Teaching Globally
Women’s Education
W o r l d w i d e®
Faculty Conference
31 May - 3 June 2011
Women’s Education Worldwide: The Unfinished Agenda
Joanne V. Creighton, President Emeritus, Mount Holyoke College
This conference presented through the generous support of Nancy Nordhoff ’54 and the Kathleen Ridder Fund
Women’s Education Worldwide: The Unfinished Agenda
by Joanne V. Creighton
President Emeritus, Mount Holyoke College
“Few subjects match the social significance of women’s education in the
contemporary world.” So said Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, the keynote
speaker of the first-ever gathering of presidents and chief academic
officers of women’s colleges and universities from around the world in
2004 held on the campuses of Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges. As
Sen has conclusively demonstrated in his research, when women are
educated, all of society benefits—whether in terms of economic productivity, public health, or an engaged citizenry. Women are still the world’s
greatest underutilized natural resource. Education is the key to unlocking
women’s potential.
Yet, in thinking about women’s education, one should remember how recently in the millennia of human history are the origins of women’s higher
education, less than 200 years. And within that short time span, women’s colleges have had an important catalytic role. The oldest women’s
college in the world, Mount Holyoke College, is indebted to legendary
founder, Mary Lyon, a woman from an impoverished family background
who, against incredible odds, started the new institution in 1837. She was
a visionary and revolutionary who set high expectations for the young
women attracted to her school. She believed in the transformative power
of education and the transformative power of women to make positive
change in the world. “Go where no one else will go. Do what no one else
will do,” she urged her students, and successive generations of graduates
heeded her call, becoming pioneers in a number of fields and founding
scores of schools and colleges across this country and around the world
and serving as president or principal of over a hundred others.
The model of single-sex education pioneered at Mount Holyoke and other women’s colleges in the eastern United States in the mid- to late 19th
century was in the latter half of the century and into the early decades of
the 20th century replicated across the country and exported to Europe,
Australia, the Far East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Most
women’s colleges were founded when opportunities for educational advancement for women were severely limited. Over the past fifty years,
however, historical forces, including the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, have had a profound effect on changing the landscape
of higher education in this country and in other parts of the developed
world. Women are now welcomed at higher education institutions of all
kinds, being, in fact, the majority population of students in many countries, including this one.
Today, the prevailing trends in higher education are towards coed, large,
public, urban, professional, nonresidential education. From a high of 300
or so women’s colleges before the widespread coeducational movement,
there are just over fifty remaining in the U.S. and every year or so, another
coeducates, assimilates, or closes, a move which usually provokes passionate outrage of students and alumnae and speculation in the media
about the status of women’s colleges. Reports of the death of women’s
colleges, however, have been greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark
Twain: dozens of those that remain—including five of the original “Seven
Sisters”: Mount Holyoke, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Wellesley—are
vital and strong. (The sixth, Vassar, went coed, and the seventh, Radcliffe,
assimilated into Harvard.) To be sure, women’s colleges now serve a tiny
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percentage of college-going women students, but their graduates remain
significantly overrepresented in academic, professional, and public life.
Moreover, women’s colleges have a continuing stake in advancing the
great unfinished agenda of the 21st century: the education and advancement of women across all ethnic, racial, age, and socioeconomic groups
both within the United States and around the world. Intertwined with
that is an even more pressing issue and a much larger agenda, that of
social justice for women worldwide. It is a disgrace that 800 million of the
world’s people are illiterate with 67% of them women and that in virtually every country of the world women are consciously or unconsciously
subjected to sexism, discrimination, or worse.
It was in recognition of this unfinished agenda of women’s education that
we at Mount Holyoke asked neighboring Smith College to partner with
us to try to bring together women’s colleges from around the world, an
undertaking that had never been done, and for which there was very incomplete and unreliable information.
Given that and the variegated history of women’s education in each country and region of the world, one must be tentative in generalizing about
the status of women’s colleges today. This we know: in Japan, India, and
other parts of South Asia, single-sex institutions have a continuing strong
presence in numbers and influence even though coeducational models
are becoming more numerous. In China, South America, Australia, and
Europe coeducation, with a few notable exceptions, is now nearly universal. In Korea, Japan and North America a comparatively small number
of historic women’s colleges, including some highly distinguished institutions, remain in a predominantly coeducational educational landscape.
And in parts of Africa and the Middle East, new institutions, both singlesex and coeducational, are emerging where limited opportunities existed
before.
Our approach in inviting women’s colleges together was far from systematic. Given our limited resources, we communicated entirely electronically. Our efforts, of course, were affected by the capabilities of this method.
