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How Gaza's female first responders are saving lives, breaking stereotypes

In a patriarchal society such as the Gaza Strip, a group of female first-aid workers created controversy when they headed to a football stadium to help male players.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — In an attempt to fight a patriarchal society that keeps hindering their progress in most of the fields they aspire to, Palestinian women are breaking with customs and traditions in a bid to prove that just like men, they have scientific capabilities and technical skills. This was the main incentive that led the Palestinian association of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to allow female first-aid workers to cover the ongoing football Premier League for the first time,  in a move to challenge society's perception of women's work in general and female first-aid workers in particular.

In this context, the chairman of the board of the Palestinian Association of EMS in the Gaza Strip, Abbas al-Harazin, told Al-Monitor, “We got the idea from the female first-aid workers’ coverage of the Women's World Cup under the age of 17, which was held Sept. 30 at the Jordan university of science and technology, and we executed it out of our belief in the ability of female first-aid workers to deal with all kinds of cases.”

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