By Nabil Tahir
Karachi,Pakistan（INPS Japan/London Post）- The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5, to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030, is universally recognised as one of the most transformative yet most elusive of the 17 SDGs. Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the region that continues to post the world’s widest gender gaps in economic participation, political empowerment, and legal rights according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2024, the UNDP Gender Inequality Index 2025, and the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law index. Yet the same region has, over the past decade, recorded some of the fastest relative gains in female education, enacted bold legislative reforms, and seen the emergence of a digitally native, feminist youth movement that is reshaping public discourse.
Since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, female labour-force participation in MENA has risen from a global low of 19 % to approximately 24 % in 2025 (ILO data), with the most dramatic increases in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has driven women’s workforce participation from 18 % in 2016 to nearly 36 % today; women now make up over 40 % of the public-sector workforce in Qatar and the UAE. Landmark legal breakthroughs, the 2018 lifting of the driving ban and the 2019–2023 progressive dismantling of the male guardianship system in Saudi Arabia, the introduction of paid paternity leave and anti-harassment laws in the UAE and Bahrain, Tunisia’s pioneering 2017 law against violence against women, and Lebanon’s 2024 reform allowing women to pass nationality to their children, have removed some of the most visible barriers to women’s autonomy.
Education remains the brightest success story. Gender parity in primary and secondary enrolment now exceeds 0.97 across most Arab countries, and in tertiary education women outnumber men in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, and the UAE. In several states, female literacy among the under-30 cohort is effectively universal. These achievements directly support SDG targets 5.4 (recognising unpaid care work) and 5.5 (ensuring women’s full and effective participation), yet they have not translated proportionally into economic or political power.
Important legal gaps persist. Ten jurisdictions still require a woman to obtain a guardian’s permission to marry. Seven retain highly unequal inheritance laws rooted in traditional interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence. Marital rape is not fully criminalised everywhere, and personal-status codes in most Gulf countries continue to institutionalise male authority over divorce, custody, and freedom of movement.
The most binding constraints, however, are cultural rather than strictly legal. Concepts of family honour (sharaf) and female chastity (‘ird) continue to regulate behaviour more effectively than statutes. Socially enforced expectations that women remain primary caregivers are nearly universal; even where maternity leave is generous, paternity leave is minimal or non-existent, reinforcing childcare as “women’s work.” An Arab Barometer 2024 survey across ten countries found that 62 % of respondents, down only nine points since 2011, still believe a woman’s most important role is caring for home and family.
Progressive reforms have provoked conservative backlash that frames gender equality as a Western import incompatible with Islamic values. Yet an increasingly confident generation of Muslim feminist scholars and activists, through movements such as Musawah and progressive fatwas from Al-Azhar (2023) and Algeria’s Supreme Islamic Council (2024), successfully argue that egalitarian interpretations of inheritance, polygamy, guardianship, and domestic violence are theologically legitimate and align with the higher objectives of Islamic law (maqasid al-sharia).
The decisive variable for the coming decade is the region’s youth bulge and its digital nativeness. Women under 30 are the most active demographic on Instagram, TikTok, and X in every Arab country. Campaigns such as Lebanon’s #LanSaktut, Tunisia’s #Undress522, and Saudi Arabia’s #IAmMyOwnGuardian have moved feminist discourse from elite NGOs into mainstream youth culture. Paradoxically, the intense online harassment these activists face has only amplified their reach.
Economic necessity is proving a more powerful driver than ideology alone. Gulf states recognise that excluding half their national talent pool is no longer sustainable; McKinsey estimates that closing the gender employment gap could add $2.7 trillion to regional GDP by 2030. Jordan, Morocco, and Egypt have introduced gender-responsive budgeting and corporate-board quotas (Morocco 30 %, UAE 20 %). These measures are motivated less by social justice than by the realisation that gender inequality has become a competitive disadvantage in a knowledge economy.
To accelerate progress toward SDG 5 by 2030, governments and international partners should prioritise six mutually reinforcing actions: abolish remaining guardianship rules and equalise inheritance and nationality laws; criminalise marital rape everywhere; invest heavily in subsidised childcare, eldercare, and generous shared parental leave; reform school curricula to dismantle stereotypes from primary level upward; scale digital and financial-literacy programmes for rural and low-income women; and amplify religious reformist voices who frame gender equality as an Islamic imperative rather than a foreign imposition. The League of Arab States could usefully establish binding regional benchmarks with annual public reporting.
The Middle East is neither the unchanging patriarchal fortress of stereotype nor on the verge of Nordic-style parity. It is a region in rapid, uneven transition. The same societies that rank last in global gender-gap indices have produced the fastest relative gains in female education and some of the boldest legal reforms of the past decade. The central paradox of SDG 5 in MENA is that cultural transformation now lags behind both legislative change and women’s own aspirations. Closing that gap will demand sustained policy reform, massive investment in care infrastructure, and a deliberate cultural strategy that engages religious leaders, schools, media, and, above all, the digital-native generation already rewriting the rules in real time.
By 2030 the region will not achieve full gender equality, but the trajectory is clearer and more hopeful than at any point in modern history. The question is no longer whether change is coming, but whether governments, religious institutions, and societies will harness the energy of their young women fast enough to meet the economic, demographic, and moral imperatives of the twenty-first century.
Note:This article is produced to you by London Post, in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.