Nonetheless, we were delighted with the result. Our first conference in
2004 drew together participants from five continents. Subsequent international conferences of this new alliance, named Women’s Education
Worldwide (WEW), have been held in Dubai (2006), Pavia (2008), Sydney
(2010), and upcoming Nanjing (2012). Student and faculty conferences
and exchanges are also part of our shared endeavors. We now have over
60 women’s institutions affiliated with this alliance.
These institutions are very different from one another—some are of venerable age and others quite new; some large, some small; some public,
others private; some comparatively privileged, and others very poor.
Yet we have found much common ground and have quickly developed
a sense of colleagueship and sisterhood. As institutions focusing on
women, all are, in some ways, out of the mainstream. Yet all are propelled
forward by a compelling sense of mission—dedicated to creating more
educational access for women, to developing self confidence and a sense
of agency in students, and to helping them to lead fulfilling and productive lives. Most, if not all, are committed to recognizing populations that
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Women’s Education Worldwide: The Unfinished Agenda
have been traditionally excluded from education, including older women
and certain socio-economic, ethnic and indigenous populations. Goals
for the alliance are to share best practices, to collect and disseminate data
about women’s colleges, to foster exchange among our institutions, and
especially to advocate for women’s education worldwide. (See our websites: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/proj/wew/about.html and http://www.
smith.edu/wsc/wewconference.php. )
Perhaps most excitingly, this vital partnership brings together longstanding women’s colleges in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Asia with newly
emerging women’s institutions in parts of the world where opportunities for women have been bleak, such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bangladesh,
Kenya, Sudan and Zimbabwe. There is much mutual enrichment to be
found in this partnership. These new institutions provide inspiring examples of modern day Mary Lyons who, against significant odds, advance
the cause of women’s education through visionary and determined leadership. Let me tell you about a few of them in two quite different regions
of the world: Sub-Saharan Africa and in the Arabian Gulf.
Sub-Saharan Africa is arguably the poorest, least developed region of the
world, with daunting problems including high fertility, rampant disease,
dysfunctional governments, ethnic conflict, poor infrastructure, endemic
unemployment and poverty—as well as widespread gender discrimination and inequality and limited access to higher education. Only about
five percent (compared to a world average of 25%) of relevant age groups
attend university. Moreover, because of limited opportunities at home,
many talented young Africans seek study and work abroad.
In preparation for our first conference we asked participants to identify challenges that they faced at their institution. “Civil war” said Afhad
University for Women in the Sudan, putting all the other challenges in
perspective. Indeed, Sudan, the largest country in Sub-Saharan Africa
with some 44 million people, you might think would be one of the most
inhospitable places for women’s education in today’s world, an impoverished country, characterized by the UN Human Development Index as a
“low-income, food deficient country” that ranks 141 out of 177 countries
and territories, with “feminized” poverty particularly pronounced. Land
degradation, depletion of natural resources, civil war, and brutal ethnic
violence have displaced millions of people and eroded already marginal
infrastructure and educational systems. While it is difficult to get accurate
information about the situation there, it is estimated that more than half
the women are illiterate, and one source says that perhaps 90 percent of
women in southern Sudan cannot read or write as a result of the disruptions of war as well as gender discrimination and the inclination, in some
rural areas, to see girls as more valuable married off at an early age rather
than educated. (Rebecca Hamilton, “Sudan Dispatch: What About the
Women,” January 25, 2011, http://www.ashewa.org/ashewa/)
Yet despite the odds, enrollment at the premier state university, the University of Kartoum, with a student body of nearly 17,000 students, is 55%
women. And the largest, longest-standing, most highly developed and
most impressive private women’s university in Africa is Afhad University
for Women in Omdurman across the Nile from Khartoum, which is part of
our WEW alliance. Now 45 years old, Afhad is a private, non-profit, nonsectarian university, the origins of which grow out of the vision and dedication of one family tracing back to 1907 when Babiker Bedri, a Sudanese
soldier, returned to his home and began a secular school for girls in a mud
hut for own daughters and those of his neighbors.
Babiker’s son, Yusuf, carried on his father’s work, and in 1966 established
the Ahfad University College for Women. Begun with only 23 students and
three faculty, Ahfad now has an enrollment of over 7300 undergraduates
and 250 post graduate students. It is run by Dr. Gasim Bedri, the grandson
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of the founder. “Ahfad” means “our grandchildren” in Arabic and Babiker’s
grandchildren are among the leaders and faculty of The Afhad University
for Women today.
