KJA chief recalls female students early struggles
The Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre organized an open dialogue with Kuwait Journalists Association (KJA) Chairperson Fatma Hussein on Tuesday. Hussein is an activist who has promoted equality for women in the media and during her diplomatic service, and found a platform as a writer, radio and television host. Hussein started the open dialogue by telling the audience about the recent history of Kuwait. “We had no electricity or water. We had only one Syrian doctor in our area,” she recalled.
She added that the Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian teachers were credited with changing the curricula of public schools for girls for the better. “We were studying what was called a female curriculum. When I was eight years old, our school taught us how to give a baby a bath and how to cook!” she said. Hussein hailed the role of a Lebanese teacher who changed their view of life. “Also, a Palestinian teacher was teaching us English and Science. They challenged us to sit for the same exams as the boys. We were shocked that we actually succeeded and were the smartest, although we did not have the chance to study the same things that they did,” Hussein said.
After that, the principal of the school kicked out the teachers and accused them of incitement, and that is when the rebellion began. “The school replaced our teachers with useless ones, so we protested, made flyers and started to teach each other. We formed a study circle where every girl who was good in a subject taught the rest of us,” she said. But the protest did not succeed, because they were afraid of their families’ reaction.
Asked about her beginnings in the journalism field, she said that it was by chance. “I studied in Egypt. All classes were full with not less than 600 students. So I chose a specialty that had fewer students, and it was journalism,” Hussein said. Fatma Hussein Al-Qenai was born in 1937. She entered the hearts of all Kuwaiti families through radio and television, where she supported women’s issues. She started to write when she was a student at school. She studied at Al-Sharqia and Al-Wasta schools and Al-Qablia high school. In 1960, she obtained a journalism degree from Cairo University. She then traveled to the US with her husband in 1961 and enrolled in two English courses. She started work at a New York radio station with a show called ‘The diaries of a Kuwaiti woman in New York.’ She also participated in the international women’s conference in Beijing in 1995.