Islamabad, September 10, 2024: Though women constitute a major part of faculty across all higher education institutions in Pakistan but their representation in senior roles remains limited. Realizing this, three years ago, HEC initiated Women Leadership Programme under its project Higher Education Development in Pakistan (HEDP).
HEDP is strengthening HEC's National Academy of Higher Education (NAHE) on various fronts – the Women Leadership Program is one of these key initiatives. Under the Women Leadership Program a total of 161 women leaders have already been trained across Pakistan in all the four major provinces.
The program equipped female academic and non-academic staff on governance in higher education, recruitment policies, managing work-life balance, gender and workplace communication, public procurement rules, financial management and strategic communication.
The program also provided personal and professional development opportunities and exposes participants to international best practices in women's leadership. The alumni of the program have made significant progress in their career moving up in the ladders, with one of the alumni is now a Vice Chancellor of the Shaheed Allah Baksh Soomro University of Arts, Design and Heritage, Jamshoro, which is one of the co-education public sector universities of Sindh.
As the HEDP project is attaining its maturity, HEC decided to sustain this initiative and develop women mentors who via a cascading model to train and develop other women leaders in academic sector empowering more female employees in the universities of Pakistan. Named as Women Empowerment and Mentoring Program (WEMP), it would also help in fostering leadership development and offering essential support for achieving a healthy work-life balance. By providing mentorship from senior leaders in higher education, the program continues to help them build networks, advocate for their interests, and advance their careers.
This program is in its final stage of development. The WEMP committee was notified in June this year and its first meeting was held on June 24, 2024. Up till now, it has held 7 meetings and the recent consultative session was the last meeting to finalize its modalities.
HEC after a day-long consultative session with the experts finalized the draft for WEMP. The final session was chaired by Ms. Noor Amna Malik, Managing Director – NAHE, and attended by a panel of experts including Prof. Dr. Anwar Ul Hassan Gilani, Consultant (Quality Assurance) HEC; Prof. Dr. Saima Hamid, former Vice Chancellor of Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU); Prof. Dr. Arabella Bhutto, Vice Chancellor of Shaheed Allah Baksh Soomro University of Arts, Design and Heritage, Jamshoro; Prof. Dr. Wasima Shehzad Dean Air University, Dr. Afshan Tehseen Former Chairperson National Commission on the Rights of Child, Islamabad and Mr. Tahir Abbas Zaidi, Program Coordinator NAHE.
