Rana Hayek from Lebanon is currently a last-year student in the electric engineering university course. "I chose this specialization because I have loved cars since childhood. I like to dig around motors and look for the cause of faults," she told Sputnik Arabic.
She said her dad always supported her in her hobby and even found employment for her at his friend’s garage, so his daughter could apply the theoretical knowledge of car repair that she had learnt in practice.
"No one took me seriously at first, as they thought I had come to the car repair shop together with my father."
"But then they got used to it, saw a professional in me and now entrust their cars to me," Rana pointed out. "Nevertheless, there are still those who think car repair services are a job to be done by men and I am not suitable for it," she added.
According to her, there is not much needing to be done with physical effort, like it was in the past. "There is a scanner, which examines the technical features of a car, and I can handle it no worse than the others in our team," Rana remarked. "I am easily entrusted with Porsches, along with sport cars."
Suleiman al Jalah, the owner of the car repair shop, noted to Sputnik that this is all in the spirit of the times, since "now women are battling for equal employment rights – a move that I personally back," going on to say "welcome to our world."
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"We used to live under the reign of the Eastern mentality, which presupposed that women would solely be housewives and guardians of the hearth. But now we see them working as much as men do, and some manage to achieve a great success in it."
He recollected a time when females were considered to be incapable of competing with men in rallies, but "we all well remember the French race driver Michèle Mouton, a woman who successfully rivaled her male colleagues."
"There are no more restraints of that kind now," the owner of the Beirut car repair underscored.