Religious Belonging and Gender Roles of Christian Female Students in a Private University: A Case Study of a Private University, Lahore, Pakistan

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The current study aims to understand the religious belonging and gender roles of Christian female students in the university atmosphere. This might be according to their self-realization or as an attempt to survive with other religious activities at their campus. The nature of this study is qualitative. This research employed six in-depth interviews with respondents chosen through purposive and snowballing sampling techniques at the University of Management and Technology, Lahore. Pfaff’s theory of belonging was used to analyze the data. The data was analyzed through code categories and themes. The themes were religious belonging, religion and social life, religion and gender roles, religion and educational institutions, religion and feminism. The findings of this research exposed that, at the time of admission, university management did not make any inquiry from students about their religion. Due to lack of information about policies regarding Christian Students, they have to experience stereotypical behaviour among their fellows. Female students were especially observed in discriminating behavior in university. So, the recommendation of this research study was that university authorities should investigate especially female Christian students about their religious belongings and keep in mind the demands of female minority students regarding their religion. In order to encourage religious acceptance at universities, authorities should contextualize the university’s atmosphere so suitable for minority students so that they can integrate substances of inter-religious coordination. Considering the outcomes of the participant interviews, the following themes were generated. The results that the researcher got from my study were two levels of discrimination faced by Christian students, first of being a female and second a female belonging to a religious minority.