This article deals with the traditional and changing gender roles and relationships in the exchange-marriage system that exists in south Punjab, Pakistan. It examines the structural roles and an individual’s independent choices. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-four families who have utilized the system of exchange. In this research the guidelines of the Grounded Theory Method (GTM) in order to collect and analyse the data. The study found that pre-determined, structured roles were more influential and they retain more importance than the individual’s choices. It revealed a perpetual tension between structural forces and an individual agency: an emancipated individual tries to assert and wants to exercise her/his choice but finds that the structural pressures are powerful. Some contention grows between the structural agents and the individual agency for the freeing of the individual’s emancipated role. This paper analyses the interplay between the structure and the agency. It also analyses the tensions and the process of slight social change that occurs under given social conditions.

Social Science disciplines have always been considered the second choice as compared to the hard sciences in the academic institutions of Pakistan. Does this apply to the national education policy as well, where the state intervention is catalytic in setting up the academic choices of the people? This study, by critically reviewing the national education policies and plans, endeavors to address this important question to understand the role of education planning in promoting/demoting social science academic disciplines in Pakistan. Education policy in Pakistan has been predominantly proposed through eight national five-year plans between 1955 and 1998, to primarily focus on increasing the national literacy rate, and promoting hard science education and vocational training. After the creation of Higher Education Commission of Pakistan in 2002, the policy significantly shifted to Higher Education, yet to focus (natural/computer) science, and technology. Social science is at the periphery of the knowledge mission in Pakistan. The paper concludes that even the long-awaited recent quantitative growth of social science disciplines fails to produce significant impact on national education policy that almost unanimously seeks their economic worth, instead of their inherent social value. Keywords: Education Policy, Social Sciences, Pakistan, Five-Year Plans, HEC