The panel was convened to discuss the proposed Asian University for Women (AUW), a residential, Bangladesh-based liberal arts university being launched with the vision of creating women leaders. AUW is the brainchild of Kamal Ahmad, a US-educated Bangladeshi who serves as counsel at the Asian Development Bank. The question remains whether in a region which has such a drastic need for girl's basic literacy and elementary education, we can afford to think about higher education.

The answer is, of course. Vishakha Desai, senior vice President of the Asia Society and moderator of the program, said that if women are to take leadership roles in Asian society, they have to embrace the challenges of the 21st Century with a liberal arts education.

Hanna Holborn Gray, who serves on the board of the new university's support foundation and received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr in 1950, admitted that she might not chose an all-female college if she were attending today. A lot has changed in America in the last 50 years. But for girls living in countries that do not have tremendous educational and economic opportunities for women, single-sex schools provide the support that allows women to press up against the expectations of the world. And a liberal arts education, as opposed to Asia's more widespread technical school, better equips women (and men) to make critical choices as well as to understand contexts, connections and complexity. As she quotes an old adage, an education is what is left after you have forgotten everything.

Sang Chang, who got her B.S. from Ewha Womans University in 1962 and now teaches New Testament Theology in its Department of Christian Studies while serving until recently as its President, admitted that it might seem anachronistic to talk about a woman's university in the 21st Century. But based on her own experience at Ewha, it is timely. Ewha allowed women to overcome the historical prejudices of South Korea by giving them space to give each other moral support, to energize each other and to renew self-confidence. As she said, if you feel second best, you cannot lead. A woman's university nurtures potentials and is required if the 21st Century is to become the Women's Century and the basis for a culture that does not depend on war and violence, she said. Dr. Chang was designated South Korea's Prime Minister in 2002.

Patricia Licuanan, who served as chair of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and is president of Miriam College in the Philippines, agrees that women can develop their skills best in the protection of a woman's institution, which offers role models and mentors in women professors. Miriam College, which briefly went co-educational as a test, returned to being a single sex women's institution with an aggressive, feminist and gender-issues orientation. It is not afraid to be a proponent of 'women's power', an American or western phrase that is becoming more accepted by educated women in Asia.

Stephen J. Friedman, senior partner with the US law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, said the AUW will have a 6-year degree program, with one year devoted to remedial English, math and computer training to prepare many applicants for higher education. Mindful of South Asia's traditional reliance on a British schools' model of job training, he spoke of the job training and placement emphasis the AUW will have on the back end, primarily through graduate schools of information technology and environmental engineering and sustainable development. The first year of the school is projected to be 2007 with a population of 2,500 women. In answer to a question from the audience, the curriculum, which is being developed by a group of educators both in the United States and in India, will be finalized by the university's Asian vice chancellor and will be western-based but with so-called Asian materials or elements.

Left unsaid is how a residential university can attract women in a region where most women are not encouraged to leave home. Those with the family background and schooling that would be attracted to AUW might instead want to attend university in England or the United States. Marketing the university will be difficult and left to non-governmental organizations and principals of secondary schools. The selection criteria has yet to be nailed down. The Asian University for Women is a work in progress.