Arab women have been challenging the gender roles by breaking into fields like science, math, & engineering and have achieved massive success in those sectors.

SOURCE: STEP FEED

BY: LEYAL KHALIFE

Did you know that one in three startups in the Arab world is founded or led by women? If you did not, then you’re not following the ecosystem in the region well enough nor are you acknowledging the grounds that women have been breaking.

Before delving into the stem of the topic at hand, it is worth noting that women in the region outnumber men at the tertiary level of university enrollment by a ratio of 108 to 100. Standardized tests have also shown that women (and girls) in some Arab countries, like Jordan for example, achieve higher results than their male classmates across different levels of education. And contrary to popular belief, women in the Arab world are very much interested in sciences, earning more science degrees on a percentage basis than those in the United States. According to UNESCO, 34–57 percent of STEM grads in Arab countries are women, a higher share than in universities in the U.S. or Europe.

So, that’s got to count for something, right?

Well, in a region where success most often stops at the educational level, it’s hard to say. Many Arab women are left out of the labor force, which makes it harder for those who do enter the market to reach high positions due to the high levels of male dominance in several sectors and fields. According to reports, women in the region continue to face less favorable labor market conditions than men. In 2018, the unemployment rate among women (15.6 percent) was almost three times higher than the male rate (5.7 percent).

Because of male dominance and the traditional hierarchal company systems, many Arab women are picking their own brains when it comes to business plans. This is especially true when it comes to internet companies in the region as 35 percent are founded by a woman, compared to the global average of just 10 percent. 

The technology sector is a relatively new field with no pre-attached gender stereotypes, fortunately, making it moderately easy for women to enter the market without being told that her “womanhood” doesn’t belong in that field. But even in older sectors, Arab women have been challenging the gender roles by breaking into fields like science, math, and engineering … and have achieved massive success in those sectors, too.

The number of women dominating those fields dates back decades. Queen Hatshepsut founded medical schools in ancient Egypt and encouraged women to pursue medicine, Iraqi mathematician Sutayta al-Mahmali left behind a legacy of algebraic equations, and Egyptian Sameera Moussa – dubbed Mother of Atomic Energy – is one of the very few Arab figures of her time to contribute to the advancement of medical nuclear power. And the list goes on and on. Over time, the list grew in quantity and quality, too.

We now have countless women conquering STEM like never before.

Let’s start with the famous Ayah Bdeir. She’s not your typical engineer who ended up working for a consulting firm, no. Bdeir is a Lebanese engineer and interactive artist who founded littleBits, “an award-winning platform of easy-to-use electronic building blocks that is empowering kids everywhere to create inventions.”

The company is basically a library of modular electronics that snap together with a magnet. It’s no surprise considering the MIT media lab alumna’s career was always centered around creating a platform that would make innovation and education available to as many people around the world as possible. She is now considered one of the leaders of the open-source hardware movement and has made a huge impact on the lives of millions across the world. Her company has sold millions of products and now writes curricula that are used in 3,500 schools worldwide.

Bdeir has been featured on Forbes, Business Insider, and many other international publications. She was also named on Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business” list in 2013.

And since we’re talking about innovation and creations, we must dedicate some time to talk about groundbreaking Lebanese entrepreneur Hind Hobeika, the founder of wearable tech company Instabeat. The latter is a device that allows swimmers to monitor their heart rate and other metrics through a real-time display and is often referred to as the “Google Glass” of swimwear.

The device has won many awards and Hobeika’s story is often hailed as a successful one due to the global recognition and appeal of the product. A newer version of the product was officially launched mid-2019; the company has raised a total of $6 million in funding and has spent a total of 8 years on R&D between Lebanon, China, and the U.S as of July 2019, according to LebNet.

In the field of innovation and technology, another name comes to mind, i.e. Noor Shaker. In 2008, computer scientist Noor Shaker left Syria for Europe to pursue her passion for Artificial Intelligence. Following her master’s degree, she spent eight years as a machine learning researcher in Copenhagen, Denmark, focusing on the application of technology in computer games.

Academia was clearly her first step; an entrepreneurial storm was her second. She eventually co-founded Generative Tensorial Networks (GTN), a company that combines quantum computers with AI to speed up the creation of new medicines.

Her significant advances for the pharmaceutical industry have landed Shaker a spot on the “Innovators Under 35 Europe” list in 2018. One year later, she occupied space on BBC’s “100 Women” list.

You also have Egyptian Dina El-Mofty, the woman behind one of the country’s most successful companies, INJAZ Egypt. The organization partners with schools and universities across the country, impacting over half a million Egyptian students and helping train them to become future entrepreneurs.

In recent years, the company “has seed funded and supported over 50 successful startup businesses.” After her great success in creating an innovative platform that helps build a better future for young Egyptians, Arabian Business nominated El-Mofty in 2016 as one of the world’s most influential young Arabs under 40.

All these women mentioned above have one thing in common: an entrepreneurial heart. And the epitome of that kind of spirit is Elissa Freiha, who also happened to snatch a spot on BBC’s “100 Women” list last year.

