The achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls to reach their full potential is key to Goal 5. The achievement of this goal requires the elimination of all forms of discrimination, violence and harmful practices against women and access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. Work towards this goal will also mean the achievement of gender parity in political, public and economic life. 

The Islamic University of Lebanon gives way to women in order to prove their capabilities and qualifications by allocating leadership and senior roles to them. The conclusive evidence of this policy’s application is that a female president (Prof. Dina el Maoula) heads the IUL. Moreover, women also play important roles as decision-makers. They are deans of the faculty, heads of departments, coordinators of courses and supervisors of internships. 

At IUL, the recruitment policy is based on the qualifications, education, experience and convenience of the position or course, subject to the involvement of women in all faculties and departments.  

The payment policy at IUL aims at reducing gender gaps between men and women where all genders’ employees are paid equally for work of equal importance and have the same rights. Furthermore, for a pregnant full-time female teacher, there are special policies that reduce her workload. Moreover, IUL supports and encourages female students, staff and instructors to push their studies and conduct research under the IUL’s sponsorship, and through agreements between the IUL and international universities. Also, the university encourages female students to participate in conferences by covering all the required fees.  

Under the leadership of Prof. Al Maoula, IUL received the French institutional accreditation “High Council for the Assessment of Science and Higher Education” (HCERES) for five years without any requirements or restrictions. Moreover, the French government awarded Prof Al Maoula the Academic “Palme d’Or”. Moreover, Prof. Al Maoula was appointed as president of the Association of Francophone Arab Universities in the Middle East to the 10th CONFREMO General Assembly. She also took over the presidency of the 51st session of the executive office of the Association of Arab Universities. 

Female students are encouraged to apply for majors where women are underrepresented such as engineering. The IUL encourages also the involvement of female students in national and international activities and training sessions. 

In the domain of sports, IUL supports and sponsors sports teams for female students. The results of this policy are the formation of several teams such as basketball team, Ping-Pong team, and shooting team and the accomplishments of teams and students.  

Moreover, application forms at IUL don’t require applicants to mention the transgender issue, whether for work or study, as the IUL believes it is a private and personal matter in which it does not intervene and does not have any impact on the application. Also, female employees and teachers are given 40-day maternity paid leave and financial assistance.  

At the social level, all IUL employees profit from financial assistance through several forms: covering children’s school tuitions, free registration at IUL, covering fees at another university if the desired major is not available at IUL, and health insurance. In addition, and according to IUL’s policy, women have the right to notify the administration if they were discriminated against. In this case, strict measures are applied to ensure gender equality.  

The University has developed the ‘Regulations for the Implementation of Gender Equality Policies in Education at the Islamic University of Lebanon.’ The Regulation specifies that: The University should not demonstrate unequal treatment on the basis of gender or sexual preference during the hiring of employees, the recruitment of students and the conditions for admission (new policies file to be approved by the president).  

Additionally, a force labor legislation is established at the IUL, where all its articles don’t discriminate between the genders and even doesn’t mention it for the employee criteria, rights or duties. All the criteria mentioned in this legislation for an academic or staff position, promotion, salary, vacation, etc… are identified regardless of the gender, they are based only on the eligibility of the persons for any of these submissions.

