Literacy for women

The impact a high literacy rate for women can have is enormous. In Pakistan, the current literacy rate for women, officially, stands at around 47 percent. Many believe it is actually considerably lower than this. There are also fewer girls enrolled in schools, even though this number has risen sharply over the last two decades, and more girls drop out of schools at the primary or secondary levels, compared to boys. Very few go on to acquire higher education.

In this situation, a poster that is said to have been put up by the TTP outside a government degree college in Samar Bagh in Lower Dir is dangerous. The poster warns girls against acquiring education and, according to the principal of the school, threatens them directly by suggesting they could be killed if they continue to attend classes. This is the last thing we need. We have seen the forced closure of girls schools and colleges in the past and we would not like to see that being repeated. The authorities in charge in Lower Dir need to ascertain who is behind the poster and hand out whatever punishment is available under the law. The TTP is a banned organisation. It should not be permitted to go around putting up posters.

More important than this is the need to encourage women to acquire education to whatever level they can. When women are educated, this has an impact on the entire family and in many has been shown to improve healthcare, education and other basic services because literate and educated women are in a position to demand rights for themselves and their children. The situation in our own country remains alarming. We need to promote education at all levels for girls and women and also encourage them to be empowered in different ways. A professional degree gives women a great deal of power and a position of some authority within families. We need this badly. The question is how the policies that should be put in place to reach this goal are to be achieved. At the present moment, there is no visible evidence of an effort to encourage women to acquire their rights. Indeed, issues such as child marriages and the forced conversion of girls simply disturb them from seeing themselves as citizens, with the same rights as men. We direly need to ensure education for all women in the country. A programme should be devised with the understanding that educating a woman means a huge benefit to her family in the future and to the community she interacts with.