This is a study on Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in the Arab countries, with Egypt as a case study. The study focuses particularly on efforts for achieving universal primary education, and promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. The study puts emphasis on the advances made, and on the obstacles to achieve these goals, such as: discriminatory social norms, laws, and practices, and therefore the need to be further incorporated in the MDGs to achieve a more egalitarian developmental approach.