essay on pakistani woman

The rising voices of women in Pakistan

From registering women voters to negotiating rights, women are redefining roles despite resistance from the state, religious institutions, and other women.

SHAHDARA, Pakistan – Bushra Khaliq stood in the middle of a village home, chin up and shoulders back, holding the attention of fifty women around her. Old and young, they wore Pakistani tunics and scarves; some cradled and fed babies, others shushed children who tugged at their sleeves. Sun from the open roof warmed Khaliq’s face as she looked around, holding eye contact with one woman, then another. “Who is going to decide your vote?” she asked. The women clapped and shouted in unison: “Myself!”

Both Sunni and Shia students study at a girls’ school in Minawar, a village near Gilgit in the province of Gilgit-Baltistan.

Bibi Raj, 22, principal of Outliers Girls School in Minawar, graduated with her master's degree in Education in 2018. She teaches biology and chemistry and hopes her students will attend college, even though some of them are already engaged to be married.

Nadia Khan, a 23-year-old Ismaili teacher, sits among her students. Ismailis are known in Pakistan for supporting female education, but they have limited influence outside of the Hunza valley in Gilgit-Baltistan. The only girls’ school in Minawar village, with 24 students between the ages of 14 and 17, still struggles to keep girls in school instead of leaving for marriage at age 15. “It’s a challenge for me,” says Principal Bibi Raj. “All girls should go to school.”

Khaliq, a 50-year-old human rights defender and community organizer, was holding a political participation workshop session, the first of several that day in the rural outskirts of Lahore. The women attendants were local wives and daughters of agricultural laborers. Many were illiterate, though several worked low-income jobs to send their daughters to school. It was the week before Pakistan’s general election, and Khaliq, who runs an organization called Women in Struggle for Empowerment (WISE) , encouraged the women to vote.

Many rural women are not registered for their National Identity Cards , a requirement not only to vote but also to open a bank account and get a driver’s license. In Pakistan, many women in rural and tribal areas have not been able to do these things with or without the card. In accordance with patriarchal customs and family pressures, they live in the privacy of their homes without legal identities.

Yet Pakistan’s July 2018 elections saw an increase of 3.8 million newly registered women voters . The dramatic increase follows a 2017 law requiring at least a 10 percent female voter turnout to legitimize each district’s count. Pakistan has allowed women to vote since 1956, yet it ranks among the last in the world in female election participation.

Teenage girls from Gulmit load up in a van after an all-female soccer tournament meant to promote gender equality in the Hunza valley of northern Pakistan.

All-girl teams from surrounding villages walk onto the field during the soccer tournament.

The Hunza valley in the northern Pakistan borders China’s Xinjiang region and the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan. The Ismaili Muslims who live there embrace education rates for girls and religious tolerance.

The remote tribal area that borders Afghanistan, formally called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northwestern Pakistan, has traditionally been least tolerant of women in public spaces, some women activists say. Yet registration in 2018 increased by 66 percent from 2013. This rise in women’s votes is a victory for women like Khaliq, who are fighting for women’s inclusion and equality in Pakistan, especially among marginalized communities in rural and tribal areas.

Encouraging more women to vote is only the beginning. Women themselves disagree over what their role should be in Pakistani society. The patriarchal, conservative mainstream dismisses feminism as a Western idea threatening traditional social structures. Those who advocate for equality between women and men – the heart of feminism – are fighting an uphill battle. They face pushback from the state, religious institutions, and, perhaps most jarringly, other women.

There are different kinds of activists among women in Pakistan. Some are secular, progressive women like Rukhshanda Naz, who was fifteen years old when she first went on a hunger strike. She was the youngest daughter of her father’s twelve children, and wanted to go to an all-girls’ boarding school against his wishes. It took one day of activism to convince her father, but her family members objected again when she wanted to go to law school. “My brother said he would kill himself,” she said. Studying law meant she’d sit among men outside of her family, which would be dishonorable to him. Her brother went to Saudi Arabia for work. Naz got her law degree, became a human rights lawyer, opened a women’s shelter in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and worked as resident director of the Aurat Foundation, one of Pakistan’s leading organizations for women’s rights. She is also the UN Women head for the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA.

An Ismaili bride participates in one of many marriage rituals in the Hunza valley. This bride is marrying for love rather than by family arrangement.

The women in Naz’s shelter are survivors of extreme violence whose status as single women makes them highly vulnerable outside of the shelter. When we met, she brought three Afghan sisters whose brother had killed their mother after their father died so he could get her share of the land inheritance after their father died. Naz also had with her a 22-year-old woman from Kabul whose father disappeared into Taliban hands for having worked with the United Nations. The woman had been beaten, kidnapped, and sexually assaulted for refusing marriage to a Taliban member. Women hidden in Naz’s shelter are relatively safe, but outside its walls Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has high incidences of “honor”-based violence. Last June, a jirga (typically all-male tribal council) ordered the “honor” killing of a 13-year-old girl for “running away with men.” At least 180 cases of domestic violence were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2017, according to Human Rights Watch , including 94 women murdered by immediate family.

Others such as Farhat Hashmi represent women from a different perspective. A scholar with a doctoral degree in Islamic studies, Hashmi founded the Al-Huda movement. The group, started in the 1990s, has gained huge traction among upper-middle class Pakistani women as a women’s religious education system that emphasizes conservative Quranic teachings. The Al-Huda schools drew attention after Tashfeen Malik, a former student who became radicalized soon after, carried out a terror attack in San Bernardino, California, in 2015. While there is no proven connection between the Al-Huda movement and any terrorist organization, the group is one of several “piety movements” that has grown in popularity among Pakistani women.

Women of Pakistan’s Wakhi minority make and sell traditional hand-woven carpets in Gulmit village in the Hunza valley.

Zina Parvwen, 52, sits before a display of the Wakhi traditional carpets that she and eleven other women make and sell in Gulmit.

Bibi Farman, a 32-year-old female carpenter, is one of 40 women who work at a carpentry workshop in Karimabad, a village in the Hunza valley. “I am gaining skills,” Farman says. “I am earning money. I support my family and it built up my confidence. Many girls share their problems here. We are a community.”

Women show their hand-embroidered textiles to Tasleem Akhtar, 55, who runs a vocational center in a village near Islamabad. A women’s empowerment organization called Behbud has trained about 300 women who are working here. The women use their earnings to send their children to school.

The role of women in Al-Huda’s teachings is fundamentally different from the position women like Naz and Khaliq are fighting for: Women are taught to obey and submit to their husbands as much as possible, to protect their husbands’ “ honor ,” and never to refuse his physical demands. As Gullalai, director of a women’s organization called Khwendo Kor (“Sister’s Home” in Pashto) puts it, “What they think are women’s rights are not what we think are women’s rights.”

The debate about whether to pursue women’s rights in a secular or religious framework has continued since the 1980s, when progressive feminism first began to gain momentum in Pakistan. Though women’s movements existed in Pakistan from the country’s beginnings, they mobilized in new ways when Zia-ul-Haq’s military dictatorship instituted a fundamentalist form of Islamic law. Under the system, fornication and adultery became punishable by stoning and whipping, murder was privatized under the Qisas and Diyat law (providing a loophole for perpetrators of “honor killings”), and women’s testimony was only worth half of men’s in court.

These laws spurred the formation in 1981 of the Women Action Forum (WAF), a network of activists who lobby for secular, progressive women’s rights. On February 12, 1983, the WAF and Pakistan Women Lawyers’ Association organized a march against the discriminatory laws, only to be attacked, baton charged, and tear gassed by policemen in the streets of Lahore. The date became known as a “black day for women’s rights,” Naz says, and was later declared Pakistan’s National Women’s Day.

Tourists from Karachi pose for a selfie overlooking the Karakoram mountain range in the Hunza valley. The group of young women came to "escape city life," they said.

Since then, Pakistan’s military has grown stronger and more entrenched in its control of both state and economy. The 2018 elections saw the unprecedented inclusion of extremist and militant sectarian groups running for office, including a UN-declared terrorist with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. At the same time, hundreds of people were killed or injured by a series of pre-election suicide attacks.

Some conservative movements have become far more popular than the progressive women’s movement. Some scholars explain the appeal of these faith-based organizations as a channel for women to exercise agency and autonomy by pointedly embracing a non-Western form of womanhood. It’s a different definition of empowerment. Its adherents also avoid the shame, pressure, and physical threat that secular feminists regularly face. “They have the support of religion and acceptance in society, so they are in expansion—and we are shrinking,” Naz said.

Days before Pakistan’s general elections, 50-year-old activist and human rights defender Bushra Khaliq encouraged rural women to vote. A longtime campaigner for women’s rights and labor rights, Khaliq has survived social and state-level attacks on her work. In 2017, the Ministry of Interior and home department of Pakistan accused Khaliq’s organization of performing “anti-state activities.” Khaliq took her case to the Lahore High Court and won the right to continue working.

Gulalai Ismail, a 32-year-old Pashtun human rights activist, founded Aware Girls, an organization combatting violence against women, at age 16. The group aims to educate and mobilize girls and women against social oppression, especially in her home province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. At the time of this portrait, Ismail and Aware Girls were charged with blasphemy for undertaking “immoral” activities and for challenging harmful religious traditions.

Gulalai, who chooses to go by one name to protest the custom of taking a man’s name, runs a women’s organization called Khwendo Kor in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. She conducts weekly feminist reading sessions in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The meetings bring women teachers, doctors, and nonprofit workers together to read and discuss the intersection of gender, class, economic inequality and nationalism. “Living in this part of the world and being a woman, how can one not be a feminist?” Gulalai said. “There is no other option.”

There is a third group of women in Pakistan who don’t connect with either secular feminism or conservative ideology – women who are just trying to survive, said Saima Jasam, a researcher who focuses on women’s and minority rights in Pakistan at the German Heinrich Böll Foundation . Jasam grew up in a Hindu family that decided to stay in Lahore after partition. She witnessed her parents being stabbed to death in her home when she was 15 years old. “The person who stabbed my father said he’d dreamed that he had to kill Hindus,” Jasam said. Though the rest of her family was in India, Jasam insisted on finishing her studies in Lahore, where she fell in love with a Muslim man and converted to Islam to marry him. A year later, he died in an accident. Jasam was pregnant and lost her child. She was 25 years old. At 27, she began working on women’s issues, eventually writing a book on “honor” killings and doing fieldwork.

Jasam’s way of ignoring criticism and conservative pressure is to focus on protecting the vulnerable. “They are facing a different level of patriarchy: food insecurity, health insecurity. They’re just surviving,” Jasam said. Secular women—which, to secular activists, doesn’t mean anti-religion, but anti-conflation of religion and state—are the ones who have secured legislative change to protect women better over the last 20 years.

Rukhshanda Naz, a lawyer and activist who runs a women’s shelter in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, stands with one of the Afghan women in her shelter. The 23-year-old Afghan woman fled Kabul after being beaten, kidnapped, and sexually assaulted for refusing marriage to a Taliban member. “Women’s solidarity should be without ethnicity or borders,” said Naz. “We want to live a life which our mothers didn’t have a chance and their mothers didn’t have a chance [to live], a life with rights and dignity.”

Gullalai, who is originally from FATA and spends much of her time engaging women in the most tribal and conservative parts of Pakistan, said the gap between feminist beliefs and Pakistani reality requires pragmatic compromise. She works to meet women where they are. It’s easy to convince women that they should have inheritance rights, for example, but there are religious texts which state women should have only half a share. “So women will say, ‘Oh, we want half,’” Gullalai said. Personally, she believes women should have an equal share, but she won’t bring it into conversations in the tribal setting. Gullalai said, “At the moment we are even advocating for half!”

Sometimes Pakistani feminists compromise to engage Jasam’s “third group” of women; other times, those women inspire feminists toward more radical activism.

In the rural Okara district of Punjab province, women have long played a leading role in a farmers’ movement against military land grabs. They have used thappas —wooden sticks used in laundry—to face down brutal Pakistani paramilitary forces that have beaten, murdered, detained, and tortured local farmers and their children. Khaliq openly aligned with this farmers’ movement in 2016, speaking up in solidarity with them. In response, the Ministry of Interior widely circulated a letter accusing her NGO of unspecified activities “detrimental to national/strategic security.”

A memorial to Benazir Bhutto, former Pakistani prime minister, sits at the site of her assassination in December 2007 during a political rally in Rawalpindi, Punjab province. Bhutto was the first woman to rule a democratic Islamic nation and took a stark stance against religious extremism. Throughout her time in politics, she was threatened by the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and local extremist groups.

