Mideast women beat men in education, lose out at work

In nearly two thirds of Middle Eastern countries, there are more women than men in university, according to United Nations statistics.

This is a giant step towards -- and in many cases beyond -- one of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals: to eliminate gender disparity in all levels of education by 2015.

While most women's rights campaigners welcome the progress in education, many are concerned it does not translate into greater equality in the workplace.

"The gender gap has been closed in education in many Arab countries, which is a big achievement of recent years," said Dima Dabbous-Sensenig, Director of the Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World at the Lebanese American University.

"It's very recent," she added. "Even in the 1990s there was a big gender gap in education. However, there's a paradox that we have a lot of women getting a higher education and they are still too absent from the workforce and politics.

"The idea that education is key to more women reaching positions of power has not materialized."