THIS month Khadija Arib was elected president of the lower house of parliament in the Netherlands. Arib, a Moroccan-Dutch woman who immigrated to the Netherlands when she was 15, has had an exceptional political career, first as a civil servant and social worker, then as a member of parliament and speaker of the House of Representatives.

Representing the Dutch Labour Party, Arib has achieved the highest political office ever held by a Muslim in the Netherlands. She is emerging as the new face of Muslim women who are determined to have a say in the decision-making process of their nations.

In case you believe a woman can achieve high political office only in a secular Western country, think again. Last month, PTI’s Dr Meher Taj Roghani was elected deputy speaker of the KP Assembly, while PML-N’s Rahila Durrani became the first woman speaker of the Balochistan Assembly. That these two women hold high office in the two most conservative provinces of the country is testament to the struggles that all women in Pakistan’s government, civil service and bureaucracy have undertaken in order to achieve representation in the corridors of power.

‘Struggle’ aptly describes women’s long journey.

‘Struggle’ is indeed the right word to describe this long process, which is taking place across South Asia. Women have realised that unless they are involved in the decision-making processes of their nations, their concerns will be given the same second-class status that women themselves have held for centuries.

At a planning session for the Karachi version of the Women of the World Festival held under the auspices of the Southbank Centre, Afghan filmmaker Dr Sahraa Karimi said, “If Afghan women don’t care about themselves, if they don’t help themselves, nobody will care. If we don’t see that we women are the centre of progress, then nobody will see that.”

These days the buzzword is ‘education’ — if girls are educated, all will be well with the nation. But education is merely the gateway to bigger things, and a seat at the table of political power is one of the biggest. Educating girls is a useless endeavour unless those girls grow into women who are able to use their education to benefit society. Education cannot be a tool of mere self-interest, acquired for the sake of padding a resumé or sweetening a marriage proposal.

Nasim Firdaus, executive director of the Bangladesh Alliance for Women Leadership, related how in Bangladesh, girls are being educated at the primary and secondary levels in record numbers. But tertiary education is where they fall down: all those educated girls in Bangladesh’s rural areas can’t go to universities, which are located only in the cities. It’s only with tertiary education that women can go on to achieve jobs and government positions.

Firdaus was the only Bangladeshi woman in the civil service. She set up BDAWL in order to build women’s capacity in leadership; more than 200 women have been trained since 2009 in effective leadership skills. These include: “developing media relations, public speaking and communication skills, decision making and conflict resolution.” Firdaus says that it’s their confidence and capacity that will advance women’s leadership and position in society beyond just lip service in the Constitution.

Similarly, Sapana Pradhan Malla of Nepal, who served as adviser to the Nepalese government on violence against women, expressed frustration with the legal system in Nepal. “The law has been made into a tool for discriminating against women, especially those laws made by men with their patriarchal standards and values.”

Malla gave an example of previous inheritance laws in Nepal to make her point. Married women were not allowed to inherit property; when women’s rights activists appealed to the courts, the courts responded that because Nepal is a Hindu country and the laws are part of Hindu custom and culture, they could not be declared discriminatory. 

But with the insurgency in Nepal came the opportunity to rebuild the nation and rework the constitution; Malla and her cohorts made sure to be part of that process. Now, in the Nepalese constitutional framework, there is no discrimination in inheritance laws based on sex, class, or creed — but the activists ensured that gendered situations such as marital status, pregnancy and health status were no longer cause for discrimination either. “There is no merit to the argument that women should accept some level of inequality because of national interest or nation-building,” observed Jude Kelly, director of the WOW Festival.

As Jinnah stated, “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you.” Women must be included in all aspects of decision-making and state structuring, so that we can continue to build a nation that serves all of its citizens equally.

The writer is an author.

Twitter: @binashah

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2016