Members of the Awami National Party (ANP), a leftist Pashtun nationalist party, rally in a rural area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during the lead-up to Pakistan’s 2018 election. ANP is one of Pakistan’s most secular, liberal parties. A few days after the rally, ANP leader Haroon Bilous was killed in Peshawar by a suicide attacker. No women were at the rally.

In 2017, Khaliq went to court to defend herself and her organization. Her NGO had been training women to protect themselves against harassment, she argued. How was that detrimental to national security? Khaliq won.

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Women are Khaliq’s inspiration. “These are ordinary and illiterate women who spend their whole lives in homes, but they stand up and fight against army brutalities,” she says. “They are ahead of the men. I feel my responsibility to go shoulder-to-shoulder with them. Their strength gives us more strength.”

Outside the political-participation meeting house in Shahdara, open gutters spilled onto the village streets, flies buzzing around cows and carts moving through the uneven dirt alleys.

Khaliq first met this group of women six years ago, she said, following her usual method of engaging rural women: knocking on doors one by one, asking for the women, bringing them to weekly meetings, building a sisterhood. In the lead-up to the most recent election, her women’s groups went door-to-door throughout small villages, asking women if they had ID cards and bringing mobile vans to register them if they didn’t. They’d found more than 20,000 women unregistered in one district, Khaliq said, and managed to get identification cards for 7,000 of them.

“Ten years ago, we were not aware of our basic rights. Now we know how to work for our own choices,” said 48-year-old Hafeezah Bibi, standing up in a bright teal scarf. She was the only woman on Shahdara’s local council, which rarely addressed what she called “poor women’s problems”: overflowing garbage dumps, broken sewage systems, and exploitative wages. “They don’t listen to us, but we keep asking and arguing,” she said.

Another woman, Parveen Akhtar, said she’d been stitching shoe straps at home for 300 rupees ($2.45) a day, without knowing what others made or whether she could get a higher wage. After joining the group, she’d learned about labor laws and organizing—and demanded a raise. “I only got 5 rupees higher,” she said, “But we have a long way to go.”

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To Be a Woman in Pakistan: Six Stories of Abuse, Shame, and Survival

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Interviews with a handful of the country's 88 million women and girls

Brides-to-be wait during a mass wedding ceremony in Karachi. Reuters

According to a 2011 poll of experts by the Thomson Reuters Foundation Poll, Pakistan is the third most dangerous country for women in the world. It cited the more than 1,000 women and girls murdered in "honor killings" every year and reported that 90 percent of Pakistani women suffer from domestic violence.

Westerners usually associate the plight of Pakistani women with religious oppression, but the reality is far more complicated. A certain mentality is deeply ingrained in strictly patriarchal societies like Pakistan. Poor and uneducated women must struggle daily for basic rights, recognition, and respect. They must live in a culture that defines them by the male figures in their lives, even though these women are often the breadwinners for their families.

Quietly, slowly, in piecemeal legal reforms, female empowerment is coming in Pakistan. You meet inspiring women daily here. Sympathetic employers sometimes give protection and assistance, as do other women who've fared better. NGOs and charitable organizations try to help empower women, but not all women take advantage of these resources. They fear their husbands, attracting unwanted attention, somehow hurting the honor of their families, or, often, they simply do not know that help exists. With female literacy at 36% , many women are too uneducated to know their rights.

A difficult irony for women in Pakistan is that, should a victim speak up about physical or sexual abuse, she is seen as having lost her and her family's dignity. Many rapes go unreported as the victim fears she will become worthless in Pakistani society. Often, women will turn to their employers; families they can trust. It's a typically unnoticed form of charity but one that can be crucial to their survival.

These are the stories of six poor, working women of different ages, backgrounds, and life experiences in the Pakistani city of Karachi, where I grew up and where I met them. In interviews, which I have translated, edited, and condensed below, they told me about their lives and struggles within a cycle of poverty and, often times, violence.

These women have consented to share the stories and photos so that the world might better understand the challenges they face. For their safety, I have not used their full names.

Ayesha, age 18

Every poor girl wishes for more education, for the opportunity to learn and go to school; for a childhood. But many of us are not that fortunate. The day my brother was born was bittersweet; I was no longer allowed to go to school. Due to the increased household responsibilities, my father told me that I must stay home and eventually begin to work.

On the night of his birth, while my whole family was celebrating, I went to my uncle's house to get more bread. I didn't know a young man was there. In the empty home, he took advantage of me; he did things that I didn't understand; he touched my chest. Before I could realize, there was a cloth over my mouth and I was being raped. I was having trouble walking back home; I felt faint and I had a headache. This happens a lot in villages. Young girls are raped, murdered, and buried. No one is able to trace them after their disappearance. If a woman is not chaste, she is unworthy of marriage. All he did is ask for forgiveness and they let him go as it was best to avoid having others find out what had happened. He didn't receive any punishment even though he ruined me. People may have forgotten what he did, but I never forgot. Now, he is married and living his life happily. I blame my own fate; I am just unlucky that this happened to me.

When I began working, I was afraid. I guess it was natural, I was only ten. I consider myself lucky though. In the homes where I worked, I was responsible taking care of the children; getting them ready, feeding them and playing with them. I used to have so much fun. I felt like I was a child among them. I was able to relive my own childhood. Soon, I became so used to working that I began feeling safer and happier at work than in my own home and village. Our village is full of intoxication and indecent and disrespectful men; men like my own father.

At the moment, we live in Karachi in a small home with one room and the floor is broken. Whenever I would visit my parents, either I would witness abusive arguments between them or something far more disturbing. Since I was young, my father had always beaten my mother shamelessly. My entire family is aware of my father's abuse; it is no secret. My mother is very obedient; she never says no to my father. She leaves home for work at 8 am and only returns at midnight. Even if she is tired, she does everything to make him happy; she runs our home and cooks whatever he wishes. All the men in our village beat their wives, it is a norm and women continue to let it happen. Maybe it is fear, maybe it is desperation, I never quite understood.

As sad as it may sound, part of me does not fear the physical abuse anymore. I fear much bigger things. As I grew older, my father changed. He began smoking, drinking, and maybe even using drugs with my income. He began sleeping next to me. In the middle of the night, he would touch me inappropriately and remove my clothes. Because I was afraid, I would act like I was sleeping and would turn the other way. After his first time sexually abusing me, every night I slept in my home in fear. I kept dreaming that my father is raping me. I get so scared. I have heard that if you don't share your dream with someone else, then it never happens. So I never shared what happened to me.

After these incidents, the only person I could turn to was my employer. She is aware of what happens in my home and I know I can trust her. In January, I feared I may have been pregnant, and she took care of all my medical expenses without letting anyone find out. Thankfully, I was not, but she was ready to take care of me if I was. A woman's reputation is so fragile in Pakistani society. I have requested for her not to let me go for vacation time, and to keep me in her home where I feel safe. Without judging me, she accepted me, and has given me a place in her home like a daughter; a place even my own parents could not give me.

Rehana, age 37

My life is no different than that of any other woman living in poverty in Pakistan. My husband is abusive and I am the primary breadwinner. I am striving to get my children educated as they are my last hope. The only difference in my story is that I could have maybe had it all if one incident had not occurred in my life.

I grew up in a home where my parents were barely earning enough to support our family of 14. My father used to make medication boxes while my mother worked in homes as the help. We learned to survive on very little.

When I was about 14, I was engaged to Nasir. Being with him was the best time of my life. He was a kind man and earned a decent living. Even though we never really spent much time together, I felt like I loved him. I guess no one ever forgets their first love.

Then, one dreadful night before I got married, a few young men snuck into our home in the middle of the night, around 3 am. They tied up my parents and beat them. I was sleeping with my two sisters in the next room. As I was the eldest, they took me out of my bed and tied me up my legs. I knew they wanted to rape me. I explained that I would lose everything if something happened to me. I grabbed a knife and told them that I would kill myself if they continued. Finally, they decided to let me go. I was saved, but the damage was already done. When Nasir and his family heard the news, I was considered "used" and was no longer worthy of him. Just last night, six boys snuck in to a home and stole everything they could. When the parents resisted, they threatened to take the daughter with them. This is very common in our neighborhood. It is so easy for a young girl to lose her dignity and to stain her reputation because of uncontrollable circumstances.

When I turned 15, I married my husband, Fakhir, out of desperation. His mother asked for my hand in marriage as there was no one to cook in their home. I married for their convenience. I am Fakhir's second wife. He said he loves his first wife, Rukhsana, and has two children with her. I think he uses my salary to support her as well. Fakhir is unreliable, he goes to work sometimes, and takes the rest of my salary for gambling.

We fight over money all the time. I want to educate my children. My time to spend on myself is gone. Now I just earn for my children and our home. On pay day, if I do not give my husband my salary, he won't let me leave my home and he will beat me. However, I secretly keep the fees and rent because I don't trust what he would do with it. I am the primary breadwinner. When I had my last baby, she was only seven months old, and I had to get back to work. Even though doctors have told me to stop working because I have a worm in my stomach, I know I cannot rely on Fakhir. The medication I was prescribed costs 3000 rupees [$33 U.S.], so I cannot afford to treat myself either.

The domestic violence started two months after my marriage, and hasn't stopped even fourteen years later. Broken limbs, broken teeth and miscarriages became a routine for me. Why he beats me, I don't know. Maybe he sees me as an animal with no rights, or a punching bag for his frustrations. He surely does not see me as a living and breathing human being. Wherever I have worked, I have felt as though I have been treated like a person, not the way I am treated at my home. I realize that I deserve to be considered a human being.

Nargis, age 18

When I was young, we lived in our village with our entire extended family in a three-bedroom home. My mother used to raise cattle. She would sell the milk and run our home with her income. My father didn't help. He never really contributed, he was too selfish. Before he married my mother, he was married to her sister. When she passed away, my family told my mother that she was best to take of her sister's children, so she married my father. We are a family of eight, so our home survived on close to nothing.

When I was a child, I was never able to buy anything I wished for, but I had the chance to attend school. I was really passionate about learning. My favorite teacher, Kiran, loved me. She would tell me to sit in her chair and help her teach other children. I even used to wear a scarf like her and would assign homework to the others. Those were my best memories. I was able to learn Urdu. At the moment, my employer helps me learn English.

In our home, women are the breadwinners, while my father and brothers work when they feel like it. My father collects the income that we all earn. He is wasteful, he will go out with his friends and won't return for four or five days sometimes. He never fulfilled his responsibilities as our father, never earned for us, and he didn't want us to go to school. My father was uneducated, so he won't let anyone else ever study. I wish my childhood lasted longer than it did.

My parents sent me off to work in homes in Karachi when I was six or seven years old. In my village, at the age of four, young girls first learn to do sweeping and cleaning dishes. At the age of six, we learned to iron and wash clothes. By the time we turned ten, we'd learned to cook everything.

When I was really young I got hurt because my brother was playing cricket and the bat had ripped my head open. I needed stitches. My parents took me on a bicycle to the hospital and the doctors gave me medication. In the area where I live, we didn't have any real treatments, so my mother did a lot of healing at home. She used onions, oil, dough, and bandages. In our home, we never really saw any happiness. Our parents were never able to bring peace in our home. My father was very abusive. He used to beat my mother and I witnessed it since I was young.

I remember once when I was cleaning, I was sweeping the floor and my father told me to come to the store to help out. I told him I was coming, I wanted to finish what I was doing. He got impatient and he picked up a wooden stick with sharp edges and he hit me with it. I was five at that time. All I remember is screaming and crying.

My most horrific memory was when I was eight or nine years old and I saw my father beating my mother for no apparent reason. He began beating my mother with a faucet and an iron rod. After he was done, we all lay down to sleep. I slept next to my mother. I remember being so afraid, I couldn't sleep all night. I remember my mother telling me, "no matter what happens, promise me you won't scream." My father had kept the faucet and iron rod under his bed. My brother and I snuck out in the middle of the night with the iron rod and faucet and buried it far away in the sand outside so my father would not be able to use it. In the morning, he woke up so angry that he picked up a wooden log and beat my mother, accusing her of stealing the items from under his bed. I ran up to him and to give him a hug to calm him down. My father stopped finally. He loves me the most.

Memories like these are unforgettable. Growing up in an abusive environment and seeing the torturous ways of my father has led me to lose faith in my own future. My only ray of hope comes from my work environment where I am loved and treated as a child. My work makes me feel worthy that I am may be special. Maybe there is something better out there for me.

Nazneen, age 41

There is only one time in a woman's life where she is truly free and that is when she is a child. She can play and laugh. We were three sisters. My younger sister used to go to school and my older sister married at a young age. I studied a little bit, I know how to read and write a little. I studied until fourth or fifth grade but I don't remember much. We lived in a home made out of mud and sticks in our village, called Thatta. We came and spent a few years in Karachi to do our schooling and lived in a rental home. Then we returned to our village. My parents both used to work, my dad used to earn more income. My father did labor work, he earned well enough. My mother used to work in a school and take care of kids. When mom left work, I began working and had to leave my education.

