INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day was celebrated last Saturday. It has significant meaning for Pakistan’s women. There are those among them who have broken through the glass ceiling; brought education, dignity and opportunity to others — and who have earned detractors while braving dangerous circumstances.

In 2010, my fitness instructor, Sabina Khatri, divided her week between teaching dozens of classes, her family, and administering a community school in Karachi’s district of Lyari, where ethnic and criminal violence has resulted in jobless young men, guns and drugs. Unrelenting poverty and urban warfare has transformed this district into a volatile cauldron lit by politically backed gangs. Violent attacks are daily occurrences and women are left bereft of wage-earners.

But nothing deterred Sabina from bringing education to an underprivileged population, as she walked boldly through dense alleys, where you can peep through bullet holes in graffiti-painted walls. Working with students and parents (including fathers) at the Kiran School, she chalked out curricula; identified secondary schools for graduating students; and schooled even illiterate parents.

I met a nervous Sabina with her proud family a few years later at the premiere of a series of documentary shorts, Ho-Yaqeen where she was one of six central characters telling their stories. Hers was about bringing education and the chance to dream to Lyari’s forgotten children and women: “Turn every stone in Pakistan and you find a diamond,” Sabina told the audience, showing what happens when you provide the smallest of opportunities where there is nothing but sewage, filth, impoverishment and drugs.

Educating Pakistan’s young generation has never become a national obsession and although it is a national emergency with more than half the population under the age of 22 the government has shown little political will to bring accessible education to all. Instead, almost a year on, it is fixated on talking to extremist forces violently opposed to secular education and holding the country hostage.

These militants destroy schools that are not religious seminaries teaching the prerequisites of jihad, they kidnap and attack teachers and students, particularly targetting women’s education. What individuals like Sabina Khatri and her community teachers — including others from Teach for Pakistan, Alif Ailaan and the Citizens Foundation — support is an antithesis to the ideology endorsed by certain religious and militant forces.

In Pakistan, according to intelligence reports last year, 1,030 schools and colleges were destroyed by Taliban insurgents in KP from 2009 to 2013.

Looking at the bigger picture, women’s human rights in Pakistan including its tribal areas must not be compromised, even as the government appears determined to talk to the Taliban. Conservative forces should not be allowed to barter women’s rights and freedoms for political concessions.

In Peshawar, Gulalai Ismail was 16 when she set up Aware Girls with her younger sister Saba. Since 2002, the organisation has trained and empowered hundreds of youth. As Saba explains, “discrimination for women starts at birth — often beaten by families, and having no decision-making involvement — the identity of women is tied to men. We are sisters, daughters, mothers and wives, but not women”.

Initially focused on empowering young girls, they later launched a peacebuilding project with hundreds of volunteers against religious and political extremism to encourage young people to resist recruitment by militants.

Ineffectual socio-economic growth, minimum levels of education and Islamised policies have led to widespread human rights abuses.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan recorded 56 women killed in 2013 for giving birth to a girl; 491 cases of domestic violence; 344 gang rape cases and 90 acid attacks; and 835 other cases of violence against women.

Conformists defend traditions that dictate the status of women. They are against those that tip the balance in favour of gender equality and who try to jeopardise entrenched patriarchies, especially in politics. Although women inspiring change won’t stop such conservative forces that keep them back, their strength lies in numbers: a large number of people who stand up on behalf of women and girls adds to the collective voice in favour of girls’ education and empowerment.

Civil society movements against discriminatory legislation; and groups advocating change through education become necessary when the government fails in its responsibilities. Individuals that build dignity and mitigate human tragedy caused by cultural practices are valuable because they do more than just talk.

The writer is a journalist.

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