Kuwait University separates the sexes

KUWAIT -- In the 1970s, women at Kuwait University wore miniskirts, mixed easily with the male students, and joined them for picnics in the desert.

No longer. These days, on the six campuses of Kuwait's only university, hundreds of young women are covered in black head-to-toe cloaks. Even those who wear Western dress tend to avoid speaking to men unless necessary.

In most faculties of the 18,000-student university, men and women still attend the same classes, but that too is about to change.

Six years ago, Muslim fundamentalist legislators pushed through a law banning the mixing of the sexes in classes, libraries, cafeterias, labs and extracurricular activities at Kuwait University. Compliance was lax until lawmakers grilled Education Minister Misaed al-Haroun about it in April, and he committed to full segregation by the end of the next school year.

The action did not go unchallenged. According to Massouma al-Mubarak, who teaches political science at the university, students collected 9,000 signatures on a petition opposing segregation by gender.

"It is very sad to make students feel that mixing with the opposite sex is immoral and that they cannot be trusted to be with one another," she said in an interview.

Changing views

But Hakem al-Mutairi, a Kuwait University teacher of Islamic law and a leading Muslim conservative, argues that coeducation robs many women of university studies because their conservative families won't send them to a mixed campus.

When Kuwait University opened for men and women in 1966, classes were separate. But as the number of students grew, and more facilities were needed, coeducation was allowed. Kuwaiti society was more open then.

"We used to sit beside men without thinking anything of it," said Awatef Madu, who met her husband while studying law at the university in the 1970s. "Now, because of religious extremism, everything is seen through sex."

Although Kuwaiti women drive, work and hold senior government positions, today's society remains conservative. Wedding parties are held separately for men and women. There are separate waiting areas in clinics. Public schools have always been segregated after kindergarten. Women can't vote or run for office.

Men and women still work together in government offices, banks, and hospitals. Fundamentalists have not yet tried to change that.

Classes already are separate at Kuwait University Faculty of Islamic Law.

In a campus cafeteria one recent afternoon, only at one table were men and women sitting together. At all the others, men sat with men, women with women.

"There is nothing we can do to change the situation," complained Othman al-Awadi, a 21-year-old marketing student.

If the hard-liners aren't stopped, he said, "50 years from now, society will be totally separated. We will have malls for men and malls for women, and women will not be able to drive."

Opinions differ

Among Kuwait's neighbors, state universities are coed in Bahrain and Oman, but segregated in Saudi Arabia -- where women are banned from driving -- and in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

There are no private universities in Kuwait. Any founded in the future will fall under the segregation law.

That's fine with medical student Nagham al-Saffi. "Our religion and our people do not accept coeducation," she said. Al-Saffi, wearing a pink head scarf and white coat, said it embarrasses her to see men and women students standing together or laughing loudly.

But Louloua al-Massad, 20, who is studying accounting at Kuwait University, said she had no problem with coeducation as long as "everyone keeps to themselves."

"I talk to my men classmates only during lectures, but not outside," said al-Massad, dressed in jeans and head scarf. "People might misunderstand if they pass and see me talking to a man."

University is free in oil-rich Kuwait, and the cost of segregating classes is estimated at more than $180 million.

Al-Mubarak said her political science department had held off in hopes the no-coed law would "be forgotten or canceled." Now, she says, "in the fall, we will have a real problem because we don't have enough teachers or enough classrooms."

Al-Mutairi, the conservative, says the effort must be made. Extra costs, he said, "are nothing compared to the problems that could result from coeducation."