March 15, 2002	Friday	Zilhaj 30, 1422

KARACHI, March 14: Speakers at a workshop here on Thursday said a long and hard struggle had to be launched to change social attitudes so that women could get their due rights.

At the workshop on “Pakistani Women in the 21st century,” organized in connection with the International Women’s Day jointly by the Working Women Association of the All-Pakistan Trade Union Congress, Centre of Excellence for Women’s Studies, and National Institute of Labour Administration and Training.

They said the religion and the constitution have given many rights to women, but society is not giving them these rights due to deep-rooted sociocultural traditions in the region.

They said women were discriminated against from the very beginning. It started when a child was conceived, and if it was known that the child was a girl, some families opted for abortion.

Then after being born a boy child was given preference over a girl child by the family, and as the children grew older they adopted these attitudes and the discrimination and gender gap became even wider.

They said women were discriminated against in every field be it education, employment, etc, though they had proved it time and again that if equal opportunities were given to them they could handle every assignment with equal efficiency.

Speakers said with increasing number of women entering the job market their harassment during travel and at workplace was growing.

They said domestic violence against women was also on the rise, but there were no specific laws to counter these menaces.

They said the environment was more tolerant and women friendly at the time of independence. However, over the years the rights of the women had been eroded gradually and the environment started to become more hostile and they faced the darkest time during Gen Zia’s dictatorial rule when discriminatory laws such as the Hudood Ordinance, Law of Evidence, etc. were promulgated.

They pointed out that the country was signatory to many international agreements such as the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the government had to bring all its laws in conformity with these international commitments.

They demanded that not only all laws be made in conformity with these international commitments but all the discriminatory laws, that were being opposed by civil society organizations and also bringing a bad name to the country, be also abolished.

They demanded that the recommendations that were put forward by all the commissions on status of women set up by previous governments be implemented. They said a nation could not progress if half its population was neither considered equal partners in the developmental process nor was it given equal opportunities and kept out of the economic activities.

They also advised women to actively participate in politics so that they entered the decision-making process and were in a position to ensure that