Syria Bars Women From Many University Programs
Syria's education ministry announced new admission rules in October for two newly created security-focused universities, closing most courses to women. Human Rights Watch has criticized the rules as discriminatory.
Syria's education ministry announced new admission rules this October for two recently created institutions, the National University of Defense Sciences and the Syrian University for Security Sciences. The first reserves certain courses for men, while the second does so for almost all of them. Women can still study these subjects at other, more general universities and colleges. The decision has drawn criticism inside and outside the country, and it is seen as a signal of how the transitional authorities view women's role in state institutions.
Impact on students
Lin Najab, a 23-year-old mechatronics engineering student from Damascus, told DW she had planned to pursue a master's degree but must now consider alternatives, including moving to another province. She said parents often oppose this, either for security reasons or because families do not want daughters studying elsewhere, and conservative Syrians still frown on women living alone.
Fatoun Kharbatli, an activist from Aleppo, also opposes limiting subjects by gender. Qamar al-Yaser, a mother of three in rural Damascus, supports the ban, arguing that the relevant fields demand physical strength, travel and work at remote sites.
Other restrictions
Students at the defense university must serve in the military, and graduates of the security university must commit to up to 20 years in the internal security forces. Restrictions on women also cover a railways institute in Aleppo, oil and gas training bodies in several cities, and a radio and television course in Idlib. Men, meanwhile, are barred from kindergarten teacher training, nursing and midwifery courses.
Officials have said some of the rules were carried over from Assad-era colleges that were merged into the new universities this year. Human Rights Watch said the rules violate Syria's international legal obligations and form part of a pattern of actions by the transitional authorities that restrict women's roles in state institutions. Nadra Bunni, an analyst at the Middle East Institute Switzerland, said it remains unclear whether gender-based restrictions will become a feature of the new Syria.
