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This article may be used to:
• discuss how aspects of gender aware reporting can be subtle;
• present historical gender inequalities within education;
• highlight stereotypes about women as leaders;
• debate the existence of particular stereotypes surrounding Muslim women.
Trainers' notes:
This article reports on the election of Egypt's first female university president and speaks to several stereotypes about women's roles in education as well as their ability to lead. While the article is overtly gender-aware it does a good job balancing the subject's role as "first woman university president" with her role as just another university president. Specifically, it does not overly exceptionalise her appointment as president - save to say it is a first for a woman. It highlights Hanafi's qualifications and does not editorialise about the fact that a woman has obtained them, i.e. treating those accomplishments as again exceptional.
In many countries, women continue to have unequal access to education while this has shown signs of changing in southern Africa, the legacies of this historical inequality continue to linger in terms of women's career choices and their pay. This article presents a picture of a woman who breaks these stereotypes and has excelled at a high level in academia. Moreover, it also showcases women's leadership abilities.
Many Muslim scholars and feminists put forth that a special kind of stereotype attaches itself to Muslim women. Due to assumptions about Islam and its supposed oppressive nature, Muslim women may be portrayed as victims - a role that diminishes their own agency. In this vein, the media may promote stereotypes that Islam dictates that all women be heavily veiled, discouraged from attaining high levels of education or limited to certain public and private spaces. This article helps dispel notions like these and presents a Muslim woman from a conservative Muslim society that is a doctor, leader, educator and successful career woman.
Discussion questions:
• Is gender aware reporting in your country the norm? Why or why not? What should gender aware reporting include?
• Is education changing and do girl children have better access to it than before? What are some of the realities girls face that impact either positively or negatively on their schooling?
• How does your country see women leaders? Are women represented in the highest ranks of business, government and academia? Does this, in your opinion, correlate to girls' access to education?
• Do special stereotypes exist around Muslim women, why or why not? Do you find this true in your country? Do any other particular groups of women i.e. minorities etc experience a similar type of particular stereotyping?
Training exercises:
• Find examples of gender aware reporting and compare them - what makes them gender aware? Are there commonalities between how the pieces are written? They may all be gender aware but what makes some articles better than other in terms of style, voice, tone or focus?
• Find an example of reporting that is gender blind and provide a copy to each reporter and ask them to re-write the story in a gender aware manner.
• Unpack girls' experiences in school. Interviewing minors is difficult as a journalist and ethically often involves a lengthy consent process involving the child and parents in order to protect the child. Try looking at the experiences of girls in school differently through the eyes of their educators. Interview teachers and principles in your area - what issues keep girls in or out of the classrooms? Do their parents/care givers support their education? Are there lots of chores to do at home that interfere with homework? Are they taking care of a sick relative? Write-up what you find, you may even decide to include the voices of recent matrics as well.
• Interview a Muslim woman leader from your community both about her experiences as a woman and as a Muslim woman. How does she think women like her are portrayed? Are there aspects about her life story that contradict those portrayals? What are some of the challenges she faced in her journey towards becoming a woman leader?
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