earticle

영어

According to the recent Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum (2014), nineteen out of the twenty countries with the worst gender equality around the world are Islamic, and twelve are Arab states. This is not a new phenomenon. Scholars have provided several explanations about how and why gender inequality is most prevalent in the Muslim world. The major factors that scholars have proposed, include religion and culture, economic development, political development, globalization, fertility, and education. Thus, in order to define major determinants of gender inequality, this study examines these predicting factors of gender inequality across Muslim majority countries. The results of the empirical study define that socioeconomic development, female education, and political development are more critical determinants of gender inequality than importance of religion and level of globalization in the Muslim majority countries. Therefore, this study predicts that the modernization of the Muslim world will mitigate gender inequality eventually.