KARACHI: The 10th edition of the Women of the World (WOW) Festival Pakistan began on Saturday to celebrate women’s achievements, foster dialogue and address the challenges they face.
The two-day event was organised by the British Council, in partnership with the WOW Foundation, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Entrepreneurship and Community Development Institute (ECDI), at the Beach Luxury Hotel, where a large number of women, girls and families attended the programme.
Senior politician and Vice President of the Pakistan Peoples Party Senator Sherry Rehman was the keynote speaker under the topic “Expanding Women’s Space in a Decade of Resilience and Climate Challenges.”
She called for a decisive expansion of women’s political, economic, and social space, warning that climate change, inequality, and weak implementation of laws continue to disproportionately affect women and girls across Pakistan.
Senator Rehman began by drawing attention to what she termed the “feminisation of injustice.”
Sherry Rehman calls for expanding Pakistani women’s political, economic space
“In every disruptive frontline — conflict, pandemic, climate catastrophe, or digital warfare — women and children are disproportionately harmed. And the harm is not always collateral. Far too often, it is deliberate,” she said. “Many of us have come to realise that if there is one thing the traditional ‘rights of man’ project still strategically tolerates, it is the universality of the feminisation of injustice,” she said.
She reminded the audience that women’s rights have never been granted through benevolent democratic evolution. “Even in the oldest democracies, women secured the right to vote only after force-feeding, imprisonment, and public vilification. Pakistan’s own women’s movement, which peaked at the turn of the last century, faced arrests, lashings, and systemic indignities under authoritarian laws,” she said, noting that these laws were only partially reversed when Benazir Bhutto’s party, and later other democratic forces, came to power.
Turning to gender parity as unfinished business, Senator Rehman said that since the Beijing Platform for Action was signed by 189 governments in 1995, progress has remained deeply uneven. “The United Nations tells us that at current global trends, gender parity in political leadership is still 130 years away,” she said.
She underscored that women constitute 49.2 per cent of Pakistan’s population, yet their political representation stands at just 17pc, despite women contributing nearly 50pc of parliamentary work. “This is a clear gap between contribution and authority,” she said, adding that at the global level, women hold only 27.2pc of parliamentary seats, and only 29 countries currently have women heads of government.
Addressing economic participation, she said Pakistan’s female labor force participation rate remains at 22.7pc, even though women make up 45% of the agricultural workforce. “Yet women own only 2pc of agricultural land. This is a structural injustice that limits economic empowerment and decision-making,” she said, adding that 72pc of water collection in Pakistan is carried out by women and girls, significantly increasing their unpaid labor burden.
Highlighting the scale of gender-based violence, she revealed that 32,617 cases have been registered nationwide, yet only 5pc of perpetrators are convicted, while 64pc of cases are dismissed. Nearly 70pc of incidents go unreported due to fear, stigma, and lack of institutional trust.
Senator Rehman also spoke extensively on the gendered impacts of climate change, stating that women and girls are the most affected during climate disasters. Referring to the 2022 floods, she said 1,000 health facilities were destroyed, disrupting services for 650,000 pregnant women, while economic stress pushed 18pc more girls into early marriage.
Calling for systemic reform, she urged mandatory gender analysis in all public policies, the use of gender-disaggregated data, and the meaningful inclusion of women in climate policy formulation and resource allocation. She emphasized that men and boys must be partners in achieving gender equality.
Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2026