Afhad is a thriving, ambitious institution with unmistakably feminist and
activist aims: “to prepare women to assume informed leadership roles in
their families, communities and the nation. AUW works to achieve this
goal by offering high quality instruction with emphasis on strengthening
women’s roles in national and rural development and achieving equity for
women in Sudanese society.” (http://www.ahfad.org/philosophy.html)
The university has a number of centers and offers an impressive array of
programs including five-year bachelor’s degrees in health sciences, psychology and education, management studies, rural development, and
medicine and pharmacy and masters and PhD programs in human nutrition, gender and development, gender and peace studies, sustainable rural development, business administration, microfinance, and psychology.
While it is not easy for Westerners to visit Sudan, Sandra Hale, Professor of
Anthropology and Women’s Studies at the UCLA Center for the study of
Women and Women’s Studies Programs was deeply impressed when she
visited the institution in 2003: “Ahfad University for Women is an amazing
place! . . . this women’s university where I was recently a consultant, is a
bastion of feminist activity and independent thinking in the midst of one
of the darkest political periods in Sudan’s history.” She goes on:
“Nineteen ninety-five, the year Ahfad reached university status,
was not an auspicious year for women or women’s education
in Sudan. A military Islamist government had come to power
in 1989, banning most women’s organizations and, in general,
political parties; prohibiting much co-education; forcing religious
education; harassing women who were not in Islamic dress; policing women morally in public places; firing or reassigning many
professional women while imprisoning women street vendors of
local brew; and generally curtailing all civil liberties.
In the midst of this gender oppression Ahfad has not only prevailed, but emerged as a first-rate institution. How Ahfad managed to thrive despite the negative attitude the government
holds towards secular education is one of many wonders. The
other wonder is that Ahfad does not have a low profile with
respect to molding independent and strong women and teaching against patriarchy. “
Especially well developed are gender studies centers and programs.
Professor Hale describes a number of action-oriented courses, such as
“Gender Challenges in the 21st Century,” where students are expected to
develop “a vision of how to organize themselves to address the challenges faced by Sudanese women. . . .” Under a government that until very
recently forbade freedom of assembly, women are being taught to organize and to try to gain access to power. (Sandra Hale, “Feminist education
in the global south: A visit to Sudan,” Afhad Journal, July 2003: http://
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb003/is_1_20/ai_n29046278/ ).
It is not really clear to Professor Hale why Afhad has pretty much been
left alone since the military coup d’etat in 1989. She speculates that it
has to do with the power and influence of the large Bedri family, the fact
that the institution has no governmental funding and some external support, and that it might appear to be a quiet place for middle to upper
class women who preoccupy themselves with an innocuous subjects like
women’s studies rather than a hotbed brewing political ferment. In other
words, the government may be unaware of how deeply subversive of the
existing order the institution really is. To be sure, there has been some
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Women’s Education Worldwide: The Unfinished Agenda
harassment. For example, “a bus full of Ahfad students returning from a
picnic was stopped by one of the ‘moral guards’ (militias assigned to uphold the Public Order Act). When the girls were ordered out of the bus
it was noticed that some were wearing blue jeans and their heads were
uncovered. They were flogged, causing a public outcry that embarrassed
the government.” (Hale)
For the most part, though, the institution carries on its activist mission
without interference. Among its many offerings are short courses of two
weeks to two months duration specifically tailored for rural development.
The School of Medicine has had a significant impact on the health of
women by providing about 50 doctors a year. Of course, these are small
numbers in a country with a population of over 44 million people. Nonetheless, in multiple ways, the influence and power of example of this university are considerable.
And so too are its challenges. Since its central purpose is to empower
women of Sudan, particularly poor ones, it subsidizes a significant number, some 70 percent, of students, including those from targeted areas
such as South Sudan and Darfur. Administrators note that another challenge is that the economic sanctions against the country put in place by
the United States government in 1997—because the State Department
declared it to be a “sponsor of terrorism and relentless oppressor of its minority Christian population”—have inhibited the development of “fruitful and capacity building projects with the U.S.” (email from Nafasi Bedri
2/18/11), a serious matter since the institution puts heavy emphasis on
developing productive links with other institutions in research and development to help grow a critical mass of female change agents. Indeed,
President Bedri was unable to obtain a visa from the U.S. government to
attend our first WEW conference in 2004. Nonetheless, students and faculty have participated in our activities, and AUW has a wealth of experience
in building international partnerships and implementing projects funded
by international agencies. And, encouragingly, administrators say that at
this time civil unrest and the succession of South Sudan are not affecting
the functioning of the university. We wish it well.