After childhood, as soon as a woman gets older, household responsibilities begin to weigh her down and then she marries. If she is unfortunate, she marries the wrong man and is burdened for the rest of her life. When I got engaged, I started sewing from home to make money and prepare for my own dowry. If we did not provide sufficient dowry, there was a chance the marriage would not happen. As soon as I turned 16, I was married to my cousin, Nabeel. Within three years of marriage, I had my son, Samir. He was born prematurely at seven months and I had to have an operation. Until ten months later, my husband never came to get me. I went back to his home by myself.

Everyone began mistreating me when I returned. My mother-in-law and his sisters didn't give me spending money, food, and worst of all, no one loved my son. I began earning my own money and taking care of my son in their home. Nabeel may never have beaten me, but he managed to scar me emotionally. He never accepted our child as his own. He married another woman behind my back and created a whole new family with his new wife. They have children together. His mother and sisters were all involved in his second marriage. How could they do that to their own niece, their own cousin? My life has been filled with misery after marriage.

I came to live with my family after this incident. When my son Sameer turned three, I went off to work. At times, I would not be able to see him for a month. He calls me by my first name, and calls my mother ammi. I am the primary breadwinner in our home, making merely 6500 rupees [$72 U.S.] a month and I barely cover our expenses of food, medications, and clothing. Sameer has only studied till fifth grade as I could not afford the fees for higher learning. There is a reason why the poor remain uneducated generation after generation; we simply cannot afford it. It isn't that we do not want to study; it is simply because we can't.

I have seen many hardships in my lifetime, but nothing compares to the flooding that occurred in our village two years ago. I was in Karachi working when the flood was on its way to Thatta village. My son, mother, and sister were able to get on a bus and leave before the water arrived. They weren't able to take anything except for the clothes on their back. My father remained in Thatta during the flood and he was in the water for three days. The government workers charged 20,000 rupees [$220 U.S.] for each person they saved from the water. Many poor people could not afford saving their loved ones. Even rescuing survivors is a business in Pakistan.

When I returned to my home, everything was lost; all our valuables, the money I had been saving for years, and our home had fallen apart as well. We received no help from the government. They gave each home about 20,000 rupees to survive, when our losses were well over 200,000 rupees. My family and I had to rebuild our home ourselves. In these difficult times, our village developed a deep sense of community. Even if we have one meal and we didn't know what we would eat the next day, we still shared it with one another and prayed that God would give us something more the next day.

Haseena Bano, age 53

My life transformed when my father was kidnapped about 30 years ago. He was a rich and successful businessman. We were considered a wealthy family. Due to our lack of education, we were never able to claim the money or gold he had left behind in his bank accounts. The bank informed us that all his money had been donated to charity. Soon, we fell into dire poverty. After this tragedy, we lost our mother due to high blood pressure. She left behind 12 children who had to learn to survive on their own. Being the eldest daughter, the household responsibilities fell onto my weak shoulders.

When I turned 17, I fell in love with Ali. We ran away and got married. We were so happy together, but soon his parents forced us to get a divorce, as they disapproved of me. After Ali, I married Fazal, but this time it was arranged. We moved to Iran, where I had five beautiful children whom I love dearly. We seemed so happy; I thought we had it all, but it was not enough for Fazal. One day, he told me my sister had passed away. Devastated, I went on my way to Karachi. When I arrived, and saw my sister well and healthy, I was confused. Fazal promised to come get me in a few weeks, but he never came; a notice for divorce did. He kept my children. My youngest was two at the time, today she is 12. He married a younger woman, Khatija, who used to frequent our home as a family friend. I loved Khatija like a daughter; I never expected she would betray me this way.

The pain of losing my children was far greater than that of losing Fazal. After this incident, I began having panic attacks, depression, and kept crying for my children. I spent two years in a charitable mental institution, first as a patient, then after I recovered as a worker. The facilities are usually not very good in state-run hospitals. But I wasn't prepared for the mental abuse and violence. One of the patients was beaten with wooden sticks until her nose was broken because she disobeyed the rules. Fear was our treatment and medicine.

During this time, my eldest son, Shahid, came to visit me. Fazal tried to stop him; but he came anyway since I was very ill. When I saw him, he was speaking English; I could barely understand him. I never imagined feeling so distant from my own child. He brought me clothes, money, and medications. He held me and asked me to come with him. How could I return to Iran? I had no connection with his father. Plus, I would have asked him to stay, but I do not have any money or a home to support him. My home is my workplace.

At the moment, I am much better and work in homes as help. I take care of children and do the cleaning. Everywhere I have worked, I have been taken care of and I have been given a lot of love, maybe more than I have received in my own family. My employers give me new clothes, allow me to play with their children like I would with my own, and give me a warm place to sleep at night. When there is a wedding in their home, they give me new clothes to wear and include me in the festivities.

I hope to find love again. Even though I am in my 50s, I hope I find someone to grow old with. Life has been lonely for many years. My dream is to save my money, and have my own home one day, where my children can visit me. If my dream does come true, I know that I will be able to die in peace.

Salma, age 39

In Pakistan, if you are poor and uneducated, you are just waiting for the day where your life will end; each day is spent trying to find the motivation to survive.

At the moment, I work in a home where I am treated with respect and I get a lot of support for my family. While at work, I am the happiest, returning home is where I am the most afraid.

Every day with Farooq was filled with fear, each minute was painstakingly long, and the physical and emotional wounds remain unhealed. I would wake up early every day to iron his clothes and prepare his breakfast before I left for work. He spent the day at home. If I ever ran a little late, the consequences were dreadful. He hit me so much; sometimes he would give me a black eye or break my arm. Other times, he would take me out on the street and beat me publicly. He had no mercy, not even when I was pregnant. I have miscarried three children because of him. I have two children, one daughter and one son, who was a twin; Farooq killed his brother by kicking me in the stomach. He would ask me to go live with my parents during my pregnancy. Sometimes in the middle of the night, out of nowhere, he would attack me in front of my children. When I shower, I look down at my scarred body and I cry.

Farooq collected all my salary and used it for alcohol and drugs. One day, he accused me of sleeping with another man and divorced me. Being a divorced woman is shameful in Pakistani society. Even though I was suffering with him, I tried to save our marriage. He asked me to do halalah and told me he would marry me after that. According to the concept of halalah in the law, if a woman wants to re-marry her ex-husband, she must marry another man and consummate that marriage. I did what he asked. I did my nikkah [marriage] with another man. I only did this so my children could have their father's name. I went through the process and divorced the other man, and Farooq still didn't marry me again. He said you aren't my wife, you are my whore now. He seems to enjoy finding new ways to torture me.

I thought he would leave and that all this was finally over, but he remained in my life. He kept all my clothes, my furniture, my dishes, my sewing machine, and my washer. He still tried to sleep with me. If I refused or talked back, I would get beaten. I was scared for my life. He would tell my daughter, Seema, that he would throw acid on me if I married another man again. Fine, he is uneducated, but is he also inhumane?

I only have one dream for my future, and that is to start a new life outside of Karachi. I want to work hard, educate my children, and expose them to a life that is nothing like what I have experienced. My parents tell me to leave and to work it out with Farooq as they believe a divorced daughter is a burden even though our home runs on my income. In our culture, women look best in their homes with their husbands. Parents feel weighed down when they return home. I never belonged in my own home or my husband's home. I want a new beginning; I want to show all those people that hurt me that I can create a whole new life on my own; if not for myself, then for my children.

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Essay on Women Role in Pakistan Short Essays for Students

When it comes to a patriarchal society like Pakistan, a modern woman faces constant struggle in every field of life. She has to fight the battle on two fronts.

The future of Pakistan lies in the education and empowerment of its women, yet they remain the most oppressed, deprived, and exploited segment of the population.

The issue of domestic violence in Pakistan is increasingly becoming more prevalent, with men and women of Pakistan becoming increasingly aware of the importance of combating domestic violence.

It is a sad reality that women in Pakistan continue to be subjugated and forced to live under the control of men. From birth, women are being brainwashed by a patriarchal culture that demands unquestioning devotion to men. Since the turn of the century, there has been a tremendous shift in the position of women.

They now work in every field and have been given equal rights as their male counterparts. Moreover, as a result of improving education for women and government support, working women are rising in all sectors. Pressured by an increasingly vocal public, women’s rights are finally beginning to improve at work.

However, thousands of girls across the country are still being targeted by terrorists.

Essay on Women’s Role in Pakistan – 500 Words

A woman is a human female. In general, the word woman refers to a married female human. A woman is the epitome of natural beauty, but before Islam, she was ignored and subjected to harsh treatment.

The Islamic religion has given women a prominent place in society, and Muslim communities have been instructed to treat them kindly because women are weak. 

A woman has beautiful names in an Islamic society i.e., mother, sister, wife, and daughter. A woman can be built an ideal house and society. Pakistani women are becoming more successful than before.

The past was a time of alienation for Pakistani women in terms of education and employment, but today many Pakistani women have reached great heights in their careers. Their credibility has increased as doctors and engineers. In addition, there are almost no limitations on the area they can work in. 

A staggering number of women in Pakistan have completed the superior services examinations, joining the elected few who hold responsible positions in administrative positions such as tax and customs, income tax, railways, foreign service, and police and postal departments.

A handful of these women have gone on to join Pakistani politics, taking seats in the National Assembly for themselves as ministers and Senators. Although politics is a bit difficult field for women, they still Women have made significant contributions to political life in Pakistan. 1970 and 1977 were the first elections that allowed women to vote and stand for public office.

Zubeida Mustakeem was elected the first woman mayor of Pakistan and also served as Sub-Governor of Sindh Province. Benazir Bhutto was first elected as a Member of the National Assembly, served as Prime Minister twice (1988-90, 1993-96) and President (1993-96). 

Coming towards the next point, I’m sure you know at least one educated woman because hundreds of educated women are entering the workforce every day.

In addition to their prestigious positions in major banks and top-notch government organizations, women are stars on TV. That’s not surprising, since the average Pakistani woman is especially talented and hardworking.

In fact, she can do just about anything she puts her mind to. Go for it! Pakistan has a lot to offer, so make the most of it, but when it comes to the entertainment industry is not very suitable for women.

Unlike models and movie actresses, who don’t have a career for long years, women in entertainment can only maintain their jobs for a short period as they get married and focus on raising a family. I think this is why some families are reluctant to let their daughters from pursuing careers in entertainment. 

Women in Pakistan are no longer confined to the domestic sphere of their households but are now becoming empowered enough to make independent choices. Most families have to choose between spending on activities for their children or spending on their daughters’ education.

Nowadays, more and more families choose the former because recent statistics show that most Pakistani mothers are now being educated and educating their children.

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Sana Mursleen is a student studying English Literature at Lahore Garrison University (LGU). With her love for writing and humor, she writes essays for Top Study World. Sana is an avid reader and has a passion for history, politics, and social issues.

Title: Pakistani Women’s Rights

A country hostile toward women, Pakistan faced a reckoning on March 8 when thousands took to the streets to commemorate International Women’s Day—a demonstration of how Pakistani women grow stronger in their resolve to challenge the many forms of isolation and exclusion that give Pakistan one of the world’s poorest records of gender equality.

Signs protestors made decried all forms of discrimination, from severe physical violence endured by rape survivors and honor killings to the unequal division of labor inside the home. The march provoked backlash from various segments of Pakistani society that believed the gathering threatened prevailing cultural values.

The conflation of women’s rights advocacy and preserving culture predates Pakistan’s formation in 1947. Muslim political leaders vying for an independent Pakistan promoted the idea that women in a modern and Islamic state could advance society by serving as good mothers, daughters, and wives. Prior to independence, pushing beyond boundaries occurred, but typically only among women of the economic elite. Once Pakistan became independent in 1947, women often faced dire consequences for “unacceptable” behavior veering outside of those categories.

What started as a way to engage women in the Pakistan movement has evolved throughout the country’s history up until today, with violent manifestations in both the legal and cultural dimensions of women’s rights. In 1979, Pakistan’s military ruler General Zia ul-Haq began a process of Islamization, incorporating conservative interpretations of Islamic law into Pakistani political and social life. This process led to the creation of the Hadood Ordinances, laws related to adultery and fornication that disfavored female testimonies. For example, in instances of rape, a female victim would often be punished for committing adultery—a consequence of the Ordinances’ practice which links rape and adultery. Placing rape under the jurisdiction of Islamic law courts, instead of civil authorities, has challenged efforts to achieve justice for female victims of sexual abuse.

