Equality Beyond Paper

It can be hard to explain why I chose engineering without sounding like I am reading from a brochure. The truth is much quieter. I grew up watching my mother solve problems. She is, quite simply, the most logical person I have ever known. Long before I knew what a university was, she was the one who sat me down and taught me how to think through a math problem. She did not just give me the answers; she taught me to love the moment when a complicated mess finally makes sense. My mother is not an engineer by profession, but she has the mind of one. Because of her, I never grew up thinking that being “smart” or “technical” was a trait reserved for men. In our house, it was just the standard.

Now that I am in my fifth year at Addis Ababa University, I have realized the outside world does not always follow that same logic. Alongside my passion for engineering, I have also learned that being a woman in this field often means carrying burdens unrelated to the coursework.

I still remember one of our first electrical workshop sessions in second year. We were supposed to be working on circuit boards, but because of material limitations at the university, we were crammed into large groups. By pure chance, the group at my table ended up being all girls. We were incredibly focused, reading our schematics, checking our work, and trying our best to complete the assignment accurately. Midway through the session, the instructor walked by. He did not stop to look at our progress, and he did not ask if we needed any help. He just glanced over at our table, waved a hand, and told the rest of the class, “I will just get back to the girls later since they take more time…” He did not yell. It was not a dramatic moment, and he probably did not even realize how his words landed. But it felt like all the air was quietly sucked out of our corner of the room.

It is these casual, offhand comments that do the real damage. They quietly affect your confidence while you are simply trying to learn. I see it in that room, unspoken assumptions, missed opportunities, patronizing smiles that slowly wear down female students. It is not about lacking intelligence; it is the constant burden of having to prove you belong in the room.

As a young woman in 2026, I often feel like I am navigating a society that has done many things right on paper. We see women in leadership, legal reforms, gender quotas, and progressive campus policies. We have a blueprint of rights. But a blueprint is just paper. The door of opportunity is open, yet once you step inside, you realize the environment was never fully designed to listen to your voice.

This gap between policy and reality is where the role of youth becomes critical. We are the generation expected to turn laws into everyday culture, so that equality is felt in classrooms, workplaces, and daily interactions.

Sometimes society still suggests that women are less suited for leadership or complex problem-solving. But Ethiopian history tells a very different story. The idea that women demanding equal respect is a foreign trend simply does not hold up.

I recently read a fascinating study by the researcher Tesfaw Abebaw Ejigu about the patriotic resistance in Bure Damot during the 1930s. In his research, “The Overlooked Roles of Women in the Patriotic Resistance Movement in Bure Damot, 1936–1941,” he describes a hidden world where women were not just cheering from the sidelines or waiting to be rescued. They were the Yewust Arbegna, the internal nerves of the resistance. They managed intelligence networks, moved supplies, and helped communities survive under fascist violence. Yet history often focuses on the men who fought, overlooking the women who kept the resistance alive.

When we look at figures like Shewareged Gedle, a woman who sold her lands to fund the resistance, organized complex spy rings, and survived brutal imprisonment, we see that female leadership is not a new experiment. It is a return to our deepest roots. As young Ethiopians, our role is to reclaim this history. We have to remind our peers that advocating for women’s rights is not a departure from our culture, but a return to its deepest roots of shared resilience.

Today, however, the struggle for recognition has moved from the mountains of Bure Damot to our digital screens. And this is where things get incredibly complicated for our generation.

In the classrooms at AAU, things are actually pretty good. The guys in my classes are generally easy to work with; we share notes and stress over the same deadlines together. But there is a weird shift the second we get on our phones. In Telegram groups or campus channels, the screen gives people a place to hide. Casual banter turns mean, and it is really jarring to see the same classmates who treat you with respect in the lab suddenly laughing along with toxic jokes online.

Just look at what happens when a bold young woman like Yordanos Bezabih uses her platform to talk about real social issues. Almost immediately, she gets swarmed by comments designed to mock her or shut her down. I genuinely do not think most of the guys in these chats are bad people. It is just easier for them to go along with the crowd, or to just read the messages and say nothing, rather than being the one person who types, “Hey, that is actually out of line.” But that silence is exactly what holds us back. It shows that our generation has learned how to act respectful in public, but we have not changed our habits in private. We know how to collaborate on an assignment, but we still do not know how to treat each other as equals when the professor is not watching.

We need our male peers, the people we study, laugh, and share campus life with, to be active partners in this. True allyship is not just classroom politeness; it is maintaining the same respect online. It means calling out the quiet habits in our daily lives like the unspoken assumption that a guy will naturally present the group project, or the unconscious habit of talking over a female student during a seminar.

Looking back, I have realized that small things often shape people’s paths. A girl gets interrupted, laughed at, or overlooked enough times, and eventually she starts speaking less, not because she has nothing to say, but because constantly proving you belong becomes exhausting. We lose potential every time a young woman is made to doubt herself.

Ethiopian women have long carried responsibility and strength without full recognition, and that pattern still exists today in different forms. Real change will not come only through policies, but through everyday choices, listening to women seriously, respecting their ideas, and creating spaces where they feel heard.

Reference

Ejigu, Tesfaw Abebaw. The overlooked roles of women in the patriotic resistance movement in Bure Damot, 1936–1941. Cogent Arts & Humanities.

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