Guidelines on Scheme for Construction of Women's Hostels During X Plan 2002-2007

Abstract

From Introduction: Increasing mobility of students, to seek the education, raises the demand for hostels. Hostel as a residential unit can foster community living, provide security, especially for women students, who cannot live alone, or even in small groups, in strange cities. There is a great dearth of women hostels, not only in the institutions exclusively serving women, but in some of the established, old co-educational institutions of the country, which, in the earlier decades, largely catered to men students when there was little mobility for women to seek education in places other than their own residential locations. Today, women are competing with men and, in many cases, crowding them out in both professional programmes as also in the traditional disciplines. While women, today, constitute one-third of total enrolment, in fact, their enrolment, is growing at a faster rate in several states of the country, however, there has not been a commensurate growth of women’s hostel facilities for pursuing higher studies.