Why Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a big proponent of the marriage contract
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Loading... - Lawrence Botchway
- 28 Sep 2022
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My Sudanese grandfather, Abdel-Salam, studied in communist East Germany, where my father, Midhat, was born in the 1950s. He returned to Sudan with his young family when my father was four.
My father is the product of a Sudanese generation of free education. Back then, everyone was highly educated and he was awarded a scholarship at Imperial College London, where he gained a PhD in electrical engineering. He returned to Sudan to teach at university, but his resistance to the regime following the 1989 coup lost him work, which was partly why we moved to Brisbane.
In one sense my father is traditional, but he also did the cleaning throughout my upbringing – cleaned and cooked on weekends while my mother, Faiza, a qualified architect, cooked weekdays.
His traditional masculinity didn’t mean I was told there was one way to be a woman, as he was always supportive of me studying science, maths and tech subjects. He was the one who recommended I pursue engineering, because engineers know how to solve problems. He said it was a fantastic skill to have.
My brother, Yasseen, was a really sweet kid who wanted to please his older sister. I was really bossy towards him, and for weekends and school holidays I created Yassmin School, with a curriculum, as I wanted him to be a smart boy.
As a teenager, most of my friends were boys, partly because I liked cars. As soon as I got my driving licence I’d be like “Okay fellas, let’s go out”, and we’d hoon around for three hours. I helped the guys at university change gearboxes. We’d talk about their girlfriend problems. But when the mechanical engineering course finished and they started settling down, I slowly became less part of their lives. I didn’t see it coming, and it hurt. I thought we’d be friends for life.
I was 21 when I worked as a field engineer on an oil rig in Central West Queensland. I learnt that men are deprived of the space and permission to express emotions beyond anger and humour. That made me sad. Read More...
