Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Education

In partnership with the Egyptian Government, USAID promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment in a wide range of sectors and activities. USAID’s gender equality and women’s empowerment programs focus on youth, women of low socio-economic background or status, people with disabilities, survivors of violence against women and girls, and victims of trafficking. Supporting Women and Girls’ Education: USAID’s basic, technical, and higher education programs improve the learning, skills, and workforce readiness of all students, including women and girls. Scholarship programs expand access to high-quality education for youth with high financial need, and intergenerational literacy programming in rural areas supports girls and their mothers to learn to read. Building on decades of investments in voluntary family planning and maternal health, USAID supports Egypt’s National Family Planning Program to improve the quality of voluntary family planning services and strengthen decision-making and policy formation at the national level. USAID also works with private sector partners, such as private pharmacists and apparel manufacturers, to provide training on family planning services and peer mentoring for factory workers. Also, innovative USAID programs, including establishing nontraditional schools and providing scholarships to more than 185,000 girls, helped change community attitudes and made primary education virtually universal. Today, girls finish secondary school at higher rates than boys.