ISLAMABAD: Although, over the years, women have gained space in our male-dominated society, there is still a lot more to achieve.

These were the views of speakers during the launching ceremony of the Uks Research Centre’s annual desk diary and the 25th anniversary of the organisation on Saturday.

Among the speakers was renowned poet Kishwar Naheed who shared her experience being a woman in a male-dominated society.

Ms Naheed said once she got a promotion and was advised by the management to report from Karachi to Lahore office.

“However, the staff at the Lahore office wrote an application to the management saying that it was not ready to work under a woman. I reached Lahore and went to the office of the person who was behind the application. I initially told him to serve me tea, which he did hesitantly, and then told him to introduce me to the staff. Things can be changed with wisdom,” she said.

“However, it is a fact that women face unnecessary pressure from men in their families. My father wanted me to write my name as Syeda Kishwar Naheed and my husband wanted me to use his name. If I had listened to both of them, my name would have been Syeda Kishwar Naheed Yousuf Kamran Butt,” she said.

Journalist Hamid Mir said it was unfortunate that the number of women had decreased in media organisations.

“Some of my colleagues told me the ratio of female workers has dropped from 10pc to 4pc. Once, there used to be a large number of female journalists in newsrooms and reporting but this number has decreased over the years,” he said.

Uks Director Tasneem Ahmar said she started her struggle to liberate women, who used to face criticism over almost every issue, and decided to correct the language and derogatory headlines in newspapers.

“I remember that decades back, after the death of a woman, media would start publishing stories against her and raised questions about why she was living separately despite the fact that her parents were in the same city. We faced the same issue when a woman was travelling on the motorway and was raped. We observed similar stories in print and electronic media over the Noor Muqadam case,” she said.

“Although, some improvement has been observed especially in reporting, there is still a lot more to do,” she said.

Rights activist Tahira Abdullah said she had been working with Uks for over two decades and had put her input in every diary.

“This year’s diary is a chronology of women of Pakistan. It should not be taken as calendar but should be kept as reference,” she added.

Dr Nadia Tahir said it was unfortunate that similar stories were being repeated in television serials and there was self inspired censorship in them.

A speaker, Nabila Aslam, said even women sometimes think oddly about other women because that was how people in our society were taught to think.

An educationist, Inamur Rehman, said with the passage of time, the language used in newspapers had changed and improved.

Shaista Yasmeen, a broadcaster and project manager at Uks, said her organisation taught her how to deal with a number of issues.

“Initially, it was said that women should not be called in television programmes but now it is said that programmes cannot be complete without women,” she said.

Another speaker Injie Anis, said women suffer irrespective of their class while Ali Nisar said his perspective had changed when he started working on gender-related issues.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2022