It is unfortunate to analyse that there are very few all girls’ professional universities in Lahore. The most renowned names for the all girls’ professional universities in Lahore are Kinnaird College and Lahore College for Woman University catering to the uplift, and development of the women in multiple professional fields such as management sciences, engineering, pure sciences, education, religious studies, law, social sciences and linguistics etc. Besides, there is mainly one medical university for women in Lahore in the public sector named as Fatima Jinnah Medical College.
There exists no all girls’ university for the engineering and management sciences students as such in Lahore. This presents a dismal and bleak picture especially considering the fact that we live in an Islamic Republic where stands a need to have separate campuses for boys and girls for pursuing modern education in several fields. This segregation is inevitably required in order to ensure higher levels of academic concentration and confidence amongst the females, and to rightly adhere to the principles of modesty and bashfulness as prescribed by Islamic principles.
However, the dearth of separate professional campuses for females in Lahore is a matter of grave concern. It thwarts the process of women empowerment, and impedes fullest women educational development from all domains. In addition, it is disappointing to see that the females enrolled in co-educational professional colleges and universities are subjected to harassment in one aspect or the other. This limits their capabilities from being fully actualised, and shatters their confidence level.
Considering the afore-mentioned alarming situation, it is binding upon the government authorities to allocate higher funds for the establishment and development of professional campuses for solely women. The educational department should urgently address this issue especially from the paradigm of motivating the females to tap their untapped potential. This issue is also inevitably required to be addressed considering the fact that owing to high merit and tough competition, not all the aspirant females are able to get into already very few all females’ professional universities of Lahore.
AIYZA JAVAID
Lahore