German funding for University of Hyderabad women's empowerment project

Gachibowli: Dr Sheela Suryanarayanan, associate professor, Centre for Women's Studies at the University of Hyderabad (UoH), has been awarded a research grant from GIZ (The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit - the German Corporation for International Cooperation) for a project titled 'Transforming Educational Landscape towards Women's Empowerment'.

The project aims to examine the gender awareness and life-course decision-making among under-graduate students studying humanities and sciences and their teachers in three universities in Hyderabad City (UoH, Maulana Azad National Urdu University and Osmania University).

Beginning with the observation that the participation of women in higher education has not necessarily led to overall women's agency and empowerment, although it has been a powerful empowering tool.

The National Education Policy (NEP) has also noted gender disparities in education and has called for gender empowerment strategies to bridge this gap through education. The findings of the project, which has a strong empirical base in terms of the student and teacher population of the HEIs, will provide policy inputs to the NEP's implementation on gender sensitisation and teaching frameworks that can be applied at under-graduate level. It also has a broader aim to transform the present edu-scape towards gender empowerment.