her continuation of the marriage by saying, "Who will give me five thousand riyals per month if I ask for a divorce?"
Women in Yemen constitute half of the population, which, according to population projections for the year 2023, amounts to thirty million (1); that is, the number of women is estimated at approximately 15 million.
According to the Book of Education Indicators in the Republic of Yemen for the year 2012/2013, issued by the Central Statistical Organization, the percentage of female students in Yemen does not exceed 37% of the total number of those enrolled in education. Likewise, the National Document to Promote Girls' Education in Yemen also shows that the number of educated girls in urban areas reaches 59%, while the percentage of educated girls in rural areas does not exceed 24% (2). According to UN reports, the illiteracy rate among Yemeni women is 65% (3), which means that nearly 10 million Yemeni women suffer from illiteracy.
Actually, there are several reasons why girls are deprived of education in Yemen, the most important of which are: the societal culture that still believes to this day that girls 'education is not as important as boys' education; rather educating girls in some remote areas, especially after the basic stage, is considered a social defect. Poverty is also a major reason for girls dropping out of school. Furthermore, there is no free education in a country where international statistics say that up to 78% of its population lives in poverty, while 80% of them need some kind of social protection, such as cash assistance. Likewise, the deterioration of the infrastructure, the remoteness of the schools, and their lack of toilets or female teachers play a role in girls dropping out of education after 2015, in a society that is characterized as a conservative society.
According to UN reports, more than 2,500 schools are closed in Yemen until the end of 2018. (4) While child marriage is one of the coping mechanisms to which an alarming number of families in Yemen resort to deal with their growing instability, it is also one of the main reasons why girls drop out of school. Similarly, the scarcity of water, where women are responsible for fetching water, is one of the daily tasks of women and girls in Yemen, a number of whom left their education to fetch it from distant areas as a result of displacement or the depletion of water sources due to climate change. Moreover, the lack of awareness of the importance of education and its impact on sustainable development and general stability is one of the reasons why some families in Yemen consider it a non-priority.
On the other hand, the developing countries usually seek to catch up with modern industrialized countries, but getting to where they are now requires an educated and skilled workforce and a wide base of knowledgeable and science-literate citizens. "In short, this is the key to enhancing the areas of science, technology, and innovation. However, developing countries face obstacles to reaching this. In 2015, nearly 40 percent of all out-of-school children and adolescents in the world lived in the least developed countries. The gross enrollment ratio in high education was less than 9 percent in 2013, compared to 33 percent worldwide (5). It seems that the majority of these percentages in Yemen include girls and women, for the reasons we mentioned earlier: Could a country like Yemen seek to develop plans for sustainable development, self-sufficiency, or recovery? As girls and women, who constitute half of the population, suffer from illiteracy and are deprived of education. Is it possible for society to reach economic stability when almost half of it is unemployed and even constitutes a financial burden on the other half? If these questions were based on percentages and statistics, most of which were collected before 2015, it seems that today they will have a more severe impact on the economic and social situation in Yemen. Despite the impact of depriving girls of education on national income, the workforce, and the economy as a whole, there are other direct and indirect effects. While at the level of the family, the mother bears the greatest burden in raising children, but rather she is also the most influential in their lives, values, knowledge, and convictions—male and female. So, how can she, in the era of media openness, the advance of modern technology, the advent of digital life, and artificial intelligence, raise a healthy generation capable of assuming responsibilities, building, and developing when she is not even able to read and write? And how can she—the woman—who is connected on a daily basis with the use of energy, fuel, food, water sources, and nature with its various components, deal with knowledge of climate changes and calls for a green economy without being educated with an education that qualifies her to face all these crises and disasters?
However, at the level of society, the countries in which women and girls suffer from deprivation of education are considered countries that have structural imbalances in their political and legal structures, as they are accused of not protecting fairness and equality of opportunity between the sexes. The equality of educational opportunities is reflected in the opportunities equality in the community participation, as a whole. Because girls' education requires their work, which leads to more mechanisms for their inclusion in the management of state institutions and the creation of an effective partnership between men and women in building their societies and meeting public needs from an integrated and comprehensive perspective in which all members of society participate.
Men spend their lives protecting their daughters and providing a good livelihood for their families. Thus, some believe that depriving their daughters of education and work is one of the methods of family protection. Although the majority of men in Yemen, in line with societal norms, are still the ones who spend and provide for women, even at the minimum level that provides for their basic needs, in light of the increasing requirements of life, day after day, but they do not realize that the real and most sustainable protection that can be made for girls and women in Yemen is their education. Further, life is full of variables that often force a man to move away from his family; either because of his work, emigration, or reasons associated with disasters and political crises, or because of his death or the marriage of his daughters and sisters to areas outside his geographical area. As a result, girls and women face harsh conditions and different people from those who protected them from an early age, and to find themselves, later, often unable to meet their personal needs or the needs of their children, which leads them to accept poor living conditions that violate their most basic rights only because they do not have an education that enables them to work and depend on themselves. In addition, they are exposed to living crises that require a lot of knowledge and science from them, at a time when women and girls are more vulnerable to extortion. Therefore, the responsibility for educating girls lies with their families as a form of self-protection for them and a weapon that they can use when necessary. Besides, it is the responsibility of the state, civil society organizations, and the private sector to provide a learning environment that suits girls, meets their needs, and even provides their families with monetary or in-kind incentives such as cash or food projects in exchange for education. All of them are responsible for bridging the educational gaps resulting from girls dropping out of school for long periods of time through multiple tracks represented in building, repairing, and restoring infrastructure, raising Yemeni society’s awareness of the importance of girls’ education, and the establishment of literacy centers and rehabilitation as well as vocational training centers for women at the local community level, so that they can catch up with the labor market and to enhance the effective community partnership of women and men alike in construction and development.