• The IUL implements administrative main gender equity policy for women participations and engagement in the university, and empowering women by assigning them leadership and senior positions. One illustrious proof of implementing this policy is that IUL is leaded by a female president (Prof. Dina el Maoula).  In addition to the female leadership reflected by the President, many females are assigned senior positions where they play an essential role as Decision holders. They are faculties’ managers, deans, and head of departments, course coordinators and training supervisors. 
• The female Prof. Dr.  Dina Al-Maoula has summarized the IUL’s policy of access and participation of the women in an interview with the army magazine “مجلة الجيش”. Prof. Al-Maoula stated that she has never looked forward to success as being exclusive or exclusive to one human race. She added “I am a woman of human rights and I know very well the national legislation and the state that uphold human rights without discrimination between men and women, and I also know that Islam has called for women’s eligibility to assume power”. Furthermore, she stressed that proving scientific merit is the most important challenge for women to reach their ambition, and to remove from her mind the idea that sites are the preserve of men. Additionally, she mentioned that “Women became leaders, heads of state, prime ministers, ministers, and representatives, and entered all professional fields”. She outshined and excelled in all the sites she reached, all with merit and knowledge. She adds: “From my position as president of the university, I deal with hundreds of professors and administrators and thousands of students, and I find no embarrassment that I deal with them as a responsible person, from a leadership position, without ever thinking of distinguishing between a man and a woman. Therefore, I do not find it difficult in my work, especially because I was appointed and selected from the highest civil and religious authorities that gave me the honor of leadership” Prof. Al-Maoula affirms that the Islamic University in Lebanon does not deal with scientific and academic files or the CVs of any professor based on a gender identity. She summarizes the women’s access plan of IUL by stating that “A woman can reach locations that a man has not reached”. In this context, she points out that she put her CV in front of every woman to motivate her to reach. She also points out that the number of female professors is almost equal to the number of male professors, and it is increasing.  

• Moreover, some courses taught at the IUL emphasizes on the role of Women in Society as the “Business Ethics and Social Responsibility” course conducted in the Faculty of Economics and Business administration, “International Humanitarian Law” by faculty of Law, and “Culture, Ethics and Religions” by all faculties. 

The IUL’s policy of women’s Access and participation plan, this IUL’s policy of women’s Access can be summarized as follows:  

1. The IUL does not discriminate between males and females in the academic positions access and academic activities participation. It maintains gender equity strategies, where the female has the same right as the equivalent male to be assigned leadership positions and senior academic roles. Female instructors have the same right to be assigned any position, to teach or coordinate any course and to a member in the faulty board as the male equivalent [1] articles 68-77. 
2. The policy for employment is based on the competencies, education, experience and convenience for the position or course and does not take into account the gender identity, with the condition of the presence of the females in all faculties and departments. In case of the absence of competent candidate female, then the position can be occupied by a male. 
3. The IUL involves a large number of female instructors in all faculties as well as female employees in all administrative departments based on the vision of the IUL of women labour force participation equity.  
4. Employed females get the same rights on all the domains as the male equivalent. In the teaching domain, they get the same number of teaching hours as the male with the same academic rank, they are granted the eligibility in supervising graduate projects and juries similarly as the male instructors. Moreover, there is a special policy that lowers the teaching burden and the work load for a pregnant full-time female instructor. Additionally, instructors from either gender are subjected to the same rules and conditions for getting academic promotions, and academic trainings.

• Female employees and staff can participate in any academic or sports activities equally as the males. 
• Female employees and instructors have the same rights in annual vacations, sick leaves with more specific vacations in case of pregnancy .
• The IUL employment policy acts to close the gender wage gap where employees of both genders are equally paid for work of equal value, they have the same privileges for preferment, children salary, health insurance, salary promotions and bonuses, and recompense .

Moreover, the female president with her accumulated experiences, acquired awards, assigned positions reflect by themselves the representation of women in areas where rarely a female can be seen.  Her accumulated experiences and commitment to equality between men and women had resonance at the European level, which prompted the French government to award this female leader the Academic Golden Palme d’Or. The represent or of the Minister of National Education and Youth of the French Republic presented the IUL female president this Palm Academy Medal at the French Cultural Center (CCF) in Beirut in an official ceremony, where she had a speech about Prof. El Maoula and concluded her talk by stating that: “There are several reasons that led the French Republic to recognize your distinction: Francophonie, Francophilia, your commitment and commitment to equality between men and women. We appreciate all the determination and distinction that you worked hard to reach. You are definitely an inspiration to a new generation of students. For all these reasons, it is an honor for me, on behalf of the Minister of Education and Higher Education of the French Republic, to present to you the Knight’s Academic Palms Order”.

