Why can't an Arab woman in the Middle East be treated like a man?  It isn't a line from the song in My Fair Lady, but it could have been.  The answer is not provided in the "Report on the Global Gender Gap in 2013,"  released on October 24, 2013, but the voluminous relevant data in this report might help intuit one. The 2013 report is published by the Geneva based World Economic Forum.  It is concerned with the gender-based disparities in 136 countries (more than 93 percent of the world's population) relating to economic, educational, health, and political policies.  It measures the relative gaps between the sexes in these four areas, not the levels of absolute achievements.   The region in the world that is worst and has least improved in these regards is the Middle East and North Africa.  That region has closed only 59 percent of the overall gender gap.  In the economic area, it has...(Read Full Post)