Story highlights Michelle Obama spoke at a conference in Qatar Wednesday to promote girls' education

The first lady also referred to her own experience of gender discrimination as a child growing up in Chicago

(CNN) First lady Michelle Obama told a conference in Qatar Wednesday that it's time to confront ingrained cultural oppression of women, insisting that men also take up the cause of promoting girls' education in their societies.

"We cannot address our girls' education crisis until we address the cultural norms and practices that devalue women's intelligence, that silence their voices, that limit their ambitions," Obama said at an international education conference held in Doha, the capital of the Arab Gulf nation.

Obama was speaking midway through a five-day trip to the region promoting her "Let Girls Learn" initiative. Later in the week, she'll speak at a U.S.-constructed school in Jordan that's educating 400 refugees from Syria.

The first lady also referred to her own experience of gender discrimination as a child growing up in Chicago, recalling that even though she was "bright and curious, and I had plenty of opinions of my own, people were often more interested in hearing what my brother had to say."

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