Born and raised in Pakistan, our guest blogger this week, Musarat Yasmin, earned her MA in Applied Linguistics from University of Reading, UK and PhD from Pakistan in collaboration with San Jose University. Since 2014, she has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Gujrat, Pakistan. Her research interests include ESP, TESOL, Education and Technology, Gender and Discourse Analysis. She spent last 12 years on designing curricula for M. Phil Linguistics, ESP courses, and establishing a language centre that offered courses in French, German and English to potential candidates of immigration to Europe and Canada. She also serves as a co-editor for university journal and as a reviewer for several international journals. Besides academic activities, Musarat enjoys traveling and experiencing cultures whenever she finds an opportunity and time. Painting and crafting, her second nature, relax her after any hectic routine.
Covid-19 as a pandemic is not limited to physical illness, mortality, and quarantine. It has effects on the social, psychological, cultural, and economic arenas of daily life. It is not only humans who are contracting viruses, but their whole sphere of life is threatened- the environment they live in, the medium they breathe in—their struggles towards the development of humanity and their progress in the fields of knowledge. The media shows men as a major victim of the pandemic around the globe. But the pandemic in its impact is not limited to just the physical; it is deeply infectious to the psyche as well. Women, especially in religio-patriarchal communities like Pakistan, have become more vulnerable to psychological pressures and strains.
