i just realized i never posted the top 10 headlines of 2016, as selected by me, the world’s leading expert on great headlines. here they are, in no particular order (with honourable mentions to come in a moment in a separate post).
editor’s note: my personal favourite is the last one
Dauqan is a woman scientist in what’s possibly the hardest place on Earth to be just a woman: Yemen.
The World Economic Forum ranks Yemen as the worst country for women’s rights. In Yemen, it’s illegal for women to just leave the house without permission from a male relative.
Even as a young girl, she was rebel. “I was a little naughty,” she says with a snicker.
She liked breaking rules. And proving people wrong. So when her parents told her she might not have the smarts to go into science and engineering — like her dad — Eqbal thought: Watch me.
“I told my father, ‘I’ve heard a lot about scientists in chemistry. What is the difference between me and them? So I want to try,” she says.
And she did more than try. She crushed it.
She was the first among her friends to finish college. Then she got a scholarship to do her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the Universiti Kebansaan Malaysia, where she studied the nutritional properties of palm oil.
When little girls in the Middle East see photos of Eqbal as a chemist — wearing a head scarf, measuring pH — they don’t need to use their imagination to think: “I could be just like her. I could be a scientist.”
Such an incredible story! -Emily
I just want to add:
The awful civil war in Yemen has actually shut down her university. Nine members of her family were killed. She won a scholarship for refugees to work in Malaysia, where she hopes to make enough money to move the surviving members of her family there.
I think it’s important to mention this because the Yemen civil war doesn’t get much coverage, and no one is served by pretending things are better than they are in the area.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.