KARACHI, Dec 23: Speakers at a seminar here on Monday said a country could not progress if half of its population was not allowed to participate in economic activities.
At the seminar on “Importance of women in participation in politics,” organized by the Women Workers Helpline, they said if equal opportunities were provided women time and again had proved that they were equally efficient to fulfil any task.
They also demanded that the laws that were discriminatory towards women, minorities and other marginalized sections of society be abolished.
“The country is a signatory to the Convention of Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination towards Women, and is bound to formulate all its laws in conformity with it, but very little has been done in this regard,” they said.
Three women members of the Sindh Assembly, Sussi Palijo, Shazia Marri and Marvi Mazhar, urged the other women members of the assembly to rise above party loyalty and join hands together so that a unified strategy could be adopted while discussing an issue being faced by, or formulating any legislation, regarding women.
They said at least two PPP women MPAs were manhandled in the Sindh assembly by police a few days back, but, they claimed, none of the other party MPAs, particularly women members, condemned the incident. They said when such incidents were taking place with MPAs in the provincial capital and on the assembly premises, it could well be imagined what hardship and victimization women faced in remote areas of the province and of the country.
They said they would try to formulate legislation so that inhuman tribal customs like karo-kari, etc, could be curbed effectively. They also said women were being sold to men twice or thrice their age, or being given as compensation for murder to the victim’s family, etc.
One of the speakers criticized the hypocrisy of political parties, and said “at the time of local bodies polls almost all the political parties, even those which claimed to be progressive, signed an agreement in Okara Khattak that not only women would not be allowed to contest the elections, they would not even be allowed to cast their votes in the polls.”
Other speakers demanded that Industrial Relations Ordinance 2002 be withdrawn, and true labour representatives be taken into confidence and involved in consultation before worker-friendly labour laws were formulated through parliament, women workers be given equal wages and facilities that were available to their male counterparts, laws relating to sexual harassment be formulated, women be given representation at the decision-making level in political parties and trade unions, etc.
Nuzhat Shirin, Shahnaz Soomro, Uzma Umer, Umer Baloch and others also spoke.
