Feature: Gaza's first female kindergarten bus driver breaks taboo to promote gender quality

For women, office job, teaching or nursing might be the best job, but 40-year-old Salwa Sorour preferred to be the first female kindergarten bus driver in the conservative Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Every day at 6:00 in the morning, Sorour would set out to to pick up little kids and drive them to the kindergarten owned by her sister.

"Such a job is a taboo for women in Gaza, but I really like it because I like both driving and children," Sorour told Xinhua while driving on a main road in Gaza city.

Sorour said she decided to help her sister after she had many troubles with male drivers.

"Many people think driving a bus is a man's job, but I broke a taboo today and I'm going to be the start of change," she said with a proud smile. "Men can not deal with little children as women can."

For Sorour, still single, being with kids everyday gives her a feeling of maternity that she cannot find in other job.

"This job gives such a great feeling. I'm a mother of dozens of children... I really treat these children as my sons and daughters and they really love me and all of them call me mama," she happily said.

"Mama Salwa helps me a lot during the break at the kindergarten. I love her," five-year old Nour told Xinhua as she was about to get out of the bus. "She tells us beautiful stories when we are in the bus."

Sorour's sister and owner of the kindergarten, Saeda, said that her sister is a great example of women trying to promote gender equality and a living proof that women can carry out any kind of work just like men.

"My sister is a great driver, mother and caretaker," she proudly said. "She is a pioneer among Palestinian women now.

Sorour confesses that the job is extremely difficult and wearisome, especially when it comes to having some accidental mechanic problems, but with much resilience she overcomes all these hitches.

"I'm always armed with my self-confidence and spirit to reach my goals," she stressed.

Despite the great role she plays, Sorour suffers from criticism from the conservative Gazan society, which is ruled by Islamic Hamas movement, for choosing such a job.

But she believes that such criticism cannot demoralize her since she loves and believes in what she is doing.

Sorour believes that no job can be man-only if women have the will and the appetite. Before she became a professional driver, Sorour had also worked as electronic appliances fixer and a broker.

"I was raised up to be independent and my family has implanted self-confidence in me since I was a child," she said.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) issued data on Tuesday, which marked the International Women's Day, showing women participation in labor force is less than one fourth. The wide gap in participation rate shows that female involvement in labor force is only 19.1 percent. The latest statistics cited advancement of female labor participation by nearly 90 percent since 2001.

The official report shows a gender gap in wages, which women make daily wage of about 21 U.S. dollars compared to daily wage of 27.5 U.S. dollars for men, without explaining whether or not the unofficial sector is included in the statistics.

According to the official statistics, about half of the women with 13 years of education and above are unemployed, while the unemployment rate in general is 39.2 percent for women against 22.5 percent for men. Endit