Under Prof. Maoula’s leadership as a female and as a result of her insisting, the IUL obtained the French institutional accreditation “High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education” (HCERES) for 5 years without any condition or restriction. This accreditation gives an added value for the graduation certificate of the IUL female students’. Moreover, it has also reflected positively on encouraging the students’ enrollment. The president in the Press conference through which she declared that IUL has obtained the HCERES for 5 years without any condition or restriction.

Moreover, under the guidance and efforts of the female president, the IUL ranked for the first time among the top 25 in the QS University Rankings: Arab Region for 160 Arab universities, where it was ranked between 51-60 in the world.

The leadership roles that Prof. El Maoula has been assigned, in addition to her leadership of IUL, illustrates clearly the empowering of the women’s role in the subjects where they are underrepresented. Moreover, this female president has and is still working for defending the women’s rights inside IUL as its leader and outside IUL from the leadership positions that she has occupied. In addition to these leadership positions, she has been assigned various roles in many associations.  These authority positions and roles of the female president had provided the IUL with more power and influence to defend the women’s rights and raise their voices nationally and internationally.   

The roles that Prof. El-Moula was assigned and through which she is defending and demanding fiercely the women’s rights, empowerment and equality are as follows: 

• The female president Prof. El-Maoula represents the IUL in the Association of Francophone Arab Universities in the Middle East. At 2017, she was elected as the president for this association for two years for the 10th general assembly of the Conference of Rectors in the Middle East Region (CONFREMO). It was the first time that the presidency of this association to be assigned to a woman. She took over the presidency of the executive office of the Association of Arab Universities for the 51st session.

The female president represents the IUL in various organizations reflecting the presence of a woman in these organization and defending their roles and rights. These organizations include each of the AUF, the World Association of Universities, the Association of the Universities of the Islamic World, the Association of Islamic Universities and the Association of Universities of Lebanon. She, as the IUL female president, has been recently elected as the vice-president for the Association of Universities of Lebanon.

Furthermore, the female president participated in the first intergovernmental conference of the Global Convention on Higher Education held in Paris, organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for three days, in the presence of UNESCO’s Deputy Director General, Mr. Xing Qu, and the technical and legal experts. Her participation is another reflection of presence of women in international scopes.

This leader female has employed all the positions and roles she occupied at various national and international platforms to raise her voice demanding and spotting the light on the necessity of empowering women.  In this context, she had participated in International Women’s Day celebrated at the Holy Spirit University, where she had talked about the topic of “Women’s Rights in Islam”.

Under the spot of empowering females, the IUL instructors are directed for the participation in seminars related directly to empowering women. One example is “Girls Got IT” which is a joint initiative bringing together five active Lebanese NGOs: The Lebanese League for Women in Business (LLWB), Arab Women in Computing (ArabWIC), Women in Technology (WIT), Women in Engineering (WIE) and Digital Opportunity trust (DOT) together. Girls Got IT is held under the sponsorship of the UNICEF and GIL (Generation of Innovative Leaders). “Girls Got IT” aims to break the cultural stereotypes that surround women in STEAM subjects by exposing young females to essential technology skills, allowing them to meet inspiring role models and learn more about the various success stories from their country and the world. 

Female instructors attend seminars for support female researches as a seminar entitled “Les ELLES de la Recherche” organized by the National Observatory for the leadership and Empowerment of Women in Research (Dawrek’n). Dawrek’n is funded by UNESCO Participation Program for 2018-2019, it aims to support Lebanese female researchers in their efforts towards empowerment in the scientific environment, and this in all disciplines of research and innovation (basic sciences and engineering, medical sciences, environmental sciences and agriculture, human and social sciences …). IUL females also conduct keynotes and present women supportive visons in other seminars organized by (Dawrek’n) as in “Dardacha Talks” and other events that are related to women in research. “Dardacha Talks” is a new format for research storytelling with a Lebanese twist and during which Lebanese female scientists from all disciplines and universities will take the challenge to popularize their research.

