Pakistan Gender News Voice of Gender News From Pakistan
Letter to the editor…
We have known since nearly a decade that girls do better in studies than the boys. The phenomenon of mass failure of boys while the girls earn distinctions first came to the fore in our premier institutions. Medical colleges began to show over 60 per cent merit admissions in favour of girls. The Punjab government even tried once to ignore merit to favour the boys. But in the 21st century grassroots-level results are now telling us that the academic supremacy of the girls in science as well as arts subjects is irreversibly established. Sociologists should get to work on this and tell us what it will mean for the coming years.
Lahore and Gujranwala intermediate exam results have recently revealed the same trend. Girls have dominated in the over-all pass percentage. Now the news from Larkana in Sindh is that the district-wise results in the High Senior Cambridge too have shown that the girls outclass the boys. The boys simply don’t seem plugged into the academic system any more. The reasons they give – bad instruction, tuition system, below-par facilities in schools, etc – don’t seem to apply to the girls. Have the boys simply fallen out of the ambit of our high culture? Although we give them few rights, should we start admitting that only the women represent the civilisational impulse in Pakistan because the men have somehow opted out of it? If so, all power to the women of Pakistan!
Source: Daily Times
Date:8/12/2004
