The Arab Institute for Women (AiW) at the Lebanese American University (LAU) was established in 1973 to pay tribute to LAU’s origins as a girls’ school and to fulfil its commitment to education, empowerment, and equality for women and girls.
AiW was the first institute of its kind in the Arab region, and one of the first in the world. Today, the Institute honors that legacy by:
- Advancing women’s empowerment and gender equality nationally, regionally and globally, through education, research, development programs and outreach
- Integrating gender issues across all aspects of its work and combining academia and activism in order to achieve gender equality and human rights in the Arab region
About "Who Is She in Lebanon"
The "Who Is She in Lebanon" is an online database with profiles of prominent contemporary Lebanese women managed by the Arab Institute for Women (AiW) at the Lebanese American University (LAU). This project started in 2008 in partnership with the KVINFO, the Danish Centre for Information on Women and Gender.
This website was updated in 2024 within the context of ‘Women in Leadership’ project. The project is implemented by AiW in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and UN Women, with the generous funding of the Government of Canada.
The aim behind this project is to provide the public with easy access to biographical information on a large number of contemporary women in one of the following categories: opinion leaders, senior managers, politicians, professionals, artists, researchers, and experts within a wide range of subjects. A similar online database with a list of thousands of names of prominent Danish women has been available to the public since 1995.
The AiW aims to make the "Who Is She in Lebanon" online database: 1) as comprehensive as possible, and 2) as representative as possible of Lebanese women’s achievements in the various fields of specialization/occupations. At the same time, the list will be duly selective to reflect a high level of achievement by every woman included, depending on her field.
