Girls schools or isolation camps?

It sounds like sacrilege coming from a girl but let me place my argument. All my life I have been quarantined in a “girls’ schools andcolleges” and that meant being covered from head to be like anEgyptian mummy, my hair was plastered to my head as if a full tube of feviquick leaked on it with two twigs at the sides of my head called"plaits". Even a level five hurricanes couldn’t ruffle a single strand of my hair.

All this, I thought was to ward off mosquitoes but was told to repel “man-gaze” and males which sounded like to deter “man eater”. In the curriculum there was no "man-subject” and even the so called hu"man"ities didn’t have a topic on man. While our counter-parts in the sciences had lessons on reproduction. We had no clue of that too.

Teachers and speakers, lectured on women’s empowerment; they never mentioned that facing men was part of empowerment. Of course, an empowered woman would know well how to not be intimidated around men.

After our studies how were we supposed to compete with men in the professional world? Work shoulder to shoulder with men and ultimately get married to a mysterious species called "man" about whom, neither my college, teachers, nor curriculum has educated me.

This sounds like eternal damnation. How will I beat a man if I know nothing about him, about his weaknesses or about his vulnerability. How will I know him if I am kept away from him? How unfair.

All those men who think that women are a mystery now know that the fault lies in our isolation. We speak of gender neutral work spaces but why not gender neutral education institutions.

In this age of globalisation IT and AI when women work night shifts, go to moon alone and women marry women, isn’t this system retrograde and archaic.

It’s a fact that our education system is outdated and the curriculum needs to be overhauled and the thought of a women’s only college sounds like a cobwebbed idea.

If a woman needs to be empowered she shouldn’t be looked at as a victim or a weakling to be protected or sheltered but encouraged to be independent and self-sufficient and be an individual in her own right.

All this isolation, segregation and protection make women inefficient, confused, paranoid, incapable and weak to understand man and his world. Will women-only colleges not promote gender bias and patriarchy?

SEGREGATION, ISOLATION AND SECLUSION ARE ANTI GROWTH, ANTI GOD, ANTI LIFE. The panacea for women’s empowerment is not in establishing more women only colleges, but empowerment should begin with woman herself and family; society should become her support system and act as catalysts to bring a change for better. Send in your views/ articles to features.thehansindia@gmail.com

By Asra Banu