On a humid Thursday in Doha, Qatar, I opened my laptop and waited for 72 women to log into the online university course I was teaching. Outside my window, life was ordinary. Kids played in yards, and people drove by on their way to work. But the 72 women on my screen were in the middle of a war, a powerful demonstration of women's resilience in higher education.

The students were joining our online class from across Sudan. One student joined wearing a white toub in a dark room in Omdurman. Another sat in the street with her laptop in South Darfur. Two young women logged in from a refugee camp in North Kordofan. A few cameras flicked on and off to preserve battery life, evidence of women's resilience in higher education. Others disappeared when the electricity in Khartoum was cut once again.

Ahfad University for Women, founded in 1907, is Sudan’s first and only women’s university. It is a nonprofit institution built on a simple conviction: Educating women strengthens families, communities, and nations. Yet access to higher education in Sudan remains extremely limited. Available data indicate that less than 10 percent of Sudanese people over the age of 25 obtain a college degree, reflecting broad constraints on access and an overall scarcity of higher education opportunities. Research also indicates that women’s access to higher education in particular is further constrained by conflict, displacement, and persistent gender inequalities. In this context, expanding women’s educational pathways is not only important but urgent, showcasing women's resilience in higher education.

Crises first reveal themselves in people.

By April 2023, when war erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, campuses were looted, seized, or abandoned. Families fled with whatever they could carry. By the following year, more than eight million Sudanese had been displaced—one of the largest displacement crises in the world. Hospitals collapsed. Schools shut down. Gender-based violence increased. Over half the country needed humanitarian aid.

And yet, that same month, 72 women still logged in to class, demonstrating women's resilience in higher education, even in the face of war.

Read the full article about women's resilience by Reem Omar Mohamed Salih and Sarah Young at Nonprofit Quarterly.