Educational Status of Muslim Women: A Case Study of Poonch District

Abstract

Women have equal rights in Islam to get education. The Quran and the Sunnah both advocate the rights of women and men equally to seek knowledge. Men have no priority over women in relation to the right to get education. But various studies and reports indicate that educational status of Muslim women in India is not at all satisfactory. They are treated with a different set of societal rules and under the patriarchal authority. Women are the most oppressed section of the society, discrimination against them in one form or other still continues. In this paper an attempt was made to examine the educational status of women in general and Muslim women in particular. This paper is based on secondary sources i.e. District Handbook report 2011-12 and population census of India 2001. It revealed that educational status of women in Poonch district is very low as compared to men and the situation of Muslim women even worse. Results have indicated that literacy rate among the Muslim women in Poonch district was 32.01% as against 61.98% among men with a total of 47.65% for both the sexes, as per 2001 census.