ABSTRACT
Education levels, access to health services, birth control and choice of career all drastically improved for Middle Eastern women in the twentieth century. In some places, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), women's literacy was better than that of men and stood at around 83 per cent by the end of the century. From the very beginning of the century, the ability of women to organize in groups that served their struggles well increased exponentially over time. The century ended, and the new one began, with women's organizations playing central roles in promoting not only women's rights but also more general democratization and anti-authoritarian agendas. In the 1980s, two major women's organizations campaigned successfully to expand women's roles in work and education, as well as securing considerable concessions with respect to freedom of dress. The more important of the two, the Arab Women's Development Society, focused on legal reform and suffrage.