Another much smaller and much more recently established African women’s university is Kiriri Women’s University of Science and Technology in
Nairobi, Kenya, which opened its doors in 2002. Like Afhad, Kiriri too is
secular and private rather than public and owes its existence to the vision, dedication, and philanthropy of one black African family, that of Paul
Ndaura, a Kenyan architect, who is listed as one of the 100 wealthiest men
in Kenya. He and his children started a girls’ school in 1992 and then decided to establish a university that recognizes and builds upon the centrally important role that the woman has traditionally played in African
culture. My husband Tom and I had the opportunity to visit Kiriri in 2002,
its first year of operation, and were impressed with the dedication of both
the Ndaura family and the faculty.
The university seeks to nurture women (“kiriri” means “cradle”) and “to
expand opportunities for higher education in the scientific and technological fields to women.” Graduates “will be expected to have acquired
unique qualities for leadership and scientific enterprise. They should not
only excel in the sciences but also possess the ability to apply their knowledge to practical problems and issues in their societies.” (http://www.
kwust.ac.ke/)
Access to higher education for men and women in Kenya, a country of
some 39 million people, is severely limited even though since independence in 1963 the government’s encouragement of the development of
education as a means of promoting the economic and social welfare of
the country has increased the number and size of post-secondary institu-
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tions. Even so, there are not enough places for students who want entry,
and gender prescriptions and prohibitions further limit women’s access.
Women comprise about 30% of the 50,000 students at six public institutions, with the number of women pursuing math and science is a mere 12
percent of that. At Kiriri, educators hope to help to redress this imbalance
by offering a privately funded alternative to state education with a particular emphasis on science and technology. So far, however, the “science”
component of the mission is limited. The current programmatic offerings
are business, computer science, mathematics, and pre-university tracks.
The challenges of the new private institution are considerable, especially
in securing sustainable funding beyond that provided through family,
other philanthropy, and some governmental grants and loans. Most female students in Kenya cannot afford even nominal fees. Administrators
at Kiriri hope enrollment will be stimulated by plans the government is
developing to help to finance education for the backlog of some 22,000
secondary school leavers who lack university placements. But Kiriri must
compete with both new and established public coeducational institutions
for these students. So far, the numbers students enrolled at Kiriri, while
slowly growing, are still very small: only about 300 students overall with
about 100 graduates to date. The University is very pleased, however, with
the success of those graduates; it claims all have secured employment.
Another recently inaugurated institution is Women’s University in Africa in
Zimbabwe. It too opened its doors in 2002. It would be hard to overstate
the challenges of establishing a new women’s university in Zimbabwe at
such a catastrophic time of a rapidly shrinking economy, hyperinflation,
widespread unemployment, a war in the Congo, international condemnation and sanctions, and the rule of an autocratic leader, Robert Mugabe.
Yet WUA was born, the brainchild of two prominent African women, Dr.
Fay King Chung, a former Minister of Education and Culture in Zimbabwe,
and now Chairperson of the Board of Trustees, and Professor Hope Cynthia Sadza, former Public Service Commissioner, and now Vice Chancellor.
After distinguished careers in education and public service, these women
have dedicated both their time and their own resources to a realization of
their dream of a university for women.
Up to 1956, university education was not offered in Zimbabwe at all, but
had to be sought outside the country. Since that time, more than 10 universities have been established, but none except WUA, are exclusively for
women, and only WUA explicitly identifies as its mission as serving older
women. Like Sudan’s Afhad University and Kiriri University of Science and
Technology in Kenya, this Zimbabwean women’s university is pointedly
idealistic, feminist, and action-oriented in its objectives:
• To provide gender sensitive and socially responsible education
and training in an environment of principled enquiry, tolerance
and equity
• To address the gender disparity in higher education in Africa
• To educate women and galvanise their endeavours and leadership qualities so that they can offer quality services based on the
ethical value systems within their communities
• To provide opportunities for research and development in areas
of vital concern to women in Africa
• To encourage cooperative interdisciplinary teaching and research
• To open up a permanent network for academic women on a
global scale
• To link the education of women to poverty reduction in Africa
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Women’s Education Worldwide: The Unfinished Agenda
• To promote peace, human rights and democracy in Africa and
the world
• To increase women’s involvement in decision making
• To carry out research on issue particularly related to and affecting
women families
The institution has had impressive growth: It started with 145 students and has today over 1500, with programs offered in the areas of
agriculture, management and entrepreneurial development studies,
reproductive health and family sciences and social studies and gender
development studies.