In addition to its plan or empowering women in the society, the IUL empowerment policy is also dedicated to empower the female students. This starts for the mentoring of the school female students at the IUL open day. This open day is organized every year by IUL for all the school students during which these students get introduced to the university. The IUL staff and students provide mentoring by giving overview about the different faculties and the different majors in these faculties and their job opportunities.  

Moreover, the female students are oriented and encouraged to apply for majors where females are underrepresented as for engineering major or other majors where the job opportunities are better for them as for nursing and others.  This orientation is also carried on for the candidate students during their registration process.

Moreover, the IUL female students are oriented and encouraged to achieve successes and present their skills nationally and internationally as well as empowering their personalities and communication skills (it is worth to mention that the female students undergo a communication skills course during their study at IUL). In this context, the IUL supports and orients the female students for participation in national and international competitions, events and trainings. 

A female student was assigned the role of Hult Prize Campus Director at IUL during 2017-2018.

Additionally, she was assigned the role of Organizing the First Programming Competition at IUL at 2019 for preparing the IUL students to compete in the LCPC between all the Lebanese university.

The following Table shows some of the projects accomplished by female students, the competitions’ names and the acquired rewards. These projects are funded by IUL and accomplished at its laboratories using the equipment’s of these laboratories, supervised and guided by the IUL instructors. 

Project title	Competition and year	Award
Portable patient monitoring system (Salamati)	International invention fair of middle east Kuwait  2018-2019	Silver medal  Gold medal (Portugal inventor association)
Portable patient monitoring system  (Salamati)	Falling walls lab by CNRS and German  2019	2nd place + innovation tour in Germany
Salamati	YLP5 by UNDP and INJAZ completion  2019	Most innovative solution award
Salamati	Doha oasis of innovation representing Lebanon  2019	Gold medal
Human airbag	BAU SIRACUS conference  2018
Salamati	Invention vs corona contest by IFIA (international federation of inventor association Geneva)  2020	Gold medal
Salamati	YLP Incubator by UNDP Lebanon  2020	Chosen to be in the incubator and accelerator of  2019-2020
Portable patient monitoring system	DEEL by AUF  France embassy  2018	Finalists
Le Mot d’Or, business French competition (Evidence48)	Annual competition open to students	1 IUL Translation student  participated in the national final of the competition
MT180 (my thesis in 180 secondes)	Annual competition organized by AUF	1 law thesis student participated in the national final of the competition

Moreover, the female students have gained Regional Francophone Literary Choice Award, Choix Goncourt de l’Orient, Interuniversity mediation competition, Student-entrepreneur competition, and Le Mot d’Or competition organized by AUF.

Here find some of the female students’ participations, prizes, projects and certificates.

Another participation was at NYUAD Annual International Hackathon for Social Good in The Arab World where the IUL female ranked in the third place. Another participation was in the Technology at the Service of Municipalities competition, where this competition aimed to develop a prototype to facilitate the municipalities’ work.

A team including female students have ranked seventh in Lebanon in the HULT prize competition in 2019 which involved all the Lebanese university and this qualified them to participate in this competition in Jordan, There project was entitled “Food For Less”.

Participation in the Inter University Program on International Criminal Law and procedures, where the participants visited the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) from 1 to 5 September 2019 as part of a three-day study visit to The Hague. The visit enabled the students who have attended the Inter-University Program on International Criminal Law and Procedure (IUP-ICLP) to see first-hand some of the institutions about which they had been studying.

Participation in the Organizing team of the ICRC-Geneva in the Second Regional Moot Court in International Humanitarian law held in Lebanon in the Lancaster Hotel on March 2019.

Participation in the Regional Arabic moot court which was hosted by the Lebanese University in 2019, where they got the third place over 17 teams that participated.

Participation in the Competition Interuniversitaire de Mediation en langue Arab and French DU CPM where they ranked in the second place in the competition.

