Mumbai: SNDT Women's University has honored the Lok Sabha speaker Ms. Meira Kumar with a doctorate degree. As per sources, the university honored the speaker on its 60th convocation day. K Sankaranarayana, Maharashtra Governor awarded the degree to Ms. Kumar, sources added. Speaking on the occasion, Ms. Kumar said that she feels extremely honored and privileged to receive the honorary doctorate conferred upon her.
Further, Ms. Kumar said that the SNDT University, which is India's first women's university, has over the years emerged as a premier knowledge centre. Its role in educating women in multi-disciplinary formal and non-formal streams is, indeed, commendable, she added. Ms. Kumar also added that India is amongst the first countries in the world to have a woman prime minister and today, a woman president. She said this while talking about the critical role of women in India's freedom struggle.
However, Ms. Kumar also showed her concern about social evils like gender discrimination, female foeticide, dowry and domestic violence. She said that the female literacy rate has grown from 8.9 percent in 1951 to 57 percent in 2004 and yet there is a gap of 20 percent between the male and female literacy rates. In addition, she said that women continue to lag behind in terms of level and quality of entrepreneurship and employment due to lack of skills, capacity-building, education and training opportunities and technological and financial support.