Women’s University has succeeded in getting some student scholarships
and institutional grants and donations of books and computers, and an
alumnae and a friends group has begun to support the institution. The
government of Zimbabwe bought and donated a farm which serves as
the laboratory and practicum for the agriculture faculty and also, the
dairy generates income for the university, although the recent economic
meltdown has adversely affected farm production and revenues as well
as the functioning of the university.
WUA’s annual report for 2009 paints a stark picture of current challenges: “During 2008 Zimbabwe experienced unprecedented economic and
socio-political challenges which have led to a drastic deterioration in the
operating environment characterized by power outages, intermittent
water cuts, foreign currency shortages, empty supermarket shelves and
hyper-inflation. The inflation rate, which is estimated to have hit the one
billion percent mark, tipped the economy towards both pre-monetary
bartering and dolarisation.” Because of all of this, the brain drain, particularly to South Africa, is acute and foreign visitors shun the country.
During this time, many other universities suspended operations and
postponed graduation as employees refused to work for such inadequate
salaries. Through all of this, WUA managed to keep going, offering free
bus service to and from work, food and fuel subsidies, and dollar top-ups
to salaries help to retain its workforce. But even under less dire economic
conditions, sustainable funding for WUA is a severe challenge. It has identified fund raising, particularly from external sources, as a high priority. It
also struggles with student’s difficulties in paying fees, low staff salaries
and high staff turnover, and low levels of investment in infrastructure,
teaching and learning.
Despite these daunting challenges, the spirit of Women’s University
of Africa is strong. It continues to move forward with steady determination and ambition, educating increasing numbers of its targeted population, mature Zimbabwe women with the goal of preparing them for
productive lives.
These three women’s universities in Africa produce a very small part of the
very small number of women university graduates on the continent, yet
their influence goes well beyond the numbers. By their very existence,
these women-centered institutions help to draw public and governmental
attention to the untapped potential of educating women: In effect, they
say: “Look at us. Women matter. Educating women makes sense.” Furthermore, by banding together with other women’s colleges and universities
in the world, as they are in Women’s Education Worldwide and other such
affiliations, they expand their power and influence and strengthen their
advocacy for the agenda of women’s education and advancement, which
in Africa is distressingly unfinished, to put it mildly.
Huge cultural, political, and practical challenges face the development of
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women’s education in Africa, but perhaps the greatest challenge is economic. That is much less the case in many Gulf States of the Middle East,
another area of the world where new private women’s institutions have
taken root. Rather, the new wealth in the region, largely through oil revenues, has fueled rapid development including investment in education
for both men and women.
But all this activity is in many ways a latter day catch-up to the modern
world in a region that has until recent decades been underdeveloped. The
2002 United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) warns
that “the Arab world is suffering from three huge deficits—a deficit of
education, a deficit of freedom and a deficit of women’s empowerment.
. . . the gross domestic product of the entire Arab world combined was
less than that of Spain. Per capita expenditure on education in Arab countries dropped from 20 percent of that in industrialized countries in 1980
to 10 percent in the mid-1990s. In terms of the number of scientific papers
per unit of population, the average output of the Arab world per million
inhabitants was roughly 2 percent of that of an industrialized country.”
(http://www.arab-hdr.org/)
But significant progress has been made in building educational capacity in recent decades. Not only have monarchies in several Gulf States
financed new universities themselves, they have also supported the efforts of universities from the United States and elsewhere. So too have
foreign institutions, with their own funding, set up in Gulf States satellite
campuses, storefront offerings, partnerships, etc. In some ways, it is a Wild
West with institutions vying for students and sovereign funds. By far one
of the most rapidly developing countries, the United Arab Emirates, is a
hotbed of international presence and investment.
In the UAE, women are encouraged to seek higher education and, in fact,
do so in greater numbers than their male counterparts. Nonetheless,
women’s education for nationals in this region is very much shaped and
circumscribed by conservative, Muslim, gender-based considerations. In
the UAE higher education is segregated by gender as a matter of policy.
Some educational institutions are nominally coeducational, but women
and men are separated in instruction, living arrangements, and other activities. Families and students themselves expect that women will be protected physically, morally, and culturally and will be secure in their closed
and guarded campus. Without these protections, they would not pursue
higher education at all. “Women’s institutions sustain an apparently paradoxical culture of both empowering women and protecting them from
outside forces.” (Kristen Renn, “Women’s Colleges and Universities in International Comparative Perspective: The Case of Three Institutions in Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East,” unpublished essay.)
