The study examined the extent to which open and distance learning(ODL) is an alternative university education for women at the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU). it explored 50 ZOU staff , that is , 12 female academic and nine clerks- and 1 7 male academic staff and 12 clerical staff who were all purposively sampled. The study was a qualitative in nature. Its research strategy was a case study. Data were gathered using open-ended questionnaires. The study found out that most women had been deprived of university education because of the absence of ODL university education before 1993. Cultural and historical factors used to elbow women out of the conventional university education. The study concluded that lack of university education for women could be a drawback for the production of the human capital. It also concluded that lack of university education for women was a letdown to national development. The study recommended the need for Ministry of higher and tertiary education stake holders to allocate recourses to ODL university education for women. The study could be extended to other ODL tertiary education institutions in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries for the sake of comparison using other research methodologies.

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between the Arab women’s dialog and their perceptions of distance education, their personal relevance with the distance education paradigm, and their life affiliations within a distance education environment. A s p e c t s o f Moore’s Transactional Distance Theory were investigated in this study. Transactional distance education occurs in an environment when teachers and learners are separated. This separation deals with learners’ and teachers’ behaviors and affects both. This study is a descriptive study employed a mix of methods. A sample of 150 active female learners at the Al-Quds Open University in Paletsine-Gaza Strip Branch was surveyed. A response rate of 80% was obtained. Furthermore, eight females from the responses were telephone interviewed. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations were calculated to identify significant relationships of life affiliations, personal relevance satisfaction, and perception of distance education dimensions towards female students’ dialog in a distance education setting. The findings indicated that life affiliations had no significant differences on the women’s dialog measures through distance education. However, the personal relevance and the perceptions about distance education were significantly related to the concept of women's dialog.