ISLAMABAD: With more women coming into the assemblies, the face of democracy has changed and women are now leading the agenda on climate change, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other important issues.

In future women will also lead the discussion on other important budgetary issues such as allocations, tracking and monitoring.

This was the consensus among the participants of a one-day national consultation on ‘Achieving Gender Equality through the implementation of SDG – 5’ held in Islamabad on Wednesday.

The convention was being held under the auspices of the project ‘JAZBA - Democracy and Empowered Women’, being implemented by Aurat Foundation (AF) and South Asia Partnership-Pakistan (SAP-PK) with the support of Global Affairs Canada (GAC).

Speaker of the Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly and convener SDG Taskforce GB Syed Amjad Ali Zaidi said in Gilgit-Baltistan they were going to start a first-ever cadet college for girl which would further help in empowering women of the region.

He said buses and other public transport were free for women, adding that vocational training centres were spending a large amount on training and equipping the women and girls of the region with technical skills.

Former Balochistan Assembly speaker Rahila Durrani said the province was lacking implementation of laws due to poor political and reading culture.

She said she broke the barrier and became Pakistan’s first-ever female speaker of the Balochistan Assembly.

MPA from Sindh Mangla Sharma spoke about the legislative weaknesses in Pakistan and said the women were not trained in legislative matters and a majority of the first-time members did not understand and had poor capacity in that regard.

She said Sindh had passed pro-women legislation in recent times such as anti-dowry act, acid-throwing law and domestic violence prevention act.

MPA from Punjab Sabrina Javed said when people talk about gender they instantly assume that they were only talking about women whereas it also included men and transgender persons, persons with disabilities PWDs as well.

MPA from Punjab Uzma Kardar said she remained the head of gender mainstreaming committees for three years in Punjab.

Highlighting some of her works, she said during her tenure she with the help of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) formed an integrated system in order to become aware of the work done by other departments on gender mainstreaming.

Aurat Foundation Executive Director Naeem Mirza spoke about the significance of pro-women legislative agenda in Pakistan.

In his brief remarks, he said in the modern era even in corporate feminism women had become the heads of organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

He further said the first procession for women’s rights in Pakistan was taken out by Begum Jehan Ara Shahnawaz who was also the member of Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2022