For Qatari Educators, Women Are Both the Problem and the Solution

by Richard H. Curtiss

Saif Ali M. Al-Kuwari brushes aside compliments on Qatar's remarkable educational progress. "Running the schools for an American city of 600,000 wouldn't seem like a very big problem," he says.

Whatever the truth of that assertion, what Qatar's assistant under-secretary for educational affairs modestly doesn't mention is that there is no American city with the same population as Qatar that had to start an educational program virtually from scratch in 1956. Prior to the opening of a Qatari public school system in that year, there were four boys' schools and one girls' school in the country. Today there are some 35,000 students in Qatar's primary schools, more than 16,000 students in various schools at the secondary level, and nearly 8,000 university students in Qatar. The progression in numbers reveals something else.

Qatar's resident population of no more than 600,000 people, of whom some 20 percent are Qatari nationals and the rest from three dozen countries of Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, is growing at a phenomenal rate of 4.8 percent a year. For this reason a country that had only five schools 40 years ago simply cannot turn out enough teachers for its explosively growing student population.

That brings Mr. Al-Kuwari to a paradox. Asked what is Qatar's greatest educational problem, he answers: "The education of women." Asked later in the interview what is Qatar's greatest educational accomplishment, he answers: "The education of women."

The fact that educating women is Qatar's biggest educational problem and biggest accomplishment as well is explained by the nature of Qatari society. Nearly all Qatari nationals are Sunni Muslims of the Muwahidun (unitarian) faith. They are known to other Muslims as "Wahhabis," named after Muhamad ibn Abdul Wahhab, the Saudi reformer who initiated the strictest brand of Islam in the 18th century A.D. and whose alliance with the House of Saud, sealed over generations of intermarriage between the two families, spread the discipline throughout all of Saudi Arabia. Since many Qatari nationals have origins and tribal ties that extend across the Qatari-Saudi border, this extremely conservative school of Islam found a home in Qatar as well.

Nevertheless, there are differences in practice. Most but not all Qatari women cover their faces when they go out in public, as do most Saudi women. But, by contrast with Saudi Arabia, Qatari women drive automobiles. And whereas women in Saudi Arabia who choose careers are expected to work within an all-female environment (women's schools, universities, hospitals and even banks), this is not necessarily the case in Qatar.

Although many Qatari families would prefer that their daughters work separately from men, the Qatari government not only does not legislate such segregation, it actively encourages all government offices and private businesses in Qatar to employ women.

Thus the original paradox of providing educational facilities through the university level for women who were likely to graduate into a society in which there were not enough jobs for educated women has been solved. For example, in Qatar, as in virtually all Arab Muslim countries, boys and girls have separate classes. Therefore, boys traditionally were taught by male teachers and girls by female teachers. In modern Qatar, however, there is a third way, illustrated by the country's educational statistics.

At the primary level there are 7,130 boys in classes taught by men. There are 17,730 girls in classes taught by women. Why the disparity? Because there also are some 10,000 boys in classes taught by women. The results of this untraditional use of women teachers for boy students are excellent, according to Al-Kuwari. And it solves other problems. For a time too many women teachers were being graduated to be absorbed by classes for girls and women. At the same time, with so many other opportunities open to them in Qatar's petroleum-based economy, it was hard to retain Qatari male teachers in teaching jobs.

Now there are enough jobs for all Qataris, male or female, who want to go into education, and this situation is likely to continue for some time. This is because only 13 percent of teachers in Qatar are Qataris, who make up about 20 percent of the population.

Many of the non-Qatari teachers are employed in private schools for the children of expatriate workers. These schools are conducted in such languages as Tagalog for the Filipinos, Hindi and Urdu for Indians and Pakistanis, and English not only for the children of English-speaking expatriates but also for children whose parents want them to attend classes conducted in that language.

For Qatari women who are interested in careers in non-traditional fields, there also is government encouragement¸both by making education free for both male and female Qatari nationals from primary through university levels, and in urging employment of women.

The ministry of education's Al-Kuwari is a good example of the employment opportunities available to Qataris in the rapidly expanding educational field. He completed high school in Saudi Arabia and taught in a Qatari secondary school for two years. Then he took a B.A. in education in Cairo in 1974. After serving as a school headmaster in Qatar for two years he went to the United States on a Qatari government scholarship. There he took an intensive English-language course at American University for six months and then transferred to George Washington University, also in Washington DC, where he took an M.A. in fine arts in 1984.

He returned to Qatar and served as inspector of art education for two years. Next he served as head of primary education throughout the country for one year, then became head of secondary education. In 1990 he was promoted to assistant undersecretary for educational affairs.

His wife works as an administrator in the Ministry of Education, where she is one of 20 women employees. His sister works in the social affairs department of Qatar's Ministry of Labor.

For educators like Saif Ali M. Al-Kuwari, keeping up with the burgeoning demand of Qatar's exponentially expanding student population is all in a day's work. The results, however, are astonishing as Qatar continues its evolution over two generations from one of the poorest and most conservative communities on earth to a nation which, within a decade, may be destined to have the highest per capita income in the world.