Women Right to Education & Distance Education System’s Impact on Rural Women Learning: Current Challenges and Future Strategies with Reference to the Pakistan

Abstract

Usually in developing countries, rural people have less opportunities and access to formal education system of the state due to fewer budgets, lack of awareness, lack of infrastructure, facilities and rapid increase in rural population as compared to general public. Pakistan is the 2nd largest populous country in South Asia having 147,748,707 people in rural areas. According to the provisional results of the 7th Population and Housing Census2023, the total population of Pakistan is 241,499,431 out of which 116,445,831 were women population. It’s evident that we cannot ignore the women education for participation in social and economic development by reason of its strength in Pakistan. So in order to meet educational needs of such a large number of women in rural areas, distance learning is the best alternative methodology to ensure quality education in Pakistan. The study will analyse the extent to which current distance education programmes and policies address the educational needs of rural women and challenges faced in the implementation of distance education programs. The study is expected to introduce dynamic approaches in the context of distance education and highlights the scope of distance education programs and effectiveness of this approach, compatible with the ever-changing need of global educational world. The study gives suggestions to overcome the challenges faced, development and implementation of various projects for rural women learning in order to fill literacy gap between rural and urban women.