The third meeting of the Regional Steering Committee for the Advancement of Rural and Island Women of the Asia-Pacific (RSC-AP) was inaugurated in Islamabad on February 10, 2004 with Mrs. Sehba Musharraf in the Chair.

The theme focused on poverty alleviation due to the very high incidence of poverty amongst women. A national fund for the advancement of rural women was announced with the hope that it would be emulated by other member countries.

These are all very noble goals indeed to uplift the rural women who are more enslaved in the countryside than their poverty-ridden male counterparts are in the same underdeveloped parts of these countries. Mrs. Sehba further threw light on the summit efforts "to enhance women's role in decision-making and power sharing in all tiers of government" (Dawn, 11-2-04).

Her highly enlightened intentions and goals notwithstanding, there is a chain of intervening variables between the poverty of rural women and their say in local and national decision-making that need to be addressed in parallel without which true involvement in higher level decision-making will remain elusive.

For, while women have been appointed in large numbers to positions of political authority, ala Mrs. Musharraf, they struggle to have their voices heard in council meetings and parliamentary sessions alike as mere nomination or election is not participation and involvement in the true sense if discriminatory behaviour remains rampant.

Some nazims/councilors have also faced charges of karo kari or have been humiliated in barbaric ways publicly. With such gender biases being the order of the day, the goal of economic empowerment of women in the true sense will remain elusive unless the intervening variables are sorted out boldly and decisively with courage and conviction. Mrs. Sehba is expected to take up this challenge in her current capacity.

First, it is not right to say that the village women do not "earn" incomes. A more realistic depiction would be that they "earn" but are not authorized to receive or retain cash due to village customs that relegate women to tertiary if not secondary status.

A village woman's life begins at dawn with breakfast preparation for not just own but for extended family. They fetch water from great distances, raise cattle and poultry, engage in kitchen farming, and last but not the least provide labour on cash crop farms to supplement and complement the effort of the male members of the family.

Rural men by themselves cannot produce all the output for which they alone are remunerated with women going unremunerated despite all of the economic activity they undertake as outlined above.

In addition, women prepare meals and also supply them to the male family members on the farms. A woman's day carries on until past mid-night as the evenings remain engaged in other household chores, child rearing, and meal preparation all at a time when the men return home to rest and relax.

And, all of the above unbelievable economic activity is undertaken in parallel with their incessant reproductive role. The overburdened, overworked, and under-/un-paid rural women are miraculous indeed as they take all of the hardships not just in stride but cheerfully which ought to be a research area in psychology! However, they very much are economic entities unto themselves and very respectable ones at that.

Does their family view them as respectable too? If it did, the question of their "empowerment" would not arise as they are kept deprived, despite their humogenous economic role, by none other than by their very own kith and kin. A woman is just not good enough to be trusted with money or is not human enough to need it even if she has earned it all.

Similar attitudes prevail amongst the rural-urban migrants. Here too, women are the earning members with men either unable to find jobs or too lazy to work or too thick into drugs already.

However, a woman's entitlement to her own income is limited which is either spent on the extended household voluntarily or under compulsions from the family elders some of whom expropriate women's incomes to even pay debt they incur in illicit activities.

Simplistic solution usually given then is education of women that alone would lead to empowerment of women. Again, in this cause-effect chain, intervening variables are lost sight of.

For, a number of educated urban women also do not have full right to their incomes which run the risk of or are actually expropriated either by siblings or in-laws.

And, despite a woman's education and gainful employment, she may not enjoy full and complete discretion over expenditures from her very own income also because she is still viewed as "naqis-ul-aqal" or soft in the head ill-equipped to, therefore, take sound economic decisions.

The political rights, therefore, envisaged by this government remain a far cry against the above social backdrop part of which emanates from patriarchal interpretations of religion.

Under these circumstances, education may not necessarily bring enlightenment which huge intervening variable needs to be unboxed. During this RSC-AP, therefore, the first lady of Iran, Zohreh Khatami, extended the issue further to and beyond education.

"That adjustment of social norms" is necessary to bolster women's capabilities along with betterment of education was a point raised effectively by Mrs. Khatami. Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadei is on record having said about the higher female enrolment now in Iranian universities that the utility of such degrees is limited to wall hangings if women lack the freedom and equal opportunity to pursue jobs and careers of their own choice.

During the RSC-AP, the first lady of Kyrgyzstan, Professor Mariam D. Akaeva, further added the variable of "patriarchal traditions" that keep the status of women depressed in the third world countries.

Both the issues of social norms and patriarchal traditions feed directly into the subordinate economic status of women but these issues are usually brushed aside in the various debates or discussions on the subject in Pakistan.

It is little wonder then that Mrs. Sehba's proposed solutions revolved around the "socially accepted" and therefore politically safe and correct micro-credit for women too.

Can micro-credit work wonders in Pakistan where women are either kept uncompensated or are partially compensated or do not enjoy control and discretion over own hard-earned incomes irrespective of the educational level, as discussed above?

Against the above Pakistan-specific backdrop, are womens' incomes from micro ventures not susceptible to appropriation and/or expropriation too unless the outlook towards women undergoes a sea change? This transformation is required not just in the minds of uneducated men but also in the minds of educated but highly prejudiced men and their allied women whom I may be allowed to term the female comprador groups of men through whom women are kept subjugated or discriminated against as above.

If micro credit has ostensibly done some good in India and China is no reason why it will lead to the same outcomes in Pakistan. While the Chinese women took giant strides towards empowerment in their very earliest decades of development, the Indian women too have traversed a long distance since they were "sateed" (burnt alive) with their husbands' dead bodies.

As India proudly sports a woman deputy chair in their Rajya Sabha (upper house), we in Pakistan are unabashedly intolerant of a woman deputy speaker in a provincial assembly.

While such comparisons may take more space and ink than is available, suffice it to say that a Pakistani woman's status is derived first and foremost from that of the male members of her family as compared to those in China and India where women, by and large, now enjoy identities of their own.

Against this dismal backdrop, there is more to a woman's economic empowerment than mere cash generation capability. For, income generation, as discussed herein, is not all there is to a woman's economic empowerment leave alone her social and political empowerment.

If income generation does not even give women a fuller say in family decision-making, how can it get them the rights they need at the workplace or in political places unless the issue of the poverty of minds is addressed?

It is this poverty of mindsets that the first ladies of Iran and Kyrgyzstan referred to when they talked about the need for a change in social values and patriarchal traditions.

In Pakistan, amongst other factors, these social norms grow also out of our feudal norms and misinterpreted religious teachings which tend to establish women as inferior beings and should, therefore, always remain subject to the control of men and their allied/comprador women. Whither economic empowerment of women if such misinterpretations remain ignored practically by the highest realm of the country!

Micro-credit to women, under such circumstances, will not be able to lift the country's women out of their existing status of micro-organisms unless the non-economic factors with economic bases are thrown up on the womens' empowerment agenda by none other than Pakistan's first lady herself.

She needs to change the order of priorities in her bid to elevate the status of Pakistani women and lead the way towards not only her already stated goals but also to a conceptual reformulation of the status of women in the country with the help of Pakistan's women theologians, advocates, and activists so as to make a dent in the poverty of thought that is the primary cause of the economic, social, and political poverty of women in the country.

She must take the two C-words loud and clear that remain firmly entrenched behind the grief of womankind--male Chauvinism and their women Comprador groups which two thoughts, if transformed, will not only allow the right of already earned incomes to rural and urban women alike but will unleash their potential on the lines also envisioned by the first ladies of Pakistan, Iran, and Kyrgyzstan in this RSC-AP summit held in Islamabad on February 10-12, 2004.