A Jam-Packed Day

My mind is jam-packed with insights from today.  I am overwhelmed with how graciously we TEACH fellows have been treated and with how much information there is to process.  It is such an exciting time to be here in Bahrain, and I am with such extraordinary people.  I am gaining so many insights and yet I know that I am just understanding a very little of a culture whose history goes back thousands of years.

Here are a few tidbits from what I've learned and experienced:

a)  I have been told repeatedly:  "We welcome all people and all religions. Just make sure to cover at Mosques".  The ex-pat community here is immense, and I have seen a large range of variety in terms of how people dress and the degrees of formality that people use to greet one another.

Young ladies with various styles of dress at a "Derby Coffee" at Bahrain Polytechnic School

    We started out the morning with a visit to Professor Riyah Hamzah, the Secretariat General of the Higher Education Council for Bahrain.

b)  There are gaps between men and women, but not necessarily in the way you would expect.  

Girls' public education began just a decade after boys' public education.  We were told that a belief here is that "Literate women raise literate children" and that this is in contradiction of the general belief that women are oppressed in Muslim culture.  

Aisha, a lovely (truly charming) lady who met with us at the Ministry of Higher Ed, told us that her Saudi friends tell her that they are Lucky not to be required to drive; isn't it nice to have a driver everywhere?  Aisha spoke of her full time job at the ministry and then going to drive her high school son everywhere, and imagined how nice it would be to have a driver.  

She told us that in her mother did not go to school, but that many Bahraini women went to school even as far back as 1928.  She explained that the first batch of men went abroad to study in the 1920s, and women were only a decade later in their travels abroad to study at American University in Beirut.   She earned a scholarship to study in France when she was 16, but her parents didn't think she was mature enough for it.

At first I cringed a little about how we are only talking a century or so ago that women didn't go to school, and how glad I am that I could study in France when I was eighteen and how glad I am that I can drive.  But still, this is contrary to a lot of the stereotypes of Muslim women and it is worth noting.

Further more, and this is very interesting to me about Bahraini history, women were driving in Bahrain in the 1950s.  My Grandma drove when I was a kid, but I don't think she was driving that far back.  Kind of like the ladies in "A League of Their Own", women here were called on to play extended  roles when their husbands went on long fishing or pearl-diving tips.  They considered themselves early entrepreneurs.  Note: they were taking care of nine or ten kids and the house.  But they weren't passive.

We asked about women in professions. At this point, young Emirati women are graduating from Khalif University at higher ratios in fields of engineering than men, at a ratio of 60% to 40%.  The same ratios are true in Bahrain.  The Secratariat General laughed that it might be that women are just wiser than men, or maybe because they play less soccer.  

There is a Committee for the Empowerment of Women in the Ministry, but the Secretariat General laughed that he doesn't need to nominate anyone for needing more empowerment in his ministry: 95% of the employees in his Ministry are women.  He suggested for his organization maybe there should be a committee for the empowerment of men.  

Later in the day, we went to the Bahrain Polytechnic. I can't write much more right now (time is of the essence) but one element of the visit is really relevant right here.

This new higher education institute is one devoted to practical workplace-ready education with problem based learning and vocational development.

One of the courses for Third Years in Engineering is Car Lab.  Students work all year in teams to make a car.    We met two young ladies, Takeena and Sarah, who were working in the lab. They were programming and then welding a  chassis for a car.  Their "tutor"  (teacher) explained that it is all student guided and they work for a year and at the end of the year, they have built a car.

In the lab, there is technical and computer equipment, but there are also real cars from which students can learn.  They can ask the teacher for mini-lessons, but this is their project and one that is filled with intrinsic motivation.  How cool!

We asked the young ladies if they wanted to go into the car industry when they graduate.  They both smiled and said yes, but there aren't jobs for them yet.  Women are not yet accepted into engineering jobs.  The administration and teachers said that society changes slowly, and I called these students "Pioneers".  They explained that they hope that they will get jobs in engineering but it may take time and still, with this education, they have developed professional and life skills that will help them in any future career or situation.

Lots to process!  I have only touched the tip of the iceberg on today's experiences, but I hope this gives you an idea of what I am experiencing.  I'm SOOOOO grateful to be here!