Speakers on the occasion said that though the religion and the constitution gave many rights to women they were not able to get these rights due to the socio-cultural traditions prevailing in society.
They said that women would have to wage a long and hard struggle to get their due rights. They said that whenever women were given opportunities they had proved that they were not inferior to their male counterparts.
They demanded that women be given equal opportunities in every field including education, jobs etc so that they were empowered and supplemented the family income and in the process played their due role in the progress of the country.
Sindh governor’s wife, Khadija Soomro, speaking at one of the seminars said that the government recognizing the importance of gender equality for progress in every field as a first step had reserved 33 per cent seats for women in the local bodies and had also announced that around 17 per cent of seats had been reserved for them in the parliament.
She was speaking at the seminar organized jointly by the directorate of the social welfare and women development and the Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA) held at the Finance and Trade Centre.
She said that Pakistan was a signatory to various international agreements including the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and was trying to formulate its local laws in conformity with the government’s international commitments.
She said that government had constituted a permanent commission on the status of women and had also announced its national policy for women.
Khajida Soomro urged the educated and privileged class women to create and spread awareness regarding the women’s rights among their less privileged sisters so that they could also join the struggle to get their rights.
She said that it was an enormous job which the government alone could not handle so the non-governmental organizations and other civil society groups should also join hands to launch the struggle. She said that the government was keen to solve the women’s issues.
Other speakers on the occasion demanded that all laws that were discriminatory towards women including the Hudood Ordinance, Law of Evidence, etc and be abolished.
They said that women were harassed at almost every place be it educational institution, public transport, work place, public place etc and there were no specific laws to deal with this kind of harassment.
They said that domestic violence was not even considered violence and whenever a female victim went to the police station she was advised to return home and sort out matters within family.
They said that in many parts of the country women were considered a commodity and were given away as compensation to settle the family feuds or clashes between the tribes. They said that a large number of women were trafficked nationally and internationally and were subsequently exploited sexually.
APWA chief Begum Tazeen Faridi, Sindh Women Development Secretary Ashiq Memon, Dr Khalida Ghaus, Mushtaq Memon, journalist Sheen Farrukh, Tehsina Rafiq, Shaheen Zamir, Zia Awan, and others also spoke.
Awards were given by Ms Soomro to Fareeha Razzaq Haroon, Shama Zaidi, Khalida Ghaus, Sheeba Shah, Sania Saeed, Hameed Kashmiri, Murad Ali Soni, Neelofar, Dr Shagufta, Nasreen Aslam, Fatima Asadullah and others for the roles that they had played in highlighting women’s issues.