In these Muslim countries women are 50% of students in technical professions

Engineering classes look different in Jordan, Malaysia and Tunisia, and it has nothing to do their lecture slides. Up to 50 per cent of university students studying engineering in these Muslim-majority countries are women, while in Australia that figure sits at closer to 15 per cent. The same can be said for America where the […]

Engineering classes look different in Jordan, Malaysia and Tunisia, and it has nothing to do their lecture slides. Up to 50 per cent of university students studying engineering in these Muslim-majority countries are women, while in Australia that figure sits at closer to 15 per cent.
The same can be said for America where the number of female students is between 15 to 20 per cent, and it’s something Washington State University is trying to improve. Just last month they launched a research project to investigate what Jordan, Malaysia, Tunisia and even Saudi Arabia, are doing to reach gender parity in engineering studies, and how that knowledge can be applied in a Western context.
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Australian mechanical engineer and former Muslim Youth of the Year, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, tells SBS she finds WSU research interesting but not surprising.
“I think it reinforces how deeply the stereotypes around the oppression of Muslim women are believed,” she says.
“Many of these countries and other Eastern nations don’t have the same hang ups about education and the ‘gendered’ association with knowledge. Almost all of my aunts are technical professionals, which often shocks people in the West.”

– By: Bianca Soldani 
Source: SBS