ABOVE: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
© ISTOCK.COM, VDVORNYK
As a high school student in Saudi Arabia, Reem Khojah’s dream was to study software engineering at the King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals. “Most of the alumni from KFUPM end up in high-ranking engineering and administrative position jobs, and I want to be successful like them. Unfortunately, at that time, there was no engineering school for women,” says Khojah, now a joint postdoc at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Stanford University.
There are very few engineering programs for women, resulting in a shortage of homegrown women engineers to train the next generation of students in Saudi’s gender-segregated education system, in which students are taught by teachers of the same sex. Despite having a strong passion for engineering, Khojah eventually settled for doing a degree in Medical Applied Science at the King Abdulaziz University.
Traditionally, women in ...
