It wasn’t the fear of spending the day with strangers, nor had waking up early in the morning ever irked me. No, it was not the unwillingness to learn, to answer questions and the fear of the imaginary “dungeon full of snakes” my teacher threatened to send me if I wouldn’t do my homework. It was corporal punishment that terrified me the most, especially since I’d experienced it myself.

Womentalkonline wants to hear what you have to say! The DW Global Media Forum is focusing on education this year and our readers are invited to write a blog of around 300 words on their experiences at school.

Gadgets and women are not what you’d call “bosom pals”. Gizmos seem to possess a mind of their own which only men seem to understand. How apt, considering they don’t understand women! Sudipta Mahapatra, a software engineer based in Bonn, elaborates on her favorite gizmos.

Arson and poison attacks on schools across Afghanistan, mostly against those teaching girls, have forced students to defend themselves, an extra-curricular activity imposed by the government which blames the Taliban for the violence.  Some 550 schools in 11 provinces have been closed because the state could not provide enough security.

If you live in a tribal area in Pakistan, you are a woman, you are not educated or financially independent and the men in your family are the sovereign decision makers, then your chances of being victimized by an eccentric decision taken by a group of elderly men from your tribe, who you might not even know, are huge.

The moment a girl child is born in India, it’s not only the child who cries, but the whole family. The family feels disaster has arrived on their doorstep. The blame cannot be put only on poor and illiterate people, even the so called ‘educated’ suffer from this syndrome.

Afghanistan has been suffering from internal conflict and violence for the last three decades. This, combined with extreme poverty in many cases, has caused people to lose their mental stability. Several cases of violence illustrate how women routinely become victims of violence in patriarchal Afghan society.