Asian University for Women

A small office on Wall Street has big plans for the women of Asia. It envisions women as leaders in Asia and is determined to reshape the values, social structures and mores that inhibit the actualization of women’s potential, specifically women from underprivileged communities. The Asian University for Women Support Foundation (AUWSF) is a New York based non-profit corporation, which mobilizes organizational, financial and intellectual resources for the Asian University for Women, set to open in Bangladesh in 2006.

Focusing on diverse social, economic, linguistic and religious backgrounds, the AUW intends to draw women from various parts of Asia, with a special emphasis on poor, rural, refugee and specifically Muslim women. In an all-residential setting for a maximum of 2,500 students, AUW will offer a three year undergraduate liberal arts and sciences program and a two year professional graduate program in a range of fields, including environmental engineering, sustainable development, information technology and management. Significantly AUW intends to provide complete financial aid to at least fifty percent of its students through scholarships and endowment aid. Although the exact student ratio has not yet been defined, AUW will recruit nearly 250 students (amounting to nearly ten percent of the student population) from each South Asian and some Southeast Asian countries.

The AUW campus will be situated on a stretch of 125 hilly acres in Pahartali, Chittagong. In Jan. 2004, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Khaleda Zia officially granted over 100 acres of land in a groundbreaking ceremony, calling it ‘a historic event for the women of Asia’. Also in 2004, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rhode Island School of Design each presented their ideas and visions for what the university space could look like. These presentations will serve to inform the AUWSF with the planning of the University as the construction of the campus gets underway. While the AUW campus will be provided a ‘spectacular view’ of the Bay of Bengal, the site has been carefully selected so that it will not be vulnerable to Bangladesh’s recurring floods. The University itself is being organized as an independent regional institution and the Bangladesh government will provide unparalleled institutional autonomy and academic freedom, so rarely afforded in the South Asian context.

The Asian University for Women is Kamal Ahmad’s brainchild. A corporate lawyer by profession, Ahmad has worked with the World Bank, UNICEF, Asian Development Bank and serves as the Vice chair for the AUWSF Board. Explaining the rationale for establishing this university he says, ‘Throughout much of Asia, girls and women are caught in a cycle of disadvantage that values them less, invests less in them, limits the realization of their potential, offers them less control, and restricts them to a life path that is reinforced by the distorted experience of prior cycles. A strong lever is needed to break that cycle of disadvantage and to create new possibilities for women so that they, too, might flourish and participate in the making of a new society – a society where cultural constraints are loosened or adjusted, attitudes and expectations are changed, and power is reallocated. The creation of this new, positive cycle will not only benefit the women whose lives are directly affected, but also will help their home countries fully realize that latent potential of half of its population The Asian University for Women is dedicated solely to that objective.’


One of AUW’s basic aspirations will be to produce women leaders; a vision that it hopes will be actualized through education, mutual tolerance, empowerment and economic security for the women of Asia. ‘The mass empowerment of women and advancement of women’s status in societies is impeded by the inability of many societies to produce highly competent, enlightened and credible women leaders. AUW will address this fundamental problem directly serving as a center of excellence for early identification of female talent and nurturing such talent to produce highly professional women leaders across Asia’, says Ahmad. This endeavor will be supported by extensive research showing that women from single sex universities excel in leadership positions.

One of the most noteworthy aspects to the AUW’s curriculum will be its ‘Access Program’. Since the AUW intends to recruit 50 % of the student body from disadvantaged backgrounds many of the students will enter the university through this remedial one-year scholarship program. The language of instruction at AUW will be English and this program is designed to bring each student up to par in English literacy, mathematics, and computer skills so that they are adequately equipped to pursue the academic programs offered by AUW. This program will be an innovative phenomenon in South Asia with its holistic approach towards assisting women from marginalized communities make a meaningful transition to international educational standards in a familiar and supportive environment.

Obviously the existing literacy programs in South Asia have not been successful in reaching out to women. Nearly 56 percent of women in South Asia are illiterate, according to a World Bank Regional Report. In Pakistan alone the female literacy rate is only 23 per cent and female enrolment in academic institutions only 16 percent. While the statistics for primary education seem threatening enough, more disturbing are the numbers for South Asian women’s enrollment for higher education at 14 percent, possibly resulting from a ‘collapsing higher education system’. Given the dismal outlook for the region, which has such a drastic need for women’s basic literacy and elementary education, the emphasis on higher education could still be seen as excessive by some critics.

However Vishanka Desai, the President of Asia Society and a board member of AUWSF, argues, ‘Whenever there is a public discussion about education and about women in Asia, the focus in generally on the need for basic literacy: that women should be able to read, write and count. It is fundamental to their well being… But it is also very important for us to remember that in this increasingly globalizing inter-connected world it is evident that one of the key ingredients for effective leadership is the use of new technology, information systems and higher education. If women are to take more leadership roles in all sections and segments of the society, it goes without saying that women must be prepared to embrace the challenges of leadership in the 21st century. Seen from this perspective, can we afford not to pay attention to higher education for women in Asia?’

Nevertheless the AUW will be faced with an uphill task of attracting underprivileged women to a residential university from an environment where such women are not encouraged to leave home, let alone pursue higher education. As for ‘privileged’ women in the region, many of them are already being educated in the West and might prefer to do so in the future, a factor that could undermine commitment to new institutions like AUW. It may also be difficult to identify outstanding students from poor and rural areas simply because their sparse education and social backgrounds may have not allowed them to distinguish themselves in those conditions. Currently AUW is building regional support committees in the various countries which will provide access to underprivileged localities and establish relationships with ‘feeder’ schools to identify outstanding potential students.

AUW has garnered considerable international support from many institutions like the U.S. Agency for International Development, Open Society Institute, Citigroup Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. An AUW Scholarship Campaign is also underway to raise funds to assist students. Donations made to the Scholarship Fund are managed by a committee headed by AUWSF board member Jack Meyer, who also manages Harvard University’s endowment. The success of the university will also be in a large measure a function of its success in mobilizing qualified Asians professionals to join the university effort. To test the potential of attracting talented professionals to join such a university, AUW held a conference of over thirty successful graduate students in the US. Interestingly, the idea of setting up such a university was compelling enough for this group to make them seriously consider foregoing an alternative career in the US. ‘The answer could only be explained by an overwhelming urge to do something useful and inspiring in an environment in which they could thrive by building something enduring’, says Ahmad.

Needless to say AUW will be will be a powerful contribution towards the empowerment of women in Asia. It will certainly be an unprecedented institution in South Asia, giving women from all walks of life the opportunity to pursue a gender sensitive and gender-critical curriculum that reflects the values, the culture and the requirements of the region and at the same time is open to the finest information tools available.

But even as they recognize the AUW as a laudable effort, many women would like to ask: what about men? Don’t they need to be educated? Ahmad has an exceptional perspective on this, ‘The best education for men is to really have powerful women in public places.’