March 08, 2009

The lives of Pakistani women have changed during the past 30 years and they are more empowered and emancipated yet it does not mean that they do not face discrimination, harassment or violence

Good news first: Pakistani women are more equipped and aware today than they were about 30 years ago, thanks to the women’s liberation movement that poured in the streets to fight a patriarchal society back in time. Bad news follows: (most) men still don’t know that women have arrived.

The ride of emancipation through almost 60 years has been extremely bumpy and women today have ample reason to celebrate the fact that such agitation has landed them with a vengeance in the workforce, in politics, on the streets driving cars, in media, and, in a nutshell, taking charge and making their presence felt.

More and more women in Pakistan are entering the workforce today as their predecessors, who made the first time at the work place and also made life easier for other women, lent them the encouragement to do so. My ex-boss was one of the first women in the media industry to have worked and also raised a family. Hired as editorial writer, the editor used to allow her time out from work to pick up kids from school, feed them and then return to work. This was not a case of partiality but that she was simply good at what she did. Many times she would even send in her editorials from home which many men did not like and threw tantrums. This taught her to be aggressive and assertive for the sheer fact that she was ‘but a woman’.

Today, such assertiveness is taken in stride and a female worker, standing in the league of an efficient workforce, is now considered ‘a competent worker’ elevating the stigmatised character assassination of being called a ‘professional b-word’ (the female dog, if you like). Last year, the Aga Khan University conducted a survey about the impact of working status on the lives of women. On a sample of 200 women, who were visiting the Aga Khan out-patient ward, almost 62 per cent respondents of an average age of 30 years believed that the status of working women was better than non-working women and the level of confidence in working women is also higher than non-working women according to 71 per cent respondents.

These findings may have been different a few years back, it still is many would argue, but we must acknowledge that there is more awareness in the society to pay heed to some sort of redressal, especially through media.

The study also pointed out that almost 42 per cent women found it difficult to cope with household duties while working. Around 62 per cent women said that they didn’t have enough time for themselves. Is this a cosmetic change then? Does this mean that women are still up against lack of support at home to be able to cope with nagging demands of men or families that are still adamantly asking for a ‘taaza roti’ on the table at every meal?

Though this survey cannot be gauged as a good representative of the masses, perhaps the truth should not be contested with unwanted cynicism. Many women have understood the trick to striking the delicate balance between home and work. They have also taught men to find other ways to appease (or simply dump) their nagging habits. Besides, if your wife is a minister in the federal cabinet, you certainly would not have the nerve to be obstreperous.

Happily enough, “The political representation of women in Pakistan is higher than other South Asian countries like India, Sri Lanka and Iran,” reported Information Minister, Sherry Rehman, at a seminar recently held in Oxford University on women in politics. She also highlighted the fact that Pakistan was listed as “45th in the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) list of women in national parliaments and stood ahead of several developed democracies, including Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States”. Pakistan is also one of the 30 countries which have a woman as Speaker of Parliament.

Such happy figures, however, should not be misconstrued for another fact that sexual harassment, rape, molestation and domestic violence coupled with abject poverty have taken a flight from Pakistani society. Discriminatory laws and defective implementation are still a bane of the lives of many women in Pakistan, especially in the rural areas. Crises of food insecurity and a deteriorating environment are the new weapons of destruction and women are directly vulnerable to the disasters that follow them. What are we doing about it?

Many years back, writers Khawar Mumtaz and Farida Shaheed had said in their book, Women of Pakistan —Two steps forward, one step back, “It is true that at no point have large numbers of women been active on the women’s front…but the struggle for women’s rights has run concomitantly with other struggles and at least initially the activis1ts on one front were also active on the other.” Though women drive safely in other parts of Pakistan, women in Swat struggle to be recognised as eligible members of the society to educate themselves. We live in bitter sweet times where everyone is fighting the battle of survival and women should celebrate every battle won, and those who help them win, in society.