SOP for women’s hostels soon

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Following the grand success of the Azadi campaign of students of College of Engineering (CET) seeking relaxation in curfew timings, more hostels in the state will be inspected to check whether they practise gender discrimination.
The gender advisory committee of the state government is going to conduct a research on all students’ hostels, general hostels and working women’s hostels in the state. A standard operating procedure (SOP) for hostels will be published by June.

State gender adviser T K Anandi, who was instrumental in relaxing curfew timings at ladies’ hostel of CET, said that she had been receiving complaints from inmates of various ladies’ hotels in the state. “I received over four mails and numerous complaints through Facebook. I have already discussed the matter of relaxing the in-time at hostels of higher educational institutions with higher education principal secretary Usha Titus,” Anandi said.

A meeting of gender advisory committee will be held on March 13 where future course of action will be discussed. “A research group has been constituted under gender advisory committee to conduct a study about the working of hostels in the state and to find out the kinds of gender discrimination existing in these hostels. Report of this study and an SOP will be submitted to the government by June. The SOP will have clear instructions on hostel timings, rights, offering facilities without any gender discrimination,” she said.

Azadi, a barely three-day campaign of the students of CET, became successful when the higher education department issued an order on Thursday relaxing the in-time for CET women’s hostel from 6.30pm to 9.30pm. The SFI unit of CET has supported the Azadi team in the strike.

Gender rights activist Dr Veena J S, who had been closely associated with Azadi movement, said that the issue at CET campus was just the tip of an iceberg. The discriminations faced by women students at various campuses are not just restricted to curfews.

“There is wide disparity in the quality of facilities provided to male and female students,” she said.

“For example, while a maximum of two inmates share a room in the men’s hostel, in the ladies’ hostel, four or five students are forced to cram into a single room. This is despite paying the same fee as male students. There is discrimination even in allotting parking space for vehicles on the campus. Such discriminations are common in most colleges across the state. Azadi movement was just the starting point of a bigger campaign against all such discriminations,” Veena said.