From Lebanon to Australia, Rosemary Taouk has taken up her respect and love for military service to the task of being an aeronautical engineer in the Royal Australian Air Force.
Growing up in Lebanon, she studied Civil Engineering at the Notre Dame University (NDU), one of the country’s top-ranked private universities.
In 2013, she and her family moved to Australia, where she enrolled at the University of Sydney and attained her BE in Aeronautical Engineering, and enlisted in the RAAF in 2016.
As a RAAF aeronautical engineer, her tasks include overseeing the safety of air transport as well as the delivery of humanitarian aid, equipment, and cargo, developing methods for shipping goods, and controlling or installing them on military aircraft and vehicles of the Air Force and Navy and other government agencies.
Rosemary Taouk’s inspiration for military service came from her father who served in the Lebanese Army. She followed in the footsteps of whom she deems one of her greatest childhood heroes.
“Girls should not compromise their dreams and ambitions,” she told SBS Arabic24, an Australian platform for Arabic-speaking people in Australia. “We were preceded by women who struggled to clear the way for us.”
It was only in 1980 that the first female aeronautical engineer was appointed in the RAAF.
In Lebanon, women started to enroll in the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in the 1990s upon a ministerial resolution number 376 issued on 08/09/1989, and which was followed by the approval of enrollment rules as of January 1st, 1990.
That same week, the LAF Command launched the call for Lebanese women to enroll as Privates for the Air Force and Naval Forces, the Logistic Brigade, the military academy and police, and other LAF institutions.
