There will be a discussion with members of UGC Task Force on Gender on Gender Issues on our campus on Tuesday 5th March in the Auditorium of the School of Humanities at 10:30 am. The terms of reference of the Task Force is broad. Apart from issues of safety and security, the Committee is interested in knowing the space that women (students, faculty and employees) have in the academic and non-academic life of the university community. Some themes around which the discussion may be centered are
- Around CASH (its scope, its activities, accounts of its functioning by the members and the complainants)
- Women’s hostels (facilities, safety, security, lighting, timings, toilets, discrimination, restrictions etc.)
- Transport (within and from the University for students at different levels)
- Students groups and if they take up any issues concerning women students
- Issues of caste, ethnicity, region and religion – how do they effect women’s mobility, mobilization on the campuses.
- Women students and student politics – ability to participate, adequacy of representation,
- Issues of class 4 women employees and their access to grievance redressal
- Issues related to health care facilities – presence of a trained gynaecologist in the health centre, adequate care and medicines.
- Moral policing by groups/individuals on the campuses
- Academic equality: the academic space accessible to women, relationship between colleagues, students, supervisor-student and so on…
- Individual and group experiences of women on campus
The UGC would highly value written representations on all the above issues individually or
by a group. Anonymous representations are also accepted.
Whether the committee is visiting UH at our request or on their own as routine scouting around the Universities this definitely is a good opportunity, especially for the girl students of UH to make use of the visit highlighting their needs to make UH an even more safer & gender impartial place to be around and have fond memories of it later. I would highlight on the transportation (smaller vehicle) to South campus after class hours, once an hour and better street lighting towards south campus.
The great Indian sage [b]Manu[/b] has been credited to author the equally great and famous Indian caste system. Love him or hate him, he certainly did not live to see the dalits today as the most powerful group in the Indian political theatre.
I have often heard (certainly more than once but please do not ask me for the reference; I do not have a PA) Manu wanted 6 different castes (not four) with two more members added to the existing groups: [b]women[/b] and [b]old people[/b]. I can guess that certainly several munis and rishis must have howled at him for putting the last group but I am curious to know who argued for (or against, as the case may be) women? Was it CASH?
But seriously including women and old people in the caste system as separate members of the group makes mathematical sense. Neither commute (if you know an example, please cite here) with other members of the group (except the Identity element) and are therefore a class by themselves. Biologists have drained away all the fluid from my brain over the years, but I still suspect that the women form the classical idempotent group. No, I do not support groupism, but they are the most potent group on campus. After or Before (select anyone) the dalit group. Perhaps something to do with cash?
I am quite sure that the next century belongs to the women (if the world survives the human race; or is it the other way??) but I am worried about the old people. Will they every get a voice?
I am pleasantly surprised by your concern about “Moral policing by groups/individuals on the campuses”. Whatever it may mean, I have always supported the case for “self-policing” but I do not know (I am not really keen to know) how it works when, umm, it does not work.
[b]The golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rule.[/b]