Participation in the Webinar with T.M.C. Asser Institute Netherlands, HILLAC Lecture about “How the Syrian conflict has changed International law” which was held on June 10-2020.

Participation in MediateGuru – Lebanon as Campus Ambassadors for the IUL Khalde -Campus on 30 September 2020.

The Islamic University of Lebanon has hosted the Monroe E. Price media law moot court competition 8th Middle East Regional Rounds –in Warden Eye Campus for 2 days 0n February 6 and 7-2020. In this competition the IUL female students took the second place between the 4 teams that participated.

IUL females are Student Ambassadors at Student and young professionals’ Lebanese congress, IEEEXTREME13.0, IEEEXTREME14.0, Global Ambassador for Women Tech Network, and Lebanon Student Representative at Huawei HQ where the female student gave a speech on the behalf of Lebanon.

Female students play various roles as are Members in IEEE student, IEEE Nanotechnology Council, IEEE Women in Engineering Chapter, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, LOYAC, Awaited Millenials. Addtionally, they play a vital role as volunteers in Ties AUBMC, CCCL, SAIN NGO, Champs Fund: Hicham Al-Hage Program for Young Hearts & Athletes Health, Remy Rebeiz for Young Hearts Foundation, CSRN: Covid-19 Students Response Network, the 19th International Arab Conference of information Technology, Cancer Awareness Village, National Association Of Science and Research, Beirut AI.

Moreover, IUL female students play Leadership and trainer roles. Examples of these roles include leader of Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign and trainer at Arduino Journey where they conducted training for students on how to use Arduino.

In addition to the vitality of IUL female instructors in seminars participations, the students as well have several participations. Some examples are attending workshops and seminars on “Public Speaking and presentation skills” and “Beirut Breast Cancer Conference” organized by AUB, “Took information about the most recent innovations” organized by First Beirut Mini Maker Faire, “2nd Annual Middle East Neuro-oncology conference” and “2nd Lung Cancer Congress” organized by AUBMC, and many others.

Finally, from the persuasion of the right and capability of female participation in any type of activity as the males, the IUL encourages, founds and funds sports teams for female students and they have several participations and achievements. One of these female teams is a basketball team where a female instructor plays the role of the coach of this team. This team had a participation in the Lebanese Universities Basketball League in 2019.  

Another female team is the Ping-Pong team that also has participated in the Lebanese Universities championship of Ping Pong – 2019.  

One attractive team that reflects the equity between genders at IUL is the female shooting team. This latter had a participation in the Lebanese Universities Shooting Championship 2018, and a female Student ranked in the fifth place among more than 12 universities. 

Another participation for this team was in the Lebanese Universities Shooting Championship 2019 “Judge Nasri Jamil Lahoud Cup 2019″ where a female student ranked in the third place in this championship.

Another remarkable achievement for the IUL females on the sports level is the participation of a female student in six national and international marathons and achieving the first ranks in most of them.  

On March 2019, she achieved three rewards: the 5 Km first place in age categories/second place over all at the OPAP Limassol Marathon – Cyprus, and the 200 m Second place at the AUB meeting and 400m – first place at the West Asian championship.

Finally, IUL females are mentored to save an archive for all their participations, prizes and achievements with their evidences (pictures and certificates) and the official social Medias of IUL plays a vital role on spotting the light to these female achievements.

IUL is working on more policies to enhance women’s empowerment such as regulation to impose a quota for female representation in faculty committees, committee members, department heads, faculty deans, and administrative department, a quota for female participation in IUL-sponsored training, conferences, seminars and webinars, a quota for female participation in research programs, mobility, and exchange with other universities and one for female student participation in some study programs. 

Female employees at IUL are working on activities such as organizing webinars and workshops to develop the skills of the female network at the university, creating females’ communities to empower inside and outside IUL, encouraging females to join NGOs and charities in the aim of empowering women in Lebanon and launching a women’s empowerment campaign to assist women across the globe in raising their voice and realizing their dreams.