UN Millennium Development Goals Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

UN Millennium Development Goals - Essay Example le progress have been achieved with regards to gender equality in primary and secondary education and most regions of the world including the developing countries have equal enrollments of boys and girls in primary and secondary education institutions (Sweetman, 2005). The case of tertiary and advanced education is different because there is a marked gap between the enrollments of boys and girls in higher education institutions, particularly in the developing world. Poverty, marginalization, food insecurity, armed conflicts and disease are the various different reasons of such trends of disparity in male and female higher education. The Gross Enrollment Ration in tertiary education institutions in Africa is 4.8% for women and 7.3% (Nwonwu, 2008). Financial issues are one side of the picture; there are many cultural and religious issues which are barring women for acquiring education and in some of the regions women eager to acquire education are subjected to violence. Education is one sector, gender disparity can also be observed in other spheres of life as well. Most of the developing countries have a very meager female population having paid jobs. The recent global recession has further aggravated the situation because the unemployment rates for women which rose up during recession did not fall down during the economic recovery of 2009-2010 however the unemployment rates for men fell down significantly (World Bank, 2011). Lack of representation of women in the legislative and administrative bodies is an issue being faced by the developed as well as the developing world. The target of equal representation of women in the legislative bodies of the world is still far from being achieved, according to 2011 UN report on MDG, the women shared only 19.3% of the total parliamentary seats in the world (United Nations, 2011). Education indicators in the United Arab Emirates show that the women are getting a remarkable share in the educational institutions but disparity