PAKISTAN: Deadlier than the Male

In Pakistan’s hot, dusty capital last week, the students of Karachi University were still brooding over the posting of the worst examination results in the school’s nine-year history. Fully 80% of the student body had failed one or more courses, and most of the failures were boys. The reason? Girls.

Young men in Moslem Pakistan have a thin time of it. In many parts of the country, women are still kept in purdah, and before marriage Pakistani boys seldom meet a female who is not a close relative. With rare exceptions there is no teen-age dating, there are no mixed parties, and the sexes are segregated through grade and high school. But at Karachi University, nearly 5,000 of the 16,000 students are girls—emancipated girls who no longer hide beneath the traditional sack-like burka that shrouds devout Moslem women from head to toe.

Inevitably, Karachi’s male students find their eyes wandering from their books to the spectacle of coeds decked out in tight sweaters and fetching modifications of the Pakistani woman’s traditional baggy trousers. Worse yet, despite their exterior modernization, the girls remain shy and reserved, tend to move across campus in tittering groups, like schools of fish. Reeling after them in an agony of frustration, the boys gather outside the “ladies’ common room” to giggle, guffaw, whistle and ogle.

Most of the time, that is as far as campus romance goes. Once in a while a more venturesome lad may persuade a girl to meet him furtively in the “family room” of a coffee shop, where the daring couple can engage in the temple-pounding excitement of holding hands. More often, even an invitation to a coffeehouse is nothing but male braggadocio. Says one Karachi coed: “I know of several instances where a girl suddenly accepted such an invitation and the poor embarrassed fellow didn’t know what to do.”

Last week, as Pakistani educators cast about for ways to solve the sex crisis at Karachi U., one college head imposed a 5-rupee ($1.05) fine on boys and girls caught talking to each other; by week’s end he had collected 100 rupees. Most male students, however, saw no hope. “They put the girls in the front row,” moaned one. “Every time I look up, I see one dressed to kill. How can I listen to the lecture?” The real trouble, said another male flunkee, is that “college is the only time we have in our lives for romancing.” The only people who remained unperturbed by the situation were the girls themselves. True to their reputation as the deadlier sex, they had added insult to injury by running away with the highest grades in many key exams.