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By Root 1069 0

to university and then achieve great things in their professional careers. Statistics for the school system in Jordan show that every single year the highest grades in high school exams are achieved by girls. Our modern, educated, successful professional women have more in common with professional women in London, New York, or Paris than with the oppressed prisoners of Western imagination. Some of these women choose to cover their hair with a head scarf, while others, like Rania, do not. But this tells you nothing about their abilities or professional achievements. The traditionally dressed Jordanian woman wearing a head scarf may have a PhD from MIT or Harvard. As Rania likes to say, “We should judge women according to what’s going on in their heads rather than what’s on top of their heads.”

But it is a sad fact that there is more than a grain of truth to the stereotype. Many Arab men are extremely prejudiced and believe that women should either stay at home and raise children or be restricted to certain professions. Even in my own family, some of my brothers and cousins were against my sisters, Aisha and Iman, going to Sandhurst—although no one dared to try to stop them. Somewhere along the line you need more women like them to stand up and say, “Let me lead my life as I want to lead it!”

Rania has worked hard to address misperceptions about women in Arab societies. She has been an outspoken champion of women’s rights, and in recent years she has adopted the most modern communications tools—such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—to make her case. She quickly realized that, in a globally connected world, the Internet allows us Jordanians to speak beyond our borders, making our country’s small size and lack of resources irrelevant. By going online, she could be heard around the world.

Technology is in many ways an equalizer, and it means that the first lady of even a small country like Jordan can have a prominent voice on the international stage. But the question then is, how do you make sure that what you have to say is interesting? How do you make sure that you use this tool in the most effective, creative, fun way that will just keep people engaged to hear your message? And it is here that Rania has done some terrific work, using technology to communicate her messages on the importance of education and to challenge misconceptions about Islam and the Arab world. Her most important work has been improving the educational standards for children across Jordan.

In April 2008, Rania launched the Madrasati (“My School”) initiative, a groundbreaking program to improve the quality of education in five hundred disadvantaged public schools throughout the Kingdom. At the heart of Madrasati is a simple concept: we all share responsibility for our children’s education. Madrasati brings together businesses, nongovernmental organizations, communities, and the Ministry of Education with parents, teachers, and pupils in pursuit of one common goal: rejuvenating schools in need. Since its 2008 launch, over three hundred public schools have been revitalized, lifting the lives of more than 110,000 students. The initiative has significantly enhanced the infrastructure of those schools and has introduced a series of programs that improve the educational experience, such as health awareness, access to technology and medical services, and teacher training.

Alarmed by the deteriorating conditions of schools in East Jerusalem and the dangerous implications of the increasing school dropout rate for a population that not only prizes education but needs it for its survival, Rania launched Madrasati Palestine in 2010. The initiative will build on the experience in Jordan while trying to address the specific needs of the 94,000 school-aged Palestinian children in East Jerusalem. It hopes to reintegrate some of the 10,000 children who are now out of school in the city, and to improve graduation rates, especially among boys, who are now dropping out at a rate of over 50 percent.

In early March 1999 we restored diplomatic relations with Kuwait,