The largest women’s institution in the UAE, with over 6000 students, is
state-supported, Zayed University, named for the founder of the country, which opened in 1998 as an institution for UAE national women, with
campuses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Today, the university is still primarily
women, but it also takes some male students and international students
from 19 countries as well. Accredited by Middle States Commission on
Higher Education, Zayed University, modeled on Western institutions, offers bachelor degrees in arts and sciences, business, education, information technology and media and also in programs in a number of graduate
areas. It aspires to “the same rigorous standards and intellectual elements
found in major universities throughout the world.”
Another ambitious, state-sponsored institution, and active participant in
our WEW alliance, is Dubai Women’s College, founded in 1989, which is
part of the UAE’s Higher Colleges of Technology system of 16 campuses.
The Higher Colleges of Technology, started in 1998, is the largest higher
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educational institution in the United Arab Emirates with the current enrollment exceeding 18,000 students, all UAE nationals, more than 11,000
of which are women.
The creation of the Colleges of Technology grew out of the vision of H.H.,
the late President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, who felt the need
to “educate a new generation of Emiratis who can help build a new nation.” He wanted Dubai Women’s College to be “a world class institution
for higher learning” with graduates who were “a new type of Emirati.”
Dubai Women’s College, like other institutions in the country, is openly
and eagerly welcoming of opportunities to jumpstart educational opportunity in the Emirates, drawing on external and internal resources. Its
ambitious director, Howard Reed, is an American and many of the faculty
are foreign nationals.
Dubai Women’s College hosted our second international gathering of
presidents and deans in 2006, giving us the opportunity to experience its
campus culture. With a population of 2200 students, DWC has a modern,
technologically well equipped campus buzzing with a sense of student
engagement. Bachelor’s degrees are offered in applied communication,
business, education, health sciences, and information technology. At the
same time, students are encouraged to develop their confidence, creativity and talent in multiple ways, including even establishing their own
businesses. We were impressed with the entrepreneurial spirit of the students who, for example, set up an entirely student-run travel agency and
jewelry store on campus.
Overall, Dubai Women’s College strongly emphasizes applied learning
and preparing graduates to enter the workforce—which they do in substantial numbers. Seventy per cent of DWC’s graduates are employed;
many are among the first Emirati women to be selected to head important departments in Dubai and to take on leading roles in multinational
companies. Says Howard Reed, American director of the College for most
of its 20-year history:
“As Dubai exploded on to the world scene, DWC was exploding
on to the Dubai scene by providing young local women the opportunity to dream bigger dreams, discover new talents, build
confidence and “Practice the Future.” The first 15 graduates in
1992 were pioneers for the nearly 4,000 working DWC graduates
who have changed the rules for local women in the workforce
and raised the standards and expectations for working Emirati
women and men. These courageous working graduates changed
Dubai more than all the buildings and roads combined. They
changed how Emiratis thought about themselves and how the
rest of the world thought about Emiratis.”
Yet, of course, the transformation of Emirati society is a work-in-progress,
and women’s place is still strictly defined by family and religion. Even
though women students are now the majority in universities, their entry into the workforce, while officially encouraged, still lags significantly,
largely because the patriarchal structure of the family and of the power
structure is deeply entrenched. The conflicts and contradictions of work
and home were especially evident in the comments of a young Dubai
Women’s College alumna at our WEW conference who during the 10 years
since her graduation had risen through the ranks to an executive position with Dubai Duty Free. She clearly loved her work and was proud of
her success, yet she commented that it is likely that her education and
work experience were serious impediments to attracting a husband. She
explained that she still lived under the roof and rule of her father, who,
for example, insisted that her brother accompany her on business travel
because it was unseemly for her to travel alone. She said that she told her
brother in no uncertain terms to “stay in the hotel room” so that she was
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not professionally embarrassed by his presence.
If women in Dubai must negotiate the conflicting worlds and values of
the modern workplace and the traditional home, this delicate balance is
even more evident in less progressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia. Yet
there too vital new women’s institutions are taking root and inexorably
sowing the seeds of future change.
A study by Booz Allen notes that: “Over the past 40 years, the government
has succeeded in building an educational infrastructure, leading to an increase in school and university enrollment and a reduction in illiteracy,”
and there has been an effort to redress gender inequality in the schools,
with considerable progress as well. (http://www.ameinfo.com/199773.
html) But there is a ways to go: The World Economic Forum 2010 Global
Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 129th out of 134 countries for
gender parity. It was the only country to score a zero in the category of
political empowerment.
The total number of female students enrolled seeking a bachelor’s degree
more than tripled between 1995-96 and 2005-06 to more than
340,000, but this is still modest in a country of over 26 million people. Early marriage, high dropout rates, unemployment, the strictures of religion and local norms and customs specifying gender
roles, seriously impede women’s entry into higher education and
the workplace.
