When there's no column for your gender

Neha was 10 when she realised school was not meant for her. She had gone to a government school in Rawalpindi with her mother to apply for admission. The clerk looked up, confused, before whispering something to the headmistress. The answer came gently but cut deep: “We don’t have a column for this gender”. The form was returned, unsigned. Neha walked home in silence, carrying a bag she would never use again.

Every society has its mirrors. Some are built of glass; others are built of silence. In Pakistan, the silence surrounding its transgender citizens has grown deafening. Each morning, children in uniform spill into classrooms across the country. Yet thousands of other children begin their mornings differently, walking past school gates that will never open for them. For transgender children, a lifetime of marginalisation begins with a single quiet refusal, a moment so ordinary it rarely stirs outrage, yet powerful enough to determine the course of their lives.

Numbers behind this exclusion are stark. In Rawalpindi and Islamabad, nearly 78% of transgender individuals report physical attacks, while more than 91% say they have faced some form of discrimination by state institutions.

Schools and other spaces, meant to foster belonging, too often become the first sites of rejection. Classrooms become isolating, washrooms unsafe, and teachers unequipped to prevent bullying, which is routinely dismissed as harmless teasing, normalising the alienation of these children.

Such realities point to a deeper truth: Pakistan’s education system, already strained by overcrowding, outdated pedagogy and uneven access, has not yet found the will to welcome those who fall outside familiar categories. This is not merely an administrative failure; it is a structural choice, one that quietly shapes the life trajectories of thousands.

On paper, the state’s commitments appear firm. Article 25-A promises free and compulsory education for every child. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 was hailed as historic, affirming that transgender citizens exist, matter and deserve equal protection. Yet in Pakistan, laws often travel a short distance, stretching merely from Parliament to the gazette. Six years on, the Act’s implementation is inconsistent; protections have been diluted, misunderstood or quietly ignored.

The creation of a few “transgender schools” has been widely celebrated. Although well-intentioned, these institutions reveal the limits of our ambition. Segregation may offer safety, but it does not offer equality. It acknowledges exclusion without challenging it. It concedes that mainstream schools, the very heart of the system, remain too hostile to reform. Inclusion cannot be outsourced to parallel spaces; it must reshape the original ones.

Meanwhile, nearly four out of five transgender persons in Pakistan never attend school at all. Many are pushed out of their homes during adolescence, forced into precarious work with little safety or dignity. The UNDP has described this reality as “economic imprisonment,” yet imprisonment begins long before economics. It begins the day a child is told there is no room for them in a classroom.

As veteran activist Almas Bobby puts it, “When schools reject us, it’s not just education we lose; it’s our chance to live with dignity.”

The state often argues that institutions cannot move faster than society. But institutions are not meant to mirror prejudice; they are meant to challenge it. When a child is refused admission or mocked in a classroom, it is not society acting alone. Rather, it is the institution failing in its most basic obligation.

Today, there is still no national mechanism to track transgender enrollment. No penalties for discriminatory admissions. No gender-neutral facilities. No structured teacher training. Policy exists, but practice falters. And when implementation collapses, rights become ornamental rather than lived.

Education is not merely the acquisition of literacy; it is the first place where a child learns whether the world has room for them. For transgender children in Pakistan, belonging remains conditional and dependent on silence, conformity or invisibility. A society that excludes its children at the moment their identity begins to take shape cannot credibly claim to invest in its future.

And so we are left with a question that grows more urgent each year: What does it say about a nation when some of its children are denied the chance to become anything at all?

A country’s moral standing is shaped not by how it treats those at its centre, but by how it responds to those at its margins. The transgender community is not seeking privilege; they are seeking parity, the same desk, the same book, the same safety and the same promise offered to every other child.

Until Pakistan finds the courage to open its school gates to every child, without hesitation or exception, the futures we claim to value will remain incomplete, and the children we refuse to see will carry the weight of a nation that looked away when it mattered most.

The writer is a sociologist.