Submissions/Women and non-conventional education - A study from Indian cultural context

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2013.

Presentation Media



Submission no.
2027
Subject no.
B12
Title of the submission
Women and non-conventional education - A study from Indian cultural context
Type of submission
Presentation
Author of the submission
Kavya Manohar
Country of origin
India
Affiliation
E-mail address
kavya.thottingal@gmail.com
Username
Kavya Manohar
Personal homepage or blog
Abstract

The presentation tries to study the social, cultural and domestic reasons that prevent Indian students, especially women from utilising the online repositories of free knowledge like wikipedia and contributing towards them. The presentation will include the result of a study conducted in my students and friends circles to analyse the factors that keep Indian women stick on to conventional book bound education pattern and suggest possible solutions.

Detailed proposal

Being a teacher who is employed in the field of technical education, I have felt that vast majority of Indian female students depend primarily on hard bound books as their source of knowledge. Books are often unable to catch up with the pace at which knowledge expands. Apart from gaining knowledge its a great experience to share it. This presentation searches the social, cultural and domestic situation of Indian students,especially women that deprives them from the joy of acquiring and sharing knowledge.

Even in the era of exponential knowledge growth and its free availability through online repositories like wikipedia, there exists a huge population of students in India who are unaware of their existence and hence deprived of many privileges of knowledge. Experiences shared by active wikipedians and other activists interested in the concept of free knowledge sharing reveal that there exists a barrier that a very few ventures to cross to reach the world of free knowledge. My personal experiences as a teacher have many a time made me realize this inhibition. And the barrier is found to be double thick for female students, especially in the special circumstances of India. The presentation plans to analyse the cultural and domestic reasons behind this.

When on one side the technology develops continuously to make wiki a more friendly space for sharing and acquiring knowledge, its painful to see that a potential group - students - are unable/unwilling to gain from or contribute towards it. Hence its worth analysing the facts and figures regarding the hindrances faced by female students and the presentation will discuss these based on the result of a study conducted in my own students and friend circles.

Track

Cultural and Educational Outreach


Length of presentation/talk
25 Minutes
Language of presentation/talk
English
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Yes
Slides
Presentaion done by Kavya Manohar at Wikimania 2013, Hong Kong
Special requests
No


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  1. --Netha Hussain (talk) 13:05, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Daniel Mietchen (talk) 16:37, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Siesta (talk) 16:06, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Atropine (talk) 13:32, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 09:18, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. --Parvathisri (talk) 18:44, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Vera (talk) 19:29, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Psubhashish (talk) 04:18, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]