Still, women represent more than 58% of the total number of Saudi university students in eight public universities under the patronage of the
Ministry of Education. There are now over 10 private and 27 vocational
institutes for women as well.
The first private institution for either women or men to open in Saudi Arabia,
Effat University, has been a spirited part of our WEW alliance from the beginning. It is named for HH Princess Effat al-Thunayyan , known affectionately as Queen Effat , who championed the idea of girls’ education and,
had a dream—a new private women’s university “exemplifying the spirit
of Islam in its quest for knowledge, truth, and enlightenment.” (http://
www.effatuniversity.edu.sa/index.php?option=com_content&task=view
&id=19&Itemid=101)
Her story is interesting in itself: born into a poor Saudi family, living in
Turkey, she was a distant cousin of the prince whom she met on a visit
to Saudi Arabia and later married. He became King Faisal who ruled the
country from 1964 until his death by assassination in 1975. Queen Effat
is widely credited for her determination, courage, and leadership. She
combated strong religious resistance in her country to pioneer women’s
education, including establishing the first girls’ school in 1955, and, in the
process, broke stereotypes about women in the Muslim world.
With the support of her children and a team of Saudi and international experts, she opened Effat College in 1999 just months before she died. After
Queen Effat’s death, her daughter, Princess Lolwah Al-Faisal, and others
in the royal family linked up with gifted educators to take up the cause
of building this women’s institution. Wanting to break from old patterns
of rote learning and British university models, Princess Lolwah and her
colleagues looked to learn from others, particularly American institutions,
about liberal arts education and various facets of university functioning.
In fact, she and a delegation of leaders of the incipient institution journeyed to the United States a number of times to learn about best practices, and similarly they invited American educators and administrators
to Jeddah to serve as consultants. Subsequently, Effat developed partnerships with some of those institutions, including Mount Holyoke College,
which is currently advising Effat about the development of co-curricular
programs and preparation for American accreditation, and had earlier
5
Women’s Education Worldwide: The Unfinished Agenda
advised the institution about setting up academic programs and administrative infrastructure. Inveterate networkers, Effat has also established
partnerships with Duke University’s school of engineering, the University
of Cincinnati’s college of education, Georgetown’s schools of foreign affairs and business among several others institutions in the United States
and other countries.
Within ten years of its founding, in 2009, Effat College became a university with colleges of humanities and the social sciences, engineering, and
business. Now enrolling approximately 1000 students, it recently started
its first graduate program. About 75% of the students are Saudi nationals
and the rest from other countries. While predominantly Saudi women,
the faculty includes men as well as individuals from several other countries. When taught by men or when men visit, students are required to
appear in full hijab and at all times a prescribed dress and behavior code
is in force.
However controlled the campus environment and patriarchal the larger
society and power structure, yet the campus of Effat University functions
as a “free zone,” a hospitable separate space, where women feel relatively
free and empowered and can, with zest, learn and grow intellectually and
spiritually. Comments one graduate: “four or five years ago, I was totally
different. . . . I was a very shy person at first. I couldn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I didn’t
speak at all. My mentality has changed and everything has changed. . . . I
care about my future. I’m planning to get a master’s. They build your character here. They change you.” (Effat’s New Roses, Saudi Armco World , January/February 2007, http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200701/
effat.s.new.roses.htm)
On Effat’s Web page, the quest for knowledge is carefully couched within
the language of The Holy Quran, and there is concerted attention to developing the whole person within that context: “Effat University will strive to
impart international humanistic Islamic values to its students and prepare
them to be effective members of their respective institutions and useful
contributors to their societies without being either narrow-minded or
possessed with a liberalism that leads to dissolution.” Yet much about the
university and its values resembles its American models, particularly its
robust spirit of intellectual inquiry and its ambition to offer the “best and
most distinctive education” among peer institutions. I am impressed with
the energetic savvy of the leaders of the institution who know how to get
what they want and how keep moving forward while not challenging the
gender demarcations of the larger society. Indeed, they have turned their
segregation into a decided advantage. They are determined that Effat will
not just to be equal to male institutions. It will be better.
Says President Haifa Jamal al-Lail: “If I am going to concentrate on one
challenge, it’s to build the culture of critical thinking, of making people accept other views, to interact in a more meaningful way, with tolerance and
harmony.” (Effat’s New Roses) When I asked the president about whether
the valuing of “critical thinking” could cause students to question the religious and patriarchal order of the larger society, she quickly dismissed
this idea, saying that one questioned only “up to a point.” That may well
be, but it seems unlikely that the patriarchy, at least, will be unchanged by
the steady march towards greater education of women.
The greater education of women has not, however, resulted in gender equity and equal employment in Saudi Arabia, where women represent only
17% of the workforce. In part, this is because the “dichotomy between
the type of skills taught to girls and those needed in the labor market
has led to a high unemployment rate among Saudi women and a high
demand for foreign labor.” A very large number of female graduates, 93%
in 2007, have degrees in education or human sciences. (“Women’s Education in Saudi Arabia: the way forward.” (http://www.ameinfo.com/199773.
Teaching Globally Faculty Conference
html, June 2009) This disjuncture between their educational preparation
and needs of the workplace limits Saudi women’s potential for progress
in an age that is increasingly oriented toward scientific and technological
advancement. Nonetheless, one feels that this too will change and that
women’s institutions like Effat University (which offers the only electrical
and computer engineering degrees to women in the country) will be in
the vanguard of that change.
Indeed, women’s institutions by their very existence challenge the status
quo: often, they are downright revolutionary and subversive. In Dubai
and in other parts of the world, one can almost visibly see the rents in
the fabric of patriarchal order as women get educated and move into the
workforce. More than likely, this is why the repression of women is so
virulent. The irony, of course, is that the education of women, as Amartya
Sen and others have so trenchantly argued, is a sure way to increase the
welfare of the whole of society. Still, not everyone sees it that way. And
there are sure to be bumps on the road towards a more equitable society.
One such impediment is that in many parts of the world more women are
pursuing higher education than their male counterparts—who nonetheless
control the power structure. This imbalance of education and power is
self-evidently unhealthy and inhibiting to true progress and positive gender relations. The education of women, clearly, must be accompanied by
the education of men as well, if the world is to grow towards greater enlightenment and fuller use of its human capital.
Looking back over the stories of new women’s institutions emerging in
the world, then, I am struck by two things in particular. One is the effervescent power and pervasiveness of educational humanism. These new
educational institutions are imbued with a broader purpose than simply
preparing women for the workforce, although that goal is very important.
They also want to enrich the lives and expand the minds of their students;
they want them to grow and develop their human potential; they fully expect them to be ethically responsible individuals who will make a positive
difference in the world. As such, these institutions embody the best and
most idealistic of human aspirations. Moreover, they are action-oriented:
they propel their students out into the world to be change agents. Whether this linking of educational enlightenment and human betterment
grows out of Western liberal arts traditions, or out the Christian missionary
movement of the 19th century, or out of Islamic teachings, or whether it is
the expression of a more universal secular humanism, it plays a prominent
role in the core values of the institutions.
I am also struck by how formative are visionary leaders or families, or
groups of individuals who, against daunting odds, realize their dream of
establishing thriving women’s colleges and universities in inhospitable
parts of the world: the Bedri family in the Sudan; the Ndarua family in
Kenya; two prominent African women in Zimbabwe; a visionary Sheikh
along with a savvy American director in Dubai; Queen Effat, her daughters, and far-sighted educators in Saudi Arabia. These 21st century educational pioneers recall the Mary Lyons of the 19th century and they bring
to mind the truth of Margaret Mead’s famous remark: “Never doubt that
a small group of individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only
thing that ever has.” And, I might add, never doubt that a small number of
women’s colleges can change the world. Mount Holyoke and Smith, their
historic “sisters,” and the hundreds of institutions founded in their likeness
in this country and across the world, have had a radically disproportionate effect in generating “social capital” and in propelling women forward
as change agents in the larger world that devalues them. Now more than
ever the world needs them.
NB: Versions of this talk were given at Michigan State University, April 5, 2011, and at
the faculty conference of Women’s Education Worldwide, June 1, 2011.
6
Thank You
The organizers of the 2011 Women’s Education Worldwide Faculty Conference
would like to thank the sponsors who made this conference possible through
their very generous support. Thanks to all participants and their institutions for
coming together to share thoughts, strategies, and initiatives toward realizing
the potential and facing the challenges of women’s education in today’s world.
Kathleen Ridder Fund
in Honor of Jill Ker Conway
Office of the Dean of Faculty, Mount Holyoke College
Office of Complementary Program Development,
Mount Holyoke College
Nancy Nordhoff ’54, Mount Holyoke
Smith College Project on Women and Social Change
Smith College Global Studies Center
Kahn Liberal Arts Institute
Presidents’ Offices at Mount Holyoke College & Smith College