Women’s health, education topic of BOLDtalks

A series of talks in Dubai talked about the importance of gender balance, fearless living, surviving cancer and education for women.

DUBAI // From education to health and career, women’s empowerment was the focus of a series of talks on Saturday in Dubai.

The third BOLDtalks Woman 2015 included five presentations on the importance of gender balance, fearless living, surviving cancer and education for women.

“I am pro-women and this is a major platform to reach out to other people to discuss different aspects,” said Ghadeer Kunna, an American cancer survivor, said at the Dubai Community Theatre and Art Centre. “It’s not just the disease, it’s who you are as a person that evolves and I hope I can put the message out there that this disease is a lesson and I hope I can help others.”

Her aggressive form of breast cancer resulted in a double mastectomy and removal of part of her right lymph node, which she called a highway to the body.

“Mine was triple the rate of a normal cancer spread,” she said. “Time has a much higher value now so my focus is just giving back at any cost. The scary part is how many women don’t want to talk about it.”

But with an expected increase from 14 million cancer cases in 2012 to more than 22 million in the next two decades, people must speak up.

“We’re not winning this case with cancer as time goes on,” Ms Kunna said. “I worked out five times a week, never smoked, never drank alcohol, had no family history and I got diagnosed at 29. But you need to fight and I view cancer as a school.”

In Afghanistan, women are faced with another issue – lack of education. Najibullah Quraishi, an Afghan journalist, depicted the problem in his documentary “The Girls of the Taliban”.

“There are 1,300 unregistered madrasas, or religious schools, in Afghanistan which teach what they want to teach, which is threatening, and the government cannot shut them down,” he said. “I went to Afghanistan a couple of months ago and I heard about madrasas which have 6,000 girls studying with a black veil. Their principal is encouraging them not to go to [regular] school.”

With 15 branches in only one province and many others scattered around the country, Mr Quraishi believes these religious schools are a real threat to women’s rights.

“They encourage women to not go to school and just learn the Quran,” he said. “Afghanistan is a country which is 100 per cent Muslim, we all know about Islam but we continued our schooling. We learnt physics, mathematics and other subjects but they believe women shouldn’t go outside, work with men, go to university, listen to music or go to a party.”

He said the situation was shocking.

“More than 90 per cent of people in the country are uneducated and extremists brainwash and use them,” he said.

Mahnaz Mawzoon, another Afghan journalist, said the men who taught these women were completely against what Islam stood for.

“They are extremist and misusing Islam,” she said. “They say women shouldn’t work or go outside but Islam says you should. I am completely against such madrasas.”

Through her talk, Jill Huntley, from Accenture, a management consulting company, said her firm aimed to support women.

“We have 100,000 women out of 300,000 employees which is a good ratio but not good enough,” she said. “The future of those women is the future of Accenture.”

The talks were followed by the London West End theatrical production Rest Upon the Wind.