Rhona Rapoport
SOCIAL SCIENCE (1927 - 2011)
Rhona Rapoport was a social scientist who
did extensive work looking at the work/life
balance. Over the course of her 60 years of
research and writing she focused on work,
life, gender, equity and diversity. Her
approach brought together the worlds of
psychology and sociology in order to explore
the connection between home and work. Her
work was published at a time when business
and government leaders were finding that
equal-opportunity legislation did not guarantee
an adequate number of skilled women for
professional positions and started a
discussion that ultimately led to widespread
implementation of "family-friendly" policies in
the workplace. Working with her husband,
they both started to challenge the separation
of paid work and family work by both men and
women.
Hayat Sindi
MEDICAL SCIENCE (1967 - present)
Hayat Sindi is medical scientist and the first
Saudi woman to be accepted at Cambridge
University in the field of biotechnology.
Additionally, she is the first woman from any of
the Arab States of the Persian Gulf to
complete a doctoral degree in the field and is
one of the first female members of the
Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia. She
has been appointed as a UNESCO goodwill
ambassador due to her work in promoting
education, specifically for girls in the Middle
East. Sindi was a major influence in starting
three companies, either as cofounder or
founder, Diagnostics for All (DFA) an NGO
that works to provide medical care in remote
and impoverished areas, Sonoptix, and i2 (the
Institute for Imagination and Ingenuity).
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