In 2006, however, the Pakistani government passed the Women’s Protection Act, removing rape from the jurisdiction of Islamic law and placing it under the country’s criminal code. While a legal milestone for the women’s rights movement in Pakistan, the Act did not apply to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where communities prefer to resolve cases of violence against women via the use of tribal jirgas , councils of community elders empowered to make decisions outside of British-era civil courts or other law enforcement mechanisms of the state. The problem with jirgas is that they do not consistently guarantee justice for victims. Instead, they act easy exits from, and ways around, the formal legal system for perpetrators. For example, if financial compensation is paid to the victim’s family or if the family forgives the perpetrator, the issue is considered “resolved.” Ironically, the civil courts and the police often resort to the very same measure, discontinuing prosecution in cases of payment or forgiveness.

The tendency to solve cases of violence against women outside of the legal system is reinforced by cultural and familial pressures reacting to the reality that many of the cases actually originate within extended families. And despite the critical work done by legislators and women’s rights activists to date, state and family structures remain complicit in the oppression of women.

Of the abuses where state and family pressure converge, most significant are those of honor killings and murders by family members of women and girls who believe they brought the family dishonor through their actions. Some experts estimate that, of the up to 5,000 honor killings that occur throughout the world every year, 1,000 occur in Pakistan.

The high proportion of such crimes inside Pakistan, coupled with a particular spate of killings in 2016, drew the attention of the country’s conservative-leaning Council on Islamic Ideology (CII). The CII, which advises the government, decreed that citizens should not act in an extra-judicial manner if they believe someone violated Islamic laws. This view in the context of honor killings represented an unexpected role reversal for the CII, which is known for its proposals to legalize a husband’s right to beat his wife. The nod from the CII was one of several forms of support that facilitated the government’s ability to subsequently pass a law later that year banning honor killings. The legislation eliminated loopholes that allowed killers to go free, such as the pretext of family forgiveness. Now, those convicted of honor killings receive a mandatory twenty-five-year prison sentence.

Honor killings increasingly capture Pakistani and international attention, no doubt a byproduct of the increased use of social media platforms and mobile phones, both of which bring greater visibility to the issue. Still, very few cases offer victims justice. Behind the inconsistency between the laws on the books and how justice is carried out lies a complex cultural narrative about a country struggling to reconcile aspects of its religious identity with its secular and political life.

The possibility that women’s rights movements can be gaining momentum alongside increasingly powerful Islamist forces that seek to undo such movements further reflects the inherent tensions between religion, politics, and the role of women in Pakistan. Even though groups like the CII can be helpful in facilitating the state’s ability to pass laws protecting women, they can equally be influential in pressuring the state to accept its views of women’s rights, in particular because of their undeniable street power and ability to mobilize Pakistan’s Islamists. Too often and for too many governments, this dynamic has resulted in the state’s use of women’s rights as bargaining chips for dealing with Islamist parties.

The challenges of politics and law enforcement notwithstanding, the Pakistani government’s legislation on honor killings and women’s protection speaks to a turning tide in the country on the issue. Within the law enforcement space, the government must find an opportunity to show that the new laws in place actually work—making a very public example of their effectiveness can lead to cultural shifts in how people perceive honor killings (and, quite possibly, in their deterrence).

The government should also allocate more resources for strengthening grassroots dialogue and advocacy. In 2016, the government in Pakistan’s Punjab province passed an act to protect the rights of abused women, as well as to seek future rehabilitation for victims. The law mandated the creation of a District Women Protection Committee to serve as advocates and caretakers for abused women by providing them with housing and various forms of financial support. Given the successes of the Punjab model, the government should consider the possibility of applying aspects of the model at the national level, or of working with provincial governments to pursue their own versions of the Punjab model.

To be clear, any new steps to address violence against women at the national or local levels will face multiple challenges from religious institutions, advocacy groups, family and cultural pressures, as well as elected officials. For a country so strongly tethered to its Islamic identity, Pakistani society is equally strong in its multifaceted views on gender norms, cultural practice, and application of religious belief. Considering this, it is no wonder the protests of March 8 revealed that the majority of Pakistani women felt underrepresented by the conversation on women’s rights—for too long, the dialogue and the fight remained among women of the political and economic elite, as well as at a national level. Pakistani women appear ready to represent themselves. However, their families, the elite, the Islamists, and the government have yet to fully accept that.

Shamila N. Chaudhary is a Senior South Asia Fellow at New America and Senior Advisor to Dean Vali Nasr at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She specializes in American foreign policy and national security with a concentration on South Asia and Pakistan. She served over twelve years in the U.S. government, including at the State Department where she advised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke on Afghanistan and Pakistan. She also served in White House as Director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the National Security Council during the Obama administration. She now also runs a website: https://allthingsforeignblog.com/

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When I Step Outside, I Step Into a Country of Men Who Stare

Pakistan fails its women from the very top of government leadership to those who live in our homes.

By Fatima Bhojani

Ms. Bhojani is a writer from Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — I am angry. All the time. I’ve been angry for years. Ever since I began to grasp the staggering extent of violence — emotional, mental and physical — against women in Pakistan. Women here, all 100 million of us, exist in collective fury.

“Every day, I am reminded of a reason I shouldn’t exist,” my 19-year-old friend recently told me in a cafe in Islamabad. When she gets into an Uber, she sits right behind the driver so that he can’t reach back and grab her. We agreed that we would jump out of a moving car if that ever happened. We debated whether pepper spray was better than a knife.

When I step outside, I step into a country of men who stare. I could be making the short walk from my car to the bookstore or walking through the aisles at the supermarket. I could be wrapped in a shawl or behind two layers of face mask. But I will be followed by searing eyes, X-raying me. Because here, it is culturally acceptable for men to gape at women unblinkingly, as if we are all in a staring contest that nobody told half the population about, a contest hinged on a subtle form of psychological violence.

“Wolves,” my friend, Maryam, called them, as she recounted the time a man grazed her shoulder as he sped by on a motorbike. “From now on, I am going to stare back, make them uncomfortable.” Maryam runs a company that takes tourists to the mountainous north. “People are shocked to see a woman leading tours on her own,” she told me.

We exchanged hiking stories. We had never encountered a solo female hiker up north. When I hike solo, men, apart from their usual leering, offer unsolicited advice, ask patronizing questions and, on occasion, follow in silence. I pretend to receive a call from my imaginary husband who happens to be nearby and wants to know exactly where I am. Even in the wilderness, you can’t escape.

Years ago, a friend told me about the time her dad beat her up after he saw her talking to a boy outside school. It wasn’t the first time. Until she left for college in the United States, she lived in constant terror of when the next wave of violence would arrive. Her mother stood by and let it happen.

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Naz (a pseudonym) clutches my hand tightly as we navigate our way through the swarms of people. We have traveled for three and half hours from Lahore to Islamabad by car, but by the time we arrive in the Pakistani capital, major roads have been cordoned off. We have no choice but to walk the rest of the way to the women’s protest site. Determinedly, Naz, who I refer to as Aunty, uses the long end of her pale green headscarf to cover her nose and mouth. The rest of us in the group follow suit, using our stoles and dupattas to prevent us from inhaling fumes and dust along the way.

I think back to when I first met Naz Aunty and her friends. We’d become acquainted during daily walks in a neighborhood park in Lahore, where our passing greetings and friendly nods had gradually evolved into deeper conversations about domestic life, children, and the pandemic. At that time, I never imagined we would find ourselves traveling across cities and participating in a political rally together a few months down the line. Yet here we are.

Naz Aunty, a stay-at-home mother since her marriage over three decades ago, is in her late 50s with three adult children. Like many middle-class, nonworking women of her generation, she told me early on that she disapproved of the politically active younger generation. She was dismayed that her own daughters support international women’s movements such as #MeToo and the annual Aurat March , a women’s march held in Pakistan for women’s freedom of movement, protection from sexual harassment, and other political and legal rights.

“I am against these things!” Naz Aunty told me then. “It makes life difficult for our daughters after marriage. My daughters make fun of me and say I am so old-fashioned.”

After walking for about half an hour, we pass through the security scanners at Parade Ground, a central gathering place in Islamabad. The congregation area is packed with throngs of women dressed in red and green, waving party flags and singing along to festive music.

These women, like Naz Aunty, are all supporters of Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan offers them a different vision of politics, where women with more traditional Islamic family values feel welcomed. They’ve gathered here to protest an anticipated vote of no-confidence—an event that would come to pass a few weeks later in April 2022, removing Khan from office. But in March, the atmosphere buzzes with excitement and anticipation as Khan descends from a helicopter. He makes his way to the stage—located next to the women’s enclosure—for his speech.

Fixing the pale green scarf over her streaked blond hair, Naz Aunty turns to me and says ecstatically, “ Dekho aurton ki jagah sab se agay hai! ” (Look, women are right at the front!)

PAKISTANI WOMEN IN POLITICS

Going to do fieldwork as an anthropologist, I had planned to follow the secular women’s movement in urban Pakistan and explore how women lobby for access to public spaces. But I started noticing that middle-class, conservative women like Naz Aunty were increasingly participating in protests and rallies as supporters of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. Since 2013, Khan’s populist movement has relied heavily on street protests, political rallies, and intercity-long marches—with women forming an integral part of his support base.

This intrigued me: How had Khan’s populism inspired Naz Aunty, and women like her, to become politically engaged for the first time in their lives?

Despite limited political opportunities for Pakistani women, their participation in politics is not unheard of. Rather, prior and up to the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947, women in British India participated actively in anti-colonial and independence movements. In the decades following independence, women’s rights activists remained at the forefront of political action in Pakistan, lobbying to overturn draconian laws that discriminated against women. In 1988, Pakistan became the first Muslim-majority country to elect a woman as its head of state when Benazir Bhutto became prime minister.

Today the women’s rights movement in Pakistan comprises two generations of urban women. The first grew out of organizations such as the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), established in 1981 during a period of Islamization and laws discriminating against women. WAF’s work continues to inspire a younger generation of feminists such as Naz Aunty’s daughters. This generation of activists, who came of age in the post-9/11 era in the aftermath of the Global War on Terror and during the social media boom, began leading the annual Aurat March in 2018 to coincide with International Women’s Day.

Women like Naz Aunty, however, don’t fall into either category. While they are close to the first generation of activists in terms of age and experience, their political and social inclinations do not align with their counterparts. Similarly, these women do not participate in, nor actively support, their daughters’ feminist activist pursuits. Naz Aunty and her friends always took part in elections, citing it as their civic duty (and accompanied by their husbands and sons), but weren’t politically active beyond that. Instead, they spent decades in private spaces such as the household, engaging in caregiving activities with their families.

Mundane daily practices, such as taking a walk in the park, can create possibilities for deeper forms of political engagement.

Naz Aunty and her group of friends have been PTI supporters since Khan contested elections in 2013. But at first, they avoided going to protests and rallies. On one of our walks, Naz Aunty lamented, “Before my mother-in-law passed away over a year ago, I was not allowed to come to this park for walks, let alone try and make friends in the neighborhood.”

This changed during the pandemic, when public parks became safe havens for people to socialize responsibly and maintain social distancing. It also became a space where Naz Aunty realized her political potential while walking with her new friends.

KHAN’S APPEAL—AND CONTRADICTIONS

Since his rise to political prominence following his 2013 election campaign, Imran Khan has been a divisive figure in Pakistani politics. The former cricketer and philanthropist turned politician reins in his middle- and working-class followers with anti-corruption rhetoric coupled with an emphasis on Islam and piety. His public speeches celebrate Islamic values, the centrality of the family, and traditional gender roles for women.

This rhetoric contributes to his appeal for women like Naz Aunty, who find themselves represented—perhaps for the first time—in Khan’s narratives. Khan’s followers appreciate how his politics seem to occupy a middle space between the contemporary women’s movements, which they see as too “Western,” and the stricter religious dictates of the Islamic clergy who limit women’s roles and mobility.

When Khan communicates that Islam promises women more rights than other faiths and that pious woman are a pillar of society, his followers see it as exalting their position in society and giving them their due credit as mothers—a role they have worked hard to prove themselves in. Khan holds his own mother in high esteem: The hospital he founded that caters to thousands of underprivileged cancer patients across the country is named after his late mother.

This sense of validation was reflected in Naz Aunty’s comment about women being given preferential treatment at the Khan rally: “Look, women are right at the front!” I saw it as a cheeky rebuttal to her daughters, who frequently claim that women do not have safe access to public spaces in Pakistan. However, her statement also signaled a sense of hope that there was a public space where Naz Aunty felt accepted and included.

The women’s movement, however, has vocally criticized Khan’s populist agenda. Women’s rights activists across generations see his messaging about women’s piety as misogynistic . They also cite his lack of support for actual structural changes for women and gender minorities in Pakistan. Khan did not, for example, endorse the women’s protection bill in 2006 , which amended a set of draconian laws known as the Hudood Ordinances that criminalized women in cases of adultery and rape. While Khan’s populist politics may have offered more visibility to urban women in the public eye and mainstream media, women’s rights activists are skeptical of how this translates to the protection of women’s rights, status, and safety in real terms in Pakistan.

AUNTIES IN WAITING

Naz Aunty and her neighbors are not well versed in feminist theory or politics. They don’t consider themselves feminists or even activists. However, like their daughters, they also have political desires and aspirations—even if their goals don’t align.

As an anthropologist, I observed that Naz Aunty’s political journey reveals a broader insight about social change: how mundane daily practices, such as taking a walk in the park, can create possibilities for deeper forms of political engagement.

Her story also shows how ordinary Pakistani women, who have spent decades of their life “in waiting,” are finding spaces of political potential in their everyday lives. By supporting a populist movement with a group of like-minded women, Naz Aunty is carving out a space for herself, without having to appease her elders or children.

Naz Aunty’s political leanings and practices are not isolated but are part of a global trend of women’s participation in populist movements. Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who Khan is often likened to, garnered similar support in 2016 from significant numbers of women (though this backing has declined recently ).

For conservative women in Pakistan and beyond, such populist movements create a sense of hope and political possibility. Despite the contradictions and the lack of real structural changes for women offered by Khan, his movement remains popular because of how he includes women such as Naz Aunty in the public sphere—on their own terms.

Sana Malik is a cultural anthropologist who studies women’s political agency in urban Pakistan. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Emory University. Her research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. Malik’s dissertation draws on feminist ethnography and the anthropology of rights and social movements to explore how activists and ordinary women engage in movements for social justice in urban Pakistan. Follow her on the social platform X at  @sanafmalikk .

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National Report on the Status of Women in Pakistan - A Summary

In seeking to uphold its international and national commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE), limited availability and analysis of comprehensive gender disaggregated data remain key gaps that hinder quality reporting as well as priority setting and decision-making. To address this gap, the National Gender Data Portal (NGDP) was established in 2021 by the National Commission on the Status of Women in collaboration with UN Women Pakistan. It is the first effort to consolidate gender data at a national level using digital tools, triangulating data from various official sources. This data will be used to publish periodic reports on the status of women, which will be instrumental for analyzing trends and reviewing progress, and, most importantly, formulating evidence-based policies and programmes to advance the gender equality agenda in the country.

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‘Ways of Being’: Pakistani women writers explore selfhood, politics without giving into stereotypes

The writers make the reader engage with a complex re-imagining of culture, politics, and gender dynamics..

“Who is a Pakistani writer?”, asks Sabyn Javeri, academic, essayist, novelist, and editor of Ways of Being: Creative Non-Fiction by Pakistani Women , an anthology of 15 essays that explore a diverse range of issues, ranging from selfhood, personal and political history, to motherhood and grief, being and belonging, control and resistance, all while steering clear of any essentialist paradigms. Referring to herself as a “serial migrant” in an age of mass displacement, where “home” has already turned from the tangible into an ineffable idea, Javeri answers the question with more nuance than is usual in most explorations of national and ethnic identity: “who you are is longer a question of ‘where you are from’; rather, who you are is more accurately represented by ‘what you stand for’. A Pakistani writer, therefore, (…) is one who feels a connection to the land either by origin or by sensibility.”

Art as resistance

The authors in this anthology occupy different locations, belong to different generations, and, unerringly, enter into a dialogue with the reader who is no longer allowed to hide behind easy fixes of representation, making them participate, instead, in a complex re-imagining of culture, politics, and gender dynamics.

The idea of art as resistance is a dominant motif in the text. Saba Karim Khan, having discovered storytelling as her “song”, the thing that brings her joy and fulfilment, sees fiction as a space for visible, decisive, and fierce intervention: “I could write fiction that is truer than fact, stir up an illusory world, populate it with characters and eventually inhabit it. I could dig up graves and dirt, refuse to let things be buried, turn on their heads the human food chains and pyramids we construct. I could reflect and produce an auto-ethnography, just like this one, even write about “home”, and show how distance is no match for memory; but mostly, I could search in my stories for the extraordinary in the banal and use it to forge human connection.”

Fiction, then, becomes both, an act of truth-telling and a site of social/political resistance. Rukhsana Ahmad, similarly, sees her writing as political activism, creating active opposition to gender oppression. Both Muneeza Shamsie and Saba Karim Khan credit writing with having given them a voice and the ability for political assertion, while Soniah Kamal sees it as a tool for taking back control wrested from her on account of her gender identity. In a telling comment on gendered practices of writing, Hananah Zaheer, in her deliciously subversive essay titled “Writing Naked”, takes note of the great white male writers, chronicled as having shed clothes as a literal, powerful act of self-definition, that translates into metaphoricity for women writers who would rather avoid the possibilities of disaster inherent in nakedness, preferring the abandon of laying bare intention, ability, and defiance. Writing remains viscerally political for all the writers in the anthology.

There has been an uptick, in recent years, in stories of mothers told by daughters in both fiction and non-fiction, as a shift away from narratives of motherhood that privileged the historically glorified and patriarchally sanctified mother-son relationship. In “Riffat’s Diary”, Taymiya R Zaman finds in her mother’s diary, started by her as a teenager in Karachi of the 1960s, the “story of a feminist girlhood.” The author, treating her mother’s personal journals as one half of a living archive, attempts to use her mother’s words to understand and document the past. Finding herself in almost constant disagreement with the subject of her study, she continues to knit together the past and the present, refusing to take over ownership of her mother’s story, turning the act of writing into one of re-constructing the history of one woman as also her complex social and political context. Saba Karim Khan makes an astute observation about the celebration of what she calls “motherhood martyrdom” in South Asian communities. The more the mother gives of herself, the lesser she privileges herself, the greater she becomes, finding validation in suffering and erasure of all possible personal desire and ambition.

An obvious tool of phallogocentric social formations, this cultification of motherhood has often been responsible for the woman writer’s forced disengagement with her art. Rukhsana Ahmad, first generation immigrant to Britain, and Noren Haq, second-generation British Pakistani, both point to the dangers of devaluation that attach themselves to motherhood, reducing women to “just a wife”, “just a mother”. Haq’s narration of her early days of motherhood – the fog, the fear of incompetence – is both deeply personal and alarmingly universal. The text’s intersections with and its deconstruction of the mythos of motherhood are particularly relevant to contemporary feminist scholarship. Judith Butler, in the preface to her crucial volume on queer theory and politics, Gender Trouble , problematises the word “trouble”, seeing in it the workings of power and control: “the prevailing law threatened one with trouble, even put one in trouble, all to keep one out of trouble. Hence, I concluded that trouble is inevitable and the task, how best to make it, what best way to be in it.”

Troublemakers

The writers in this anthology all seem to embrace the same idea of “trouble”, tackling head on social/cultural prejudice and breaking rules of conformity. “Women who read and write, and tell stories which hold up a mirror to the times we live in, are certainly troublemakers,” writes Saba Karim Khan. Sadia Khatri, in her evocative essay, “Fear and the City”, writes of growing up in a city that did not allow women to occupy public spaces and of her experience of unlearning the self policing of her body and sexuality. Soniah Kamal confronts the questionable morality that validates only those forms of art that allow women to remain hidden away from the public eye. The extraordinarily gifted novelist, Kamila Shamsie, writes of the antipathy towards migrants apparent in the shifts in British immigrant laws and the dangerous tendency of privileging economic worth over both intellectual/artistic value and humanitarian concerns. Bina Shah, writer and journalist, perhaps explains it best when she defines “red lines” as Pakistani lingo for things one must not say, at least in writing, and goes on to demonstrate to the reader a constant pushing of these red lines, a constant getting into trouble, challenging assumptions, and practising fearlessness.

Many of the writers represented in this anthology belong to more than one space, one culture, often claiming a multi-ethnic identity. Several hold dual citizenships. Some, like Feryal Ali Gauhar and Humra Afridi, travel not just geographically, across mapped lines, “home” and “identity” then mean to writers who cannot have rigid definitions of either? How does Javeri’s question of Pakistaniyat resolve itself? Documentation or holding a passport can only be a mechanical, forced way of locating identity, as Shahnaz Rouse points out. A common thread that seems to run through all 15 essays is that of discontent. The writers all question the structures they inhabit – domestic, diasporic, linguistic, political. They reject the silencing of women’s and minority voices and push for change. Their identity as Pakistani writers is perhaps constituted in their commonality of intent, as much as it is in a shared history. Home is often loss in these essays, even when it has not meant displacement, becoming another thematic thread that holds these diverse pieces together. It is perhaps most appropriate to summarise the volume in Javeri’s own words: “The personal essay demands ownership and accountability; the writers in this anthology own their stories with courage and grace.” Courage, grace, and truth-telling, then, as ways of being.

To celebrate this year’s International Women’s Day, Pakistani women held what they call the Aurat (Women)’s March—an annual series of rallies that began in Karachi in 2018. This year’s Aurat March—held in at least seven cities nationwide—included demands for safety from endemic violence, accessible health care in a nation where nearly half of women are malnourished, and the basic economic justice of safe working environments and equal opportunities for women. In Pakistan, as in other countries where women already were most vulnerable, the COVID pandemic has exacerbated their crises, including gender-based violence .

But the extremist backlash —including street protests, a Taliban condemnation of the women for “actively spreading obscenity and vulgarity,” and an organized social media disinformation campaign against the organizers and supporters of Aurat March—underscores how exclusionary, unjust, unsafe and violent Pakistan remains for most of its 101 million women. In the most recent Women, Peace and Security Index —a measure of women's well-being and their empowerment in homes, communities, and societies—Pakistan was ranked among the world’s 12 worst performing countries. The latest Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey estimated that 28 percent of women in Pakistan have “experienced physical violence” by the age of 50. Still, with no real national data, the full scale of Pakistan’s violence against women remains murky. The escalated backlash against women’s activism emphasizes not only the need for their movement but also the need to overcome the dominant patriarchal narrative about religion that falsely portrays feminism as inimical to Islam.

While the suffering of Pakistan’s women is anguishing, this extreme inequity in the world’s fifth most populous nation should concern moralists as well as foreign policy realists for the simple reason that greater inclusion and equality of women make the world more peaceful for all. States with greater gender equality behave less violently amid international disputes, research studies find. Overwhelming evidence also shows that inclusion of women in peace processes makes these processes more sustainable. In Pakistan’s case, achieving gender equality is critical for the country’s long-term evolution as a resilient democracy that can meet its people’s needs, adequately confront violent extremism, resolve its conflicts non-violently and help stabilize a region that poses constant international security threats.

Response to Violence: Reaction, Not Prevention

Recent violence in Pakistan lent particular poignancy to last week’s women’s rights rallies. In September, when a mother ran out of gas while driving her two young children on a highway, two men raped her—and one of Pakistan’s most powerful police officers blamed her for inviting the crime by having driven at night. A storm of protest erupted, focusing national attention on gender-based violence, including a spate of attacks against transgender women.

The highway attack was the latest in atrocities over decades to re-ignite a national discourse on gender-based violence that remains largely reactive in nature. The government passed a new anti-rape ordinance in December, promising harsher punishments like chemical castration for perpetrators and speedier trial of rape cases through special courts. Similarly, the spike in violent attacks on women during COVID has produced demands for measures like national helplines, shelters, legal aid and psycho-social support for victims. As vital as these measures can be, the nation’s response still fails to move to prevention by addressing the causes of violence against women.

Leading Pakistani scholars and advocates on women’s rights assessed those causes last month in a new USIP working group on gender issues in Pakistan. They described the exclusion of women in Pakistan’s social, political and economic institutions as a structural cause of inequity that renders women more vulnerable to violence. The literacy rate among girls and women is 22 percent lower than men. Women are 49 percent of Pakistanis, yet form only about 22 percent of the country’s labor force and receive only 18 percent of its labor income. Women hold only 5 percent of senior leadership positions in the economy. Women vote much less often in both rural and urban areas , and women form only 20 percent of the parliament. Women are less than 2 percent of the police force and are severely under-represented in the country’s superior courts.

A significant source of women’s vulnerability to violence is their financial dependence on their fathers, brothers or husbands. Tradition assigns women all household chores and discourages them from working outside the home. Work environments and public spaces that are hostile to women obstruct them from both the formal and informal economy. The few women who do participate in the workforce largely constitute the informal economy, where wages are abysmally low and economic vulnerability to external shocks like the pandemic is higher . Men’s monopoly over household income and assets, combined with a belief that women should tolerate violence to keep the family together, leaves women not only more vulnerable to violence but also incapable of escape.

Pakistani society’s patriarchal mindsets reinforce these gender disparities, noted the discussants in USIP’s gender working group. Inevitably, these mindsets extend to political and state institutions. The police official’s blaming of the woman raped on the highway reflects the systemic misogyny embedded throughout state institutions and the political environment. Thus, even though federal and provincial legislatures have passed laws to bar child marriage, workplace harassment, domestic violence, “honor” killings and acid attacks against women, they remain largely unenforced.

Way Forward: Reconciling Feminism and Islam

A broader change in gender mindsets is therefore imperative in Pakistan—and is a goal for which the Aurat March has been mobilizing men and women since 2018. While the Aurat March has focused on mobilizing people from marginalized segments of society such as low socio-economic groups and religious minorities, the campaign has remained restricted to select cities. It has yet to gain momentum in rural areas, where gender inequalities are worse .

This month’s backlash by the Taliban and others amplifies intense criticism of the movement from among Pakistan’s news media, religious scholars, established politicians and the public. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly last year formally condemned the Aurat March and politicians have filed complaints against it with police and courts. Critics of the movement accuse it of serving a “western agenda” and of being “un-Islamic.”

The criticism against the Aurat March stems from a simplistic dichotomy that sees feminism and Islam as irreconcilably opposed ideas. This false dichotomy has been cemented by mainstream interpretations of Islam that use a patriarchal cultural lens and systematically exclude feminist narratives available in Islamic traditions. The religious narrative in Pakistan has so fully absorbed patriarchal cultural ideas that those who challenge patriarchy are accused of being irreligious. Such allegations are hard to dismiss when they resonate with the majority of Pakistanis, for whom religion is central to personal and collective identity. Women’s rights movements like the Aurat March are, therefore, likely to remain polarizing, misunderstood and ineffective unless they integrate feminism, modernity and Islam in their narrative, and engage progressive religious scholars. A continued disconnect with religion will hamper the Aurat March from creating a critical mass for gender justice in Pakistan.

This disconnect applies not only to social movements but also to wider advocacy and development efforts. USIP’s initial roundtable discussion on gender inequality and violence also failed to explore religion as a contributor to gender injustice, and more importantly, as a potential tool for reform.

Muslim women in Pakistan and across the globe have been trying to build the bridge between women’s rights and Islam for generations. In Pakistan, Dr. Riffat Hassan and Asma Barlas have made significant contributions to the reinterpretation of Qur’anic texts from a non-patriarchal perspective and have laid down a strong foundation for Islamic feminism in the country. And the story of Afghanistan’s teacher, Islamic scholar and women’s rights activist, Ayesha Aziz , is instructive. Aziz’s successes in advocating women’s rights with Taliban officials by finding common ground in religious values and building relationships of trust underscores the promise that Islamic feminism holds for women’s empowerment in Pakistan.

An immediate next step in fostering gender justice in Pakistan is to build on the work of scholars like Hassan and Barlas, and to publicize feminist narratives about Islam. The longer-term challenge is to systematically address the ever-widening gap between those who understand Islam but do not understand modernity and those who understand modernity but do not understand Islam, as noted by Pakistani-American scholar Fazlur Rahman . Islamic feminism can serve as a starting point by offering a common ground of engagement to both groups, and can help propel the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on its journey to become more gender-equal and, ultimately, peaceful for all.

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Essay: a pakistani woman comes of age.

There are many ways to tell a coming-of-age story but the steps therein usually remain constant: a call-to-greatness, a hero’s journey, a conflict, and a relieved maturity. The bildungsroman is a thing as stable as Jell-O: it wiggles, but it holds.

The phrase ‘coming-of-age’ is an amusing one. It seems to position the protagonist as an antagonist to time: before the clock runs out, you must leave your cosy nest, steer through storms of suffering, and arrive at a personal epoch of enlightenment; this means that growth, like birth, is an activity: you kick and scream and wail as the womb contracts. You can’t stay here anymore; you must be expelled and newly formed. You must arrive.

But if a hero’s journey is the story of birth, then most Pakistani women are encouraged to be forever-foetuses. We’re encouraged to never leave the womb, not even when we feel we’ve grown out of it.

While I was growing up, I felt an odd combination of being both mollycoddled and treated like a criminal. Sometimes I wasn’t to leave home because the outside world was too dangerous, and my parents would much rather I be within earshot, safe. Sometimes I wasn’t to leave home because the outside world was too weak to handle me and the clerics would much rather I not cause earthquakes, drive men to madness, be an uncontrollable temptress, and bring civilisation to its knees.

The 2022 Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize For Women was awarded to an essay that the judges felt was “a compelling memoir” and which represented “original thinking at its best: bursting with freshness and ambition.” The judging panel this year included Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Carla Power, author and Guardian correspondent Arifa Akbar, Pulitzer Prize-nominated Wall Street Journal correspondent Saeed Shah, literary editor at The News on Sunday Wajiha Hyder and freelance editor Shan Vahidy. Eos presents the essay here in its entirety…

These contradictory expectations weighed heavily on my body, made me sick, sad, secluded, and let me know quite early on that the adventures of youth were forbidden to me. My emerging woman’s body was a problem and authority figures around me — parents, relatives, school teachers — subjected me to a regime of over-regulation and policing, forbidding mobility, experiments in dress, and freedom of expression; viewing whatever I did via the suspicious lens of sexuality.

This panopticon drove me mad. To escape the consistent surveillance, I ran to the only place I knew my Boomer cops would have a hard time following me into: the internet.

This is that story.

I grew up on the internet. It was there that I found many other young Pakistani women navigating the confusing terrain of modern Muslim womanhood in a world that is increasingly hostile to our presence.

We were shaped by the spaces we inhabited but, in turn, we also shaped these spaces. We built the support networks we wish we had, as families, community elders, religious leaders and state officials abandoned us, and in doing so, we inadvertently gave form to much of the modern internet.

Like any great rite-of-passage story, mine begins with falling into a different universe.

THE CALL: TUMBLR CIRCA 2014 - 2017

I am 15. I am angry. I am online.

In a journal article titled ‘Feminisms and the Social Media Sphere’, published in Women’s Studies Quarterly, author Mehreen Kasana writes about the dual bind Pakistani women find themselves in on the blogosphere in its early days, saying that, after she had established herself as a ‘Pakistani blogger’, she found that “non-white voices, particularly Muslim and female, were treated and received as anthropological projects but rarely as sources of personal musings.”

Kasana goes on to talk about how non-white women were often silenced online; spoken over by white saviours and attacked by homegrown sexists, these women fight a double battle just to be able to say what they wanted to.

Mehreen Kasana is why I join Tumblr. I follow her there from her satirical pieces in leading Pakistani newspapers. Once I am on the platform, it feels like a godsend: a collection of extremely smart people putting into words the isolation and fury I had felt for so long. The app thrums with life. On my first visit, I spend five hours on there, hopping from blog to blog and reading posts by college-educated social progressives who break down complex theories of race and gender into digestible chunks.

Suddenly, I can speak.

The fury that drove me to chop off my hair with a pair of kitchen scissors, because I (a child) was yelled at and implied to be sexually provocative for simply wanting short hair, is no longer a private and inexplicable grief. It is a just reaction to “oversexualisation” and “the loss of agency.”

The simple desire I have to explore the city without a suspicious chaperone, to have some privacy and freedom from scrutiny in my life, to emerge from under the suffocating spell of surveillance, is no longer a wordless anxiety that dances needles under my epidermis. It is a human need for “autonomy”.

My vague and formless feelings — the ones that keep me up at night — find names. I am 15 and suddenly I no longer want to die.

I negotiate my way to a shared phone and luck bestows upon me a private laptop. I learn all the tricks of the trade: deleted histories, incognito tabs, keyboard shortcuts. I am simply reading theory, but it feels private, personal, mine.

Eventually, I find my tribe. Muslim women on Tumblr lead double lives, but it’s not as sexy as you imagine. I’m a conservative through and through when it comes down to the fundamentals and I gravitate towards practising Muslim women — many Pakistani, some Afghan.

By day, these women deal with Islamophobia and sexism on their main blogs, advocating for the women in their communities, but by night they retreat to secondary secret password-protected blogs, where they write about their exhaustion with activism, their relationship with faith, their growing dissatisfaction with their communities.

I grow up reading these private musings because I’ve found my place within the inner sanctum. These women have never met me but my online persona convinces them that I can see these vulnerable parts of them. I carry their secrets like I carry mine. I find a tribe. We shield each other from the prying eyes that follow us everywhere; we let each other speak freely.

I am out of the womb.

Together, we create the resources we need to survive. This is a post-9/11 world and the Woman Question is central to Islamic revival. Everyone is talking about/for/against/with us, and we begin collecting the words we need.

I’ll let you in on a secret: every holistic discourse you encounter on the internet in practising Muslim spaces with regards to women was birthed and nurtured and spread via Tumblr first in the 2010s. You’re welcome.

It was Tumblr where Hind Makki started the “Side Entrance” blog that communicated women’s anger at being locked out of Muslim spaces to the world. It was Tumblr where Akram Nadwi’s Al-Muhaddithat was first amplified, discussed and spread. It was Tumblr where female scholars were supported and helped and mainstreamed.

On Tumblr, Muslim women built the modern Islamic internet.

THE CONFLICT: FACEBOOK 2017 — 2020

I am 18, on the cusp of legal adulthood, and I am sitting at a table. There is a table next to my table, and that is where Sara Ahmed sits, where she interrupts her family’s merrymaking to point out their problematic comment, and where she is cut up and cut out when she kills joy.

I learn all the wrong lessons.

I am 18, and I am sitting at a table. My table is a Facebook post that everyone is ‘liking’. It is a terrible post. I detail why it is a terrible post. I press enter.

There is a problem. I have caused a problem. I am a problem.

Everyone was happy before, content, in agreement. Now, I’ve come and ruined it. But this isn’t Tumblr and these aren’t strangers. I’ve caused problems with/for people I know. These are problems I must carry offline. I am a “killjoy”.

When the older women who made up my tribe on Tumblr grow up and move on from the website to focus on careers and activism and higher education, I migrate to Facebook, but I know I don’t quite fit in. There is no one here who makes my soul sing — not many on Facebook are talking about theory (yet), and I feel an exhaustion set in because of the constant fights I cannot seem to avoid getting into.

Too many things are happening, or have happened: Qandeel Baloch, Aurat March, the Women’s Protection bills. I have many opinions, and I hate many opinions. I fiddle with Facebook’s privacy settings; I learn to pick my battles.

I hang out in emerging women’s groups. There is too much trauma here. Pakistani conservatives are fascinated by these groups, convinced they are causing divorces and man-hating and all manner of bad things. There’s a perverse (almost self-Orientalising) fascination with the private lives of Muslim women and there are reports of fake male accounts joining.

I just think the groups are boring.

They do activism-speak as well as everyone on the internet by now — “problematic”, “feminism”, “sexual liberation” — but they rarely put in the work. No-one is building communal resources or encouraging others to read and think.

I take from Facebook lessons in: picking my fights, choosing silence, determining who gets my energy.

THE MATURITY: TWITTER 2020 — ONWARDS

I’m in my early twenties, and the ‘mincels’ have taken over Muslim Twitter.

While I was growing up in spaces where how women were treated was a problem to be fixed, there were plenty of Muslim men who were growing up on Reddit threads and secret forums, where the women’s movement was a problem. Now, Muslim incels — ‘mincels’ — are on Twitter, and they want women to know their place.

These men, a lot of them teenage boys, make Twitter exhausting.

They are master provocateurs, deliberately picking out de-contextualised Islamic legal rulings, Quranic verses, and Prophetic ahadith to make women feel small and powerless. They thrive in the antagonistic environment they create.

Bell hooks once wrote about “killing rage” which is a sudden flash of anger so hot and scalding that it makes you want to commit murder at behaviour that draws from oppressive ideologies.

I feel like that on Twitter these days, especially when men attempt to pit my humanity against my love for God. I feel an anger that is so absolute, it scares me with its clear-eyed focus.

But I’m older. I’ve seen this before. I don’t destroy, I organise. I join Twitter Spaces where Muslim women are gathering to do the most powerful thing we can: speak about our own lives.

These spaces are regulated. We let in other women and allies. I get to hear stories from Muslim women all over the world — Pakistan, America, England, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria — and so much of what they say resonates with me: the feeling over growing up carrying abuse and trauma and the fixed eyes of a dozen people on your back, of carrying the names of friends who didn’t make it, and of having to fight your way to a healthy relationship with your body, your God.

This is where the work is at: Pakistani activists (including Aurat March organisers) and other third world women are reclaiming space on Twitter, shutting out attempts to shut them down and creating new possibilities of existence, furthering the work of so many before them.

And in the midst of this, I find myself, at 26, still online, all grown-up, and still growing.

This is the moment of my birth. I’ve reached here, kicking and screaming, and you may now congratulate me.

I have spent so much of my life lost and angry, but in moments of great lucidity I have found myself, and managed to make incredible friends and allies all over the world. I have open doors and soft couches across the globe should I ever feel the need to visit, even as, in my private and personal life, I’ve pushed against the truncated and unfair boundaries drawn for me as a Pakistani woman.

This is a story of growing up, that is general, but it is also individual, and it is also national: this is a Pakistani story. The particularities of place and time and the specificities of culture caused me to grow up on the internet in the way I did, caused my own history to be wrapped up so closely (DNA-style) with a history of the online Muslim sphere.

This is a global story, because all Pakistani women’s stories are.

The writer is a graduate student at Karachi University and a previous staff writer at the online magazine The Tempest. You can read her work here: https://thetempest.co/tag/saira-mahmood/ She tweets @sairammood

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 27th, 2022

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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 06 July 2021

Determinants of women’s empowerment in Pakistan: evidence from Demographic and Health Surveys, 2012–13 and 2017–18

• Safdar Abbas 1 ,
• Noman Isaac 1 ,
• Munir Zia 1 ,
• Rubeena Zakar 2 &
• Florian Fischer   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4388-1245 3 , 4  

BMC Public Health volume  21 , Article number:  1328 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Women’s empowerment has always remained a contested issue in the complex socio-demographic and cultural milieu of Pakistani society. Women are ranked lower than men on all vital human development indicators. Therefore, studying various determinants of women’s empowerment is urgently needed in the Pakistani context.

The study empirically operationalized the concept of women’s empowerment and investigated its determinants through representative secondary data taken from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Surveys among women at reproductive age (15–49 years) in 2012–13 ( n  = 13,558) and 2017–18 ( n  = 15,068). The study used simple binary logistic and multivariable regression analyses.

The results of the binary logistic regression highlighted that almost all of the selected demographic, economic, social, and access to information variables were significantly associated with women’s empowerment ( p  < 0.05) in both PDHS datasets. In the multivariable regression analysis, the adjusted odds ratios highlighted that reproductive-age women in higher age groups having children, with a higher level of education and wealth index, involved in skilled work, who were the head of household, and had access to information were reported to be more empowered.

Results of the multivariable regression analysis conducted separately for two empowerment indicators (decision-making and ownership) corroborated the findings of the one indicator of women empowerment, except where ownership did not appear to be significantly associated with number of children and sex of household head in both data sets (2012–13 and 2017–18).

Conclusions

A number of social, economic, demographic, familial, and information-exposure factors determine women’s empowerment. The study proposes some evidence-based policy options to improve the status of women in Pakistan.

Peer Review reports

Women’s empowerment per se involves the creation of an environment within which women can make strategic life choices and decisions in a given context [ 1 ]. The concept is so broad that measuring it has always been problematic. Following from this conundrum, various studies have developed different conceptualisation schemes and indicators to measure the complex idea [ 2 ]. For instance, women’s empowerment depends upon cultural values, the social position, and life opportunities of a woman [ 3 ]. Women’s empowerment can take place on three dimensions, which are at the micro-level (individual), meso-level (beliefs and actions in relation to relevant others), and macro-level (outcomes in the broader, societal context) [ 4 ]. Furthermore, women’s empowerment could be characterized in four major domains: socio-cultural, economic, education, and health [ 5 ]. While differences exist in measuring the concept of empowerment, similarities can be found in the available literature. In this regard, the main themes frequently used to conceptualize women’s empowerment are household decision-making, economic decision-making, control over resources, and physical mobility [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ].

From this point of departure, the present study attempts to identify and understand various determinants of women’s empowerment in Pakistani society with the help of representative data from Demographic and Health Surveys. Investigating women’s empowerment in Pakistan is important, because of the male dominance and gender gaps which are hindering the progress of women to take an active part in development in Pakistani society [ 10 ]. Furthermore, empowerment is a strong determinant for healthcare decision-making as well as of physical and mental health in females [ 11 ].

Because women’s empowerment is an idea that acknowledges a woman’s control over her own life and personal decisions, it has a strong grounding in human rights propositions [ 1 ]. Moreover, women constitute almost half the world’s population; hence, women’s empowerment is the key factor in achieving the highest levels of desirable development [ 12 ].

Despite the widespread acclamation of women’s empowerment and the major role of women in the development process, their status is not equal to that of men across most countries of the world [ 13 ]. In many parts of the world, women are in a disadvantaged position, and hence most of the time ranked below their male counterparts in the social hierarchy [ 14 ]. This disadvantaged position can well be understood through the glaring differences between men and women with respect to many human-rights, cultural, economic, and social indicators. For instance, globally, women spend two to ten times more hours than men on unpaid care work [ 15 ]. Similarly, of all the illiterate and poor people across the world, women constitute 65 and 70% respectively [ 16 ]. It is reported that only 1% of the world’s total assets are held in women’s names [ 17 ]. Moreover, data also indicates that 70% of the 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty are women or girls [ 18 ]. Owing to these conditions, women enjoy substantially lower status than men [ 15 ].

Although gender-based discrimination is a global issue, Pakistan needs special attention in terms of women’s empowerment [ 19 ]. Pakistani society, in both its normative and existential order, is hierarchical in nature and exhibits unequal power relations between men and women, whereby women are placed under men [ 20 ]. The existence of significant gender disparities makes it a non-egalitarian society where gender equality and women’s emancipation appear a faraway goal [ 21 ]. In this context, the low level of women’s empowerment is a factual issue in Pakistan as the country is ranked almost at the bottom of the Gender Gap Index – 151st of 153 studied countries [ 22 ]. Similarly, in 2019, the Human Development Index value for females was lower than for males (0.464 vs. 0.622) in the country [ 23 ].

The gender disparity highlighted by these measures can be clearly observed through the evidence at hand. For instance, Pakistan has a very low rate of female labour-force participation compared to their male counterparts (25% vs. 82%) [ 24 ]. In addition, adult women had less secondary-school education than males (26.7% vs. 47.3%) [ 23 ]. Concomitantly, low educational opportunities and poor educational achievement lead to low empowerment among women, particularly those who live in remote areas of the country [ 25 , 26 ]. The situation is further exacerbated when female parliamentarians in Pakistan appear to be bound by patriarchal beliefs and practices when they could realize empowerment. In such circumstances, the notion of empowerment in Pakistan appears to be only theoretical without any sense of practical embodiment [ 27 ].

Against this backdrop of a persistently bleak situation for women’s empowerment in the country, the government of Pakistan has launched some targeted actions, such as the National Policy of Development and Empowerment in 2002, which aimed to improve the economic, social, and political empowerment of women. Additionally, the number of seats reserved for women in both the Senate and the National and Provincial Assemblies has also been increased. Nevertheless, women in Pakistan are still subjected to unequal power relations, and are less authorized to make decisions about their own lives [ 28 ]. The country stands among the lowest in the world in terms of women’s empowerment, even though almost half its population is made up of women, and empowering them could improve the overall well-being of society. There is a paucity of literature empirically conceptualising women’s empowerment and its determinants in Pakistan. For that reason, we have adapted the framework developed by Mahmud et al. [ 8 ], which conceptualizes women’s empowerment as a dynamic and multi-dimensional process. By the same token, the framework of the present study encompasses four major determinants: demographic, economic, social, and information-exposure factors. Likewise, it denotes two major dimensions of women empowerment, which are decision-making and ownership. Decision-making involves decisions about healthcare, economic affairs, and mobility issues. Ownership includes the ownership of house and land. Conceptualizing the determinants and dimensions of women’s empowerment with empirical and representative data is the unique aspect of the study, which adds to the body of knowledge. The theoretical framework used to explain the link between the determinants and dimensions of women’s empowerment is given in Fig.  1 . The results of the present study help to present policy implications for enhancing women’s status in Pakistan.

Conceptualization of determinants and dimensions of women’s empowerment

This study is based on secondary data from the two nationally representative Pakistan Demographic and Health Surveys (PDHSs) 2012–13 and 2017–18 [ 29 ]. These are the third and fourth such surveys conducted as part of the MEASURE DHS International Series, whose sample was selected with the help of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. The present study used the secondary data of PDHS 2012–13 and 2017–18, drawn by two-stage stratified sample design, consisting of 13,558 and 15,068 currently ever-married women aged 15–49 years, respectively. Both PDHSs deployed a cross-sectional study design with the primary objective to provide up-dated estimates on basic demographic, health, and domestic violence indicators. The present study used data from the woman’s questionnaire.

Variables: definitions and construction

In this study, we drew variables from the PDHS data sets of 2012–13 and 2017–18 available in SPSS format. In this regard, women’s empowerment was assessed using two variables, on decision-making and ownership. To measure decision-making, we computed four variables, concerning decision-making about: “spending money husband earns”, “major household purchases”, “women’s healthcare”, and “visiting family or relatives”. Each of these four decision-making variables had six response categories; namely: “respondent alone” coded as 1, “respondent and husband/partner” coded as 2, “respondent and other person” coded as 3, “husband/partner alone” coded as 4, “someone else” coded as 5, and “other/family elders” coded as 6. For each of the four decision-making variables, data was categorized as women “not involved in decision-making”, recoded as “0”, when the woman was not involved in decision-making at all, and “involved in decision-making”, recoded as “1”, when the woman was involved in any of the four variables of decision-making. Subsequently, all the four recoded variables were computed into one variable of “decision-making” with dichotomous categories of “No” coded “0” and “Yes” coded “1” for any kind of involvement in decision-making.

Women’s ownership of property was computed using two variables: a woman “owns a house alone or jointly” and/or “owns land alone or jointly”. We computed these variables into one variable and recoded “0” if a woman did not own a house/land, alone or jointly, and “1” if she did own a house/land, alone or jointly. The two variables “decision-making” and “ownership” were computed into one variable, i.e. “women’s empowerment”, and recoded into two response categories: “not empowered” coded as “0” if the woman was not at all involved in household decision-making and did not possess a house/land, and “empowered” as “1” if the woman was involved in decision-making and/or owned a house/land. This variable was used as the dependent variable in the regression analysis with the various independent variables concerning demographic, economic, and social status, along with access to information. A separate multivariable regression analysis was also conducted to see the associations between independent variables and both indicators for women’s empowerment, which are 1) decision-making and 2) ownership.

The present study used independent variables related to socio-demographic characteristics (age, area of residence, and sex of household head), economic (wealth index, women’s paid work, women’s earnings, and women’s occupation) as well as social factors (number of children, women’s education, and husband’s education) and access to information (frequency of watching TV, frequency of listening to radio, and frequency of reading newspapers).

The wealth index is a composite measure of a household’s cumulative living standard. It is calculated using easy-to-collect data and allows to distribute into wealth quintiles. The wealth index was measured using monthly income and household possessions, which are total value of household assets, availability of household items such as a car or refrigerator, value of dwelling, and other civic facilities, including access to safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, and dwelling characteristics. Employment status was assessed during the previous 12 months and afterwards dichotomized into “paid” and “unpaid” work categories.

We created a new variable: “access to information”, by computing three categorical variables: “frequency of watching TV”, “frequency of listening to radio”, and “frequency of reading newspapers”. Responses were categorized as “0” if women had “no access” to any source, and “1” if women had access to at least one source of information either daily, weekly, or occasionally. Two separate copies of SPSS files (2012–13 and 2017–18) were generated consisting of all recoded and computed variables to run requisite analyses.

Data analysis

The data were analysed by using SPSS 21. Descriptive statistics were performed. We ran a simple binary logistic regression analysis to examine the association between women’s empowerment and each of the independent variables in turn. After running the simple binary logistic regression for calculating odds ratios (OR), we applied multivariable logistic regression to predict the dependent variables through independent variables, while adjusting for region, income, and employment. Adjusted odds ratios (AOR) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI) have been calculated. We tested for multicollinearity.

Sample characteristics

The results from the two datasets, taken from PDHS 2012–13 and PDHS 2017–18, corroborated each other. The mean age of the respondents was almost the same in 2012–13 and 2017–18 (32.7 vs. 32.1 years). Similarly, the majority of ever-married women had children. In nearly all households, males were indicated as the household head (91.5% in 2012–13 and 89.0% in 2017–18). The results indicated that there was a slight improvement in education, with 56.2% being uneducated in 2012–13, reducing to 50.6% in 2017–18. The data revealed that more than three-quarters of women during both 2012–13 and 2017–18 had not done any paid work during the previous 12 months (78.0% vs. 84.6%). Among the total responses about earnings (2243 in 2012–13 and 1866 in 2017–18), only 18.1 and 17.0% of working women, respectively, were earning more than their husbands. Just over two-thirds (67.9%) of women had no access to sources of information (such as TV, radio, or newspapers) in 2012–13, and this figure had increased to 80.6% in 2017–18 (Table  1 ).

Decision-making, ownership, and empowerment

Decision-making about healthcare showed mixed results, with almost half of the women (48.1% in 2012–13 and 48.2% in 2017–18) being involved in this domain of decision-making. In both 2012–13 and 2017–18, around half of the women (47.1% vs. 46.4%) were involved in decision-making about visiting family or relatives. Likewise, in 2012–13 and 2017–18, more than half of women (56.9% vs. 58.5%) were not involved in decision-making about large household purchases. Comparably, not being involved in decision-making regarding spending the money earned by their husband was a little higher in 2012–13 than in 2017–18 (59.7% vs. 50.2%). The vast majority of women did not own a house or land in either 2012–13 or 2017–18 (82.3% vs. 82.6%). Thus, the data indicates that more than half of the women in 2012–13 and 2017–18 were reported as not being empowered (58.4% vs. 53.2%) (Table  2 ).

Simple binary logistic regression

We used simple binary logistic regression to find the prediction for each of the independent variables on the dependent variable in both datasets. It was found that the likelihood of empowerment increased with an increase in the woman’s age. Similarly, in relation to the wealth index, the likelihood of empowerment was highest for the richest women. Likewise, the data also highlighted that women earning more than their husbands were more likely to be empowered than those earning less (OR = 2.00, 95% CI: 1.59–2.52 in 2012–13; OR = 1.64, 95% CI: 0.66–4.04 in 2017–18). The data indicated that women with higher education were more empowered (OR = 2.20, 95% CI: 1.97–2.45 in 2012–13; OR = 1.69, 95% CI: 1.44–1.99 in 2017–18) than women with no or less education. The simple binary logistic regression also showed that almost all of the predictor variables were significantly associated ( p  < 0.05) with women’s empowerment (Table  3 ).

Multivariable logistic regression analysis

The results of multivariable logistic regression model indicated that, after adjustment, almost all of the predictor variables were significantly associated with “decision-making” and most of predictor variables with “ownership”. Data indicated that women in the higher age group (45–49) were more involved in decision-making (AOR = 4.51, 95% CI: 2.31–9.26 in 2012–13; AOR = 3.72, 95% CI: 2.01–6.91 in 2017–18) and had ownership (AOR = 1.20, 95% CI: 0.94–1.52 in 2012–13; AOR = 3.72, 95% CI: 2.01–6.91 in 2017–18) compared to their counterparts. Females as household heads showed a significant association with decision-making (AOR = 2.09, 95% CI: 1.79–2.44 in 2012–13; AOR = 2.52, 95% CI: 2.21–2.87 in 2017–18) but it did not appear to be significantly associated with ownership in both data sets. Likewise, the number of children had a significant association with decision-making but not with ownership. Data also revealed that higher education of women was significantly associated with decision-making (AOR = 2.01, 95% CI: 1.73–2.34 in 2012–13; AOR = 2.23, 95% CI: 1.91–2.61 in 2017–18) and ownership (AOR = 1.51, 95% CI: 1.26–1.80 in 2012–13; AOR = 2.08, 95% CI: 1.48–2.91 in 2017–18). Access to information also appeared to be associated with decision-making and ownership (Table  4 ).

Furthermore, the results of the multivariable logistic regression model with dependent variable of “women empowerment” indicated that, after adjustment, almost all of the predictor variables were significantly associated with women’s empowerment. It was revealed that women’s empowerment increased if a woman was the head of household (AOR = 2.18, 95% CI: 1.89–2.53 in 2012–13; AOR = 2.46, 95% CI: 2.16–2.81 in 2017–18). Similarly, 2012–13 data indicated that women living in urban areas were 1.18 (95% CI: 1.08–1.29) times more likely to be empowered than those living in rural areas. The likelihood of women with children were more empowered than women with no children. The data indicated that women with 4–6 children were most likely to be empowered (AOR = 1.90, 95% CI: 1.63–2.22 in 2012–13; AOR = 1.17, 95% CI: 1.01–1.36 in 2017–18). The results highlighted a significant association between occupation and women’s empowerment, wherein women in both skilled and unskilled employment were more likely to be empowered than unemployed women.

Access to information was positively associated with women’s empowerment. The husband’s education and women’s empowerment did not appear to be significantly associated in the adjusted odds ratio model, although a husband with higher education was significantly associated in the binary logistic regression (Table  5 ).

The results of this study reveal that almost all of the predictor variables are significantly associated with decision-making and most of these with ownership. Furthermore, results indicate that women’s empowerment is well predicted by demographic, economic, social, and information-exposure factors. It was noted that women having higher education, living in urban areas, and having access to information were more likely to be empowered. Likewise, women belonging to older age group, being the head of household, earning more than their husbands, involved in paid work, belonging to the rich class, and having children, were more likely to be empowered.

The results highlighted a significant association between a woman’s age and her empowerment, i.e. women’s empowerment increased with increasing age. These results are also supported by various other studies conducted in South Asia, including Nepal [ 30 ], Bangladesh [ 31 ], and India [ 32 ]. One of the reasons identified for this trend in age and empowerment is attributed to power relations within the household [ 33 ]. In the case of Pakistan, marriages are usually arranged at a young age – almost half of all women are married before the age of 20 years [ 34 ]. In this context, childbearing, particularly before the age of 18 years, is detrimental to mother and child, due not only to adverse reproductive health outcomes but also to social adjustments [ 35 ]. These women are mostly deprived of the opportunity to pursue other activities, such as schooling or employment [ 36 ].

Women’s place of residence was also significantly associated with empowerment. Similar to previous studies, the results highlighted that women living in urban areas were more empowered than their rural counterparts [ 37 , 38 ]. Poverty-stricken rural women face a lack of economic opportunities and independence that pushes them another step away from decision-making [ 39 ].

The findings highlighted women’s education as a very strong predictor of empowerment. Since education enhances empowerment through increased skills, self-confidence, and knowledge [ 40 , 41 ], and improves employment opportunities, as well as bringing income and healthcare-seeking mobility [ 42 ], highly educated women were found to be more empowered than those with low or no education. Arguably, housewifery is an expected gender role for women in Pakistan that diminishes educational opportunities for many young girls, particularly in rural areas [ 43 , 44 ]. The study’s findings revealed that education of both spouses has a significant association with women’s empowerment [ 45 ]. By the same token, higher levels of education for both spouses result in more egalitarian decision-making within the household [ 46 ].

One of the most important results was the significant association between number of children and empowerment. Women with children, as compared to women without children, were more empowered, with the most highly empowered being those who had 4–6 children. The DHS data for Namibia and Zambia also highlight similar trends [ 47 ]. Similarly, DHS from Zimbabwe highlights a positive association between the number of male children and women’s empowerment [ 48 ]. Although the number of children, especially male ones, may solidify familial bonds and bring out a rather empowered guardian of her children aspect in a mother’s personality, it certainly cannot be taken as a policy outlook of empowerment in the same way as education, employment, and political participation.

Women’s empowerment increased consistently with increasing household wealth index. Similar results have also been reported from various other Southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste [ 31 ]. In Pakistan, women stand low on the wealth index because their rights to inheritance and the ownership and management of property are poorly realized [ 28 , 49 ]. Concomitantly, research indicates that women’s access to property and household resources does not guarantee empowerment; rather, it is control over those resources – ownership – that empowers women [ 50 ].

In the case of inheritance of property, Muslim countries, including Pakistan and Muslim-dominated areas of various other countries, enshrine the Islamic law of inheritance (Sharia) alongside the state laws [ 51 ]. Nonetheless, as in Pakistan, woman’s right to inheritance is poorly realized in the majority of the most populous Muslim countries/communities. This is mainly due to patriarchal customs and socio-cultural dynamics that give preference to men over women. Against the given backdrop, there is a dire need to introduce legal reforms, accompanied by viable administrative actions, across the Muslim countries, and particularly in Pakistan. Such an affirmative action could help to reduce gender-based discrimination and improve a range of socio-economic outcomes for women [ 52 , 53 ].

Additionally, women’s productive employment is abysmally low, particularly in white-collar jobs and in rural areas [ 54 ]. Mostly, women are engaged in the informal economy, which usually does not allow them to play an equal role with men to add to their family’s wealth [ 55 ]. Moreover, women in the bottom strata of society struggle merely to cope with their sheer poverty and to manage their subsistence [ 56 ]. There is a strong need to enforce existing laws of ownership and inheritance and devise policies that encourage women’s employment.

According to the study results, women’s paid work had a positive and significant association with empowerment. Women involved in paid work were more likely to be empowered within the household than women with no paid work. The study’s findings also revealed that women working as skilled labourers and in managerial positions were the most empowered. These findings are supported by numerous studies, including DHS data from various Southeast Asian countries [ 31 , 57 ]. The greater empowerment of skilled working women can be attributed to their greater freedom of movement and financial independence [ 58 ].

By contrast, women who undertake unpaid work as part of sharing or shouldering responsibilities are usually neither recognized by their family nor considered as a contribution to the household or state economy [ 59 ]. In this context, the “gender-disaggregated analysis of impact of the budget on time use” is one of the tools of “gender responsive budgeting” (GRB), which stipulates that time spent by women in so-called “unpaid work” is considered in budgetary policy analysis [ 60 ]. In this context, in a society like Pakistan, where the work done by women is mostly taken for granted and not accounted for, there is a need to adopt GRB in order to elevate women’s status.

Women residing in female-headed households were more likely to be empowered than their counterparts dwelling in male-headed households. A study conducted with rural Nigerian women showed similar results [ 61 ]. Likewise, another study using data from the Pakistan Integrated Household Survey established that women living in female-headed households were more empowered than those living in male-headed households, mostly owing to their greater participation in household decision-making [ 62 ]. A woman-headed household does not imply the absence of men or their support in the household. The literature indicates that the involvement of both men and women in household decision-making contributes to the improved wellbeing of both the household and society [ 63 ].

The findings of this study establish an association between women’s access to information and empowerment within the household. It was noted that women having access to various information sources, including radio, television, and newspapers, were more likely to be empowered than women with no access to information. Nonetheless, women’s access to information in Pakistan is typically very low compared to that of their male counterparts. In principle, women with more information can be better aware of household needs and contribute more positively to household decision-making for the welfare of their family, particularly children [ 22 ]. Hence, information is a potent ingredient in ensuring women’s greater awareness and participation in public affairs [ 64 ].

The limitation that applies to this study is due to its cross-sectional design, which does not allow for causal conclusions. However, temporality can be established between women’s empowerment and various factors examined here. A further limitation is that data was assessed by interviewers, where socially desirable answers given by the women could lead to bias. Future studies may involve collection of primary qualitative data on the issue to draw a comparative picture of the present study.

This study provides useful insights into women’s empowerment and its various determinants within Pakistan. The results are drawn from a large, and hence generalisable, body of data, which consistently predicts a significant association between the studied demographic, economic, familial, and information-exposure factors, and women’s empowerment. The results of the present study suggest the importance of enforcing policies to restrict girl-child marriages, which adversely affect girls’ reproductive health and social well-being. The feminized poverty in Pakistan also needs to be alleviated through targeted action, particularly in rural areas where women’s access to information, employment, and inheritance is mostly denied. Women’s education and employment are the areas identified as requiring gender-based equal opportunities initiatives through a policy to enhance the socioeconomic status of women and achieve development at the national scale. Therefore, greater efforts are required to improve women’s access to employment and educational opportunities. There is also an urgent need to use mass communication and education campaigns to change community norms and values that discriminate against women. These campaigns must convey the potential contribution of women to the overall welfare of both their families and the wider society.

Availability of data and materials

The present study used raw data of the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2012–13 and 2017–18. The data that support the findings of this study are freely available from Measure DHS to authors upon submission of request.

Abbreviations

Adjusted odds ratio

Confidence interval

Demographic and Health Survey

Gender Responsive Budgeting

Islamabad Capital Territory

Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey

Statistical Package for Social Sciences

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

This research received no supporting funds from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sector. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

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Department of Sociology, Institute of Social & Cultural Studies, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

Safdar Abbas, Noman Isaac & Munir Zia

Department of Public Health, Institute of Social & Cultural Studies, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

Rubeena Zakar

Institute of Public Health, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Florian Fischer

Institute of Gerontological Health Services and Nursing Research, Ravensburg-Weingarten University of Applied Sciences, Weingarten, Germany

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SA