VIVIENNE PORZSOLT spoke recently to HA'IFA BARAMKI, director of continuing education at Bir Zeit University. Mrs Baramki was born in Gaza and stayed there until she went to study at the Beirut College for Women. She returned to Gaza and taught English language in the refugee camps before moving to Bir Zeit College.
Baramki was the registrar and director of admissions for 17 years before she took over the director's position at the new Department of Continuing Education. She said, "As director of admissions, I tried to promote the admission of women. Bir Zeit University has always encouraged the education of women and so I really did not have a hard time.
"But we needed sometimes to give them a little bit of a push because some of our women, especially from the villages, need encouragement for studying and getting the same grades as men.
"We are a patriarchal society... Every family invests in the boys because the men are the people who will take care of the family. The family is economically unable to educate all its children — the men will take priority over the women. That is why I tried to push for more women to be admitted. We allowed women with lower grades to enter. The women who were admitted to this kind of scheme really did well."
The Department of Continuing Education is an outreach program giving courses to the community, to upgrade skills in different areas. It concentrates on the education of professional people in five areas: women, management, technical training for small businesses, computerisation and teachers.
"Our work with women is going to concentrate on giving them courses, starting from management, especially in small businesses. You will find them alongside their traditional role in the home — pickling, or embroidering or dressmaking or trying to handle any of the other small businesses like opening a shop.
"Our village women are really very good entrepreneurs. They take their produce from the farm to the markets and do all their own costing and selling, but at the end of the day, whatever they make, they take back to the husband."
Baramki said that "another side in the women's training is awareness of their rights as human beings. Under Islamic law, women have a secondary role. The Palestinian state is declared to be a secular state, and so we are hoping to be able to frame the laws on a civil basis and not on a religious basis."