As the only girl among forty male classmates in a Electrical Engineering class my aunt Ana had very uncomfortable feeling, which she never experienced before. She will probably forever remember professor’s class discussions and questions, for which she has always stayed quiet without participating in discussions or answering the questions, while almost everybody else gave some answers or comments. What would it look like if she gives the wrong answer? Her colleagues could think that Ana is in the wrong place, or moreover, she is just one more girl who is trying to be smart. The same story was repeated every single week. Every time she entered that class, she kept her head down looking at the floor. As the only girl in Engineering class she was ashamed. “What am I doing here?” she asked herself a hundred times during this class. Ana felt like a stranger in some far, unknown land where people speak a different language. Men are real masters of Engineering classes. It is their world and their kingdom. Why is that? Who established this rule? Where are women in that combination? Who represents them? Since the early history and ancient civilizations, woman has played a secondary role, in which she was worth less than a man. Both in the Roman Empire and the old Greek Byzantine the role of a woman in the society, which was created and forced upon them by a man, was that a woman is only good for child rising and to be a housewife. Moreover, in most Asian countries even today, woman is stuck with the same stereotype. Also in the Arab countries, woman has been an inferior second class citizen: she was not allowed to participate in public life, also she could not be seen in any “man” place such a caf, bar, or mosque. Furthermore, in Africa women is a housekeeper surrounded with her children, waiting for her husband to come home from hunting, to bring food for her and the children. Today importance and status of a w...