Emirati-Lebanese Elissa Freiha is the founder of Womena, an angel investment platform for female investors. Freiha’s passion for female empowerment, education, and growing UAE’s SME space have always been key in driving her goals forward.

“We’re here to show that women in tech not only exist, but they are rockstars and kick-ass business leaders,” Freiha once said in an interview with Vogue.

“They’re worth your backing – not just moral backing, but financial backing.”

Womena, which first started in 2014, has since launched a media platform and the first female-focused tech accelerator in the Arab world. Womena and its 40 angels invested more than 2 million dirhams ($544,000) in seven UAE-based startups as of 2017.

Lebanese-born Huda Zoghbi is a professor of pediatrics, molecular and human genetics, neurology, and neuroscience at Baylor University in Texas. She is also the director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital.

Throughout the course of her career, the medical researcher and physician has left a mark with her medical work and has been recognized for that. In 2016, she was awarded a $3-million prize by the Breakthrough Foundation, co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg, also known as the “Oscars of Science.”

She was the only female award-winner at the award show that year. The Breakthrough Awards 2017 recognized Zoghbi’s work in Spinocerebellar ataxia and Rett Syndrome, delving into the genetic causes of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Zoghbi, an American University of Beirut Trustee and Alumna, is all about helping people with her work and her list of awards is proof of that.

She’s been awarded the Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal, a Shaw Prize, and a Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science.

In the world of science, we also have Lebanese Najat Saliba who is conducting world-leading research on the chemical and toxic composition of polluted air. Through her work, she hopes to address the most pressing environmental challenges burdening Lebanon and the Middle East.

There’s also Saudi Khawla Al Khuraya, a physician and pathology professor who broke through when she was the first to discover the cancer-triggering FOSM1 gene in the human body. She is currently a cancer specialist at King Faysal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre.

But that’s not to say science and tech don’t intersect. Just think about robot-assisted surgical procedures and how they are on the rise. None of that would have happened if technology wasn’t introduced to the field of science.

When it comes to the sciences, computer science specifically, the full integration of tech has allowed for legendary advancements in the field, starting with AI.

Emirati Rouda Al Shamsi, a graduate of the American University of Sharjah, is an example of someone who took charge of AI to help protect the UAE. She’s the brainchild of the Forecasting Defence Smart Center, which uses AI to help solve crimes in the Gulf nation.

“The artificial intelligence can work as a movement analyzer, thereby, helping the police in solving crimes by reading faces,” she said.

The center can also “help in forecasting future occurrences, it could be used as a tool for detecting narcotics since it analyzed and compares current and past situations by programming repetitive patterns.”

Egyptian computer scientist Rana El-Kaliouby is another person whose innovation started with the use of AI as well. El-Kaliouby is a major contributor to facial expression recognition research and technology development after founding MIT startup Affectiva to help computers read facial gestures more accurately.

In April 2019, Affectiva raised $26 million in a funding round with aims of advancing its emotion and object detection AI for monitoring vehicle passengers. Affectiva wants its solution to be incorporated into cameras used in car safety systems to recognize when a driver is happy, sad, drowsy, or frustrated.

Bridges can be built between any two sectors of STEM. An example of an Arab woman who connected entrepreneurship and science is Saudi national Ghazael Al Dossary who works in the petrochemical industry.

She is the founder of Oriental Promises Trading, a company that delivers waste materials to large manufacturers who then repurpose them to fit their needs. Al Dossary’s organization prevents tons of waste from going to landfills. In 2016, Al Dossary’s business won the Merit Prize at Shell LiveWIRE’s “Top Ten Innovators” global competition.

Another woman who fused tech and entrepreneurship is Saudi Manal Al Sharif, the founder of Women2Hack Academy, a program that aims at fostering tech talent in the kingdom with a focus on information security. She’s been mentioned on lists such as Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech, Newsweek’s world’s top 10 Digital Revolutionaries, Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, and Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers to name a few.

Long before her journey as an entrepreneur, the computer scientist was the only woman working as an IT specialist at state-owned oil producer Saudi Aramco.

Omani Hind Bahwan brought together tech, engineering, and entrepreneurship having founded Bahwan CyberTek Group. The latter is an IT, logistics, and engineering corporation.

The Harvard business school graduate also serves as a board member for several important companies; organizations have rendered her one the most esteemed Arab businesswomen.

She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the World Economic Forum’s “Global Young Leader” award, which she received in 2007, and the Asian Business Leadership’s 2011 “Woman of Power Award.”

Many of the women mentioned above have started their own business. This is a major step forward for the ecosystem as a whole and for women, specifically. How?

Female-led businesses hire more women (25 percent) than their male counterparts (22 percent). Female-owned firms also employ more women to managerial roles, allowing women to reach the top of the ladder based on merit rather than their assigned sex.

So more female-owned businesses means higher female employment and more female managers… which means women get just as many opportunities to shine without the help of any man. And that’s why it’s important, just in case you were wondering.