film in October 2020. By December 2020, the film had led to a major public reaction in Sudan, with legislative changes and governmental promises of prosecutions. However a follow up report by Al-Hamdani in December 2020 found the government had been slow to respond and there had been little real change. Female education Girls’ education was traditionally of the most rudimentary kind, frequently provided in Muslim areas by a khalwa, or religious school, in which Quranic studies were taught. Such basic schools did not prepare girls for the secular learning mainstream, from which they were virtually excluded. In 1902 the Coptic community in Khartoum opened a private school for girls which later became the Unity High School in Khartoum. By 1920 the government had provided five elementary schools for girls. Expansion was slow, however, and female education remained restricted to the elementary level until 1940, when the first intermediate school for girls, the Omdurman Girls' Intermediate School, opened. By 1955 there were 10 such schools. In 1956 the Omdurman Secondary School for Girls, with about 265 students, was the only girls’ secondary school operated by the government. By 1960 there were only two upper-secondary schools for girls and no vocational schools except for the Nurses' Training College with just 11 students, nursing not being regarded by many Sudanese as a suitable vocation for women. This slow development of girls’ education was the product of tradition. Parents of Sudanese girls tended to look upon girls’ schools with suspicion, if not fear, that they would corrupt the morals of their daughters. Moreover, preference was given to sons, who, if educated, could advance themselves in society to the pride and profit of the family, something girls could not do. Their value was enhanced not at school but at home in preparation for marriage and the dowry that accompanied the ceremony. Finally, the lack of schools discouraged even those who desired elementary education for their daughters. Female education claimed approximately one-third of all available educational resources by 1970, when there were 1,086 primary schools, 268 intermediate schools, and 52 vocational schools for girls. Among notable successes with female education was Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman. Originally founded in 1907 as a primary school for girls, in the early 2000s it was the oldest and largest private university in Sudan, having evolved into the premier women’s university with an enrollment approaching 5,000 in 2006.