Staff Reporter
There Is A Lot Of Stereotyping In The Way Sciences Are Taught To Girls, says Dr Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, the world-renowned biodiversity scientist and former first female President of Mauritius.
Mom of two, Gurib Fakim, says increasingly on the continent, women and girls are not being encouraged to do the sciences, and this is for many reasons.
“For example, if you look at the [teaching] textbooks, there is a lot of stereotyping in the way that the sciences are being taught to girls. If you look at the infrastructures in schools, they don’t really cater for girls to stay.
“These issues need to be looked into. We need more mentoring, more advocacy. We need to take the girls by the hand and make them believe that they can do anything. By building their confidence from a very young age, telling them that the sky’s the limit, it will lead to more in the sciences.”
When it comes to women in leadership, she said: “I have been advocating that we need to have better representation and there is a need to fix what we are all talking about – the ‘leaky pipe syndrome’ – which loses a lot of women in the pipeline, instead of bringing them along into systems and institutions.
“But the onus is also on all Africans. People have to start asking the right questions. Politicians, leaders, policymakers in normal democracies, are all accountable to the people. But, and I am sorry for saying this brutally, we get the government that we deserve. The one we vote in. It’s your vote.”
Gurib Fakim said we all need to push gender be it in medicine, food, education, agriculture – in everything that we do in all sectors. “We cannot compromise on quality. This is the message that we need to spread across our continent. And to get to the required degree of excellence and quality, we need to empower our youth, more so our girls, with the right tools and education that will take them to the highest levels of excellency.”
INSIDE EDUCATION
