KARACHI: Speakers participating in a two-day multidisciplinary international virtual conference highlighted the challenges in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, suggesting more holistic and cost-efficient strategies in each sector that could cater to the needs of everybody without discrimination.

The event was titled ‘Diversity, Inclusion and Equity: Synergies and Challenges in the Wake of Covid-19’ and jointly organised by the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences of Ziauddin University (ZU) and the National Academy of Higher Education (NAHE), Islamabad.

Presenting her research paper on the first day of the conference, keynote speaker Prof Shaheen Sardar Ali, rector at NAHE, analysed the challenges as well as the opportunities of the pandemic and its unintended consequences.

On the positive side, she said the transformation to online delivery of academic programmes led to adaptation of new skills and competencies.

The work-from-home strategy, however, created additional burden on women with caring responsibilities as they would now look after young children, attend to their daily needs, facilitate children’s online learning and, at the same time, perform household chores.

“Women employees globally worked under these unforeseen pressures and constraints and with little or no support from employers,” she said.

Talking about the barriers to online learning, Dr Shaheen Sardar said the HEC had received complaints from students in remote areas that they didn’t have the internet access to continue their online education.

Dr Nida Hussain, ZU pro chancellor, spoke about the university’s commitment to authentic multidisciplinary research and said the university took pride in offering its forum for debates and intellectual discussions in all disciplines.

Dr Caroline Manion, Senior Lecturer at University of Toronto, Canada, said the pandemic had created the largest and longest global disruption of school-based education in modern history.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2020