KARACHI, March 10: Speakers at a seminar here on Sunday demanded equal opportunities for women in every field so that they could play their due role in the progress of the society.

The seminar on “Working Women Are the First Victims of Globalization”, was organized by the Idara-i-Amno Insaf to mark the International Women’s Day.

The speakers said though religion and constitution of the country gave many rights to women they were denied of these by the society.

They said women were discriminated in every field and the working women were even paid less as compared to their male counterparts though they performed their duties equally.

They said many a time women were given low level jobs and very few of them reached top management position. They demanded that in cases where majority of the workers were women, females be appointed to supervise their working.

Pakistan is a signatory to various international agreements dealing with women issues, including the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and it was bound to make its local laws in conformity with its international commitments, they said, adding that very little work had been done in this direction.

They urged the women to take part in politics so that they could enter the decision-making process. “Unless women take active part in the decision- making process, their status can not be improved,” they maintained.

The speakers said a large number of women working in offices and in industrial sector were not even given appointment letters due to which their ability to secure their rights in case of a dispute with their employers became very limited and they suffered in the process.

They urged the trade union leaders not only to make the women workers members of their unions but also bring them up in the leadership levels so that they could solve the issues being faced by the women workers as they would be in a better position to understand the women-related problems.

Because of globalization, the workers were facing exploitation and women who belonged to the weaker section of the work force were the worst sufferers.

They urged the educated women to create and spread awareness regarding women’s rights among their less privileged sisters so that they also became aware of their rights and could join hands and worked together to get these rights.

Women are not considered equal to men even in the family. One example of the discrimination, they said, is that women usually are given food in the last due to which the number of women suffering from anaemia was much larger than that of men.

They said comparatively less care was taken regarding women’s health conditions and one result of which was that a large number of women died during pregnancy and many others suffered for life due to pregnancy- related complications.

They said the country could not progress in a real sense unless women were provided with equal opportunities.

Mahnaz Rehman, Marium Samuel, Daphne Alfray, Sarah Ivan, Malika Khan and others spoke, while Atiya Dawood and Mehar Taj Mehmood presented poetry highlighting the sufferings of the women.