Friday 22 January 2010

Mabruka Ya Iqbal - Arab World's Youngest Female Medical Student



Copyright The National Newspaper Abu Dhabi


Here's a great story.


A young Lebanese girl from the Beka'a - hardworking and bright - is soon to be the youngest female medical student at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar.
“I’m an example: I’m a woman, but still I made it,” she said. “If you have the motivation and you have the abilities, no one’s going to stop you, whether you’re a woman or a man.”
Let us hope that no one stands in the way of her dream or any others out there.

2 comments:

hut said...

I don't want to spit in anyone's soup but these extraordinary stories often do more harm than good. (Leave aside the serious question whether a an 18 or 20 year old adolescent is mature enough to treat people holistically; medicine after all is not a skill alone which someone with aptitude and talent can master precociously at an early age).
Examples of women's achievements are too often used as fig leaf arguments in a region where academic underachievement and oppression of women is more common than not. So it remains just that: a laudable exception.

Abu 'Arqala said...

An excellent idea especially since soup is rarely served.

If maturity were a function of age alone, there should be better behavior from lot more people. I have encountered doctors more than twice her age who have acted as though I were one more task on the assembly line of their practice.

Iqbal is a rare bird academically. She may as well be one emotionally.

While we may lament slow progress, it can nonetheless make things better. Not that we should let one isolated case cause efforts in that regard to flag.