According to the constitution of Pakistan article 37 education is the right of every citizen both men and women equally but due to gender disparity and Pakistan being a highly male-dominated society, most women are deprived of this basic right. In 2018 22.5 million school-going age children were out of school, by grade six 59 % of the school-going age girls were out of school and only 13 % of girls all around the country made it to the ninth standard. Gender disparity in education is very significant in Pakistan and it is worse in some provinces compared to others, in Baluchistan, 81 % of the women have not completed their primary education as of the 2014-15 report, and Covid-19 has further deteriorated the situation. In KPK, the education rate is high but the gender disparity in education is also very significant. The situation is less alarming in Punjab and Sindh.
Most parents have one thought in mind: “Shall I feed her or educate her”. If parents are willing to send their girls to school, then poverty is blocking their way. If they don’t have enough food to feed all their children, then how can the poor parents send their girls to school.
As I mentioned in the above paragraph that due patriarchal nature of Pakistani society and poverty, most girls are deprived of their basic right to education. To change this scenario, we need more women in the decision-making positions to take the right and informed decisions for other women. Before going into the details on the importance or benefits of female leadership in higher education, we must know first what leadership is?
What is meant by leadership and especially female leadership?
Leadership is the ability to inspire a team to achieve some predefined goals and if that inspiring figure is a woman, then we can say that a group is led by a female, or the concept of female leadership emerges in our mind.
Then there is a misconception about leadership that it is something a person is born with, or all the great leaders of the world are born with some innate power that helped them to lead better than anyone else. Females are usually considered weaker than males and they are made dependent on their male partners. This is not the truth, we have seen that whenever a woman has got a chance to lead a team, she has excelled in the job.
Benefits of female leadership
- When females are in higher education at the leading positions, then they can encourage next-generation girls to get higher education and be in that position and it can remove gender disparity from our society.
- Women and men are diverse in themselves and bringing women on board along with men can bring a mix of skills and experience.
- Gender equality and women’s education can contribute to economic growth and human development.
- Women are more apt at problem-solving and multitasking, so they can improve the organizational performance of the institutions.
- Women in higher education provide a new flavor to the functioning and development of institutions.