Peninah Wanjira finished among the top five students in her secondary school. She wanted to be an engineer, but her headmaster prevented her from specialising in science. Too difficult, he told her. Boys whom she consistently outperformed took her place. “I will never forgive him. He killed my dream,” Wanjira, a sociology graduate currently working as a clerk in Nairobi, says bitterly. “Look at what I do: signing and stapling forms all day.” Fortunately, Kiriri Women’s University of Science and Technology (KWUST), which opened in September 2002, is challenging generations of gender stereotyping and an entrenched culture that favours males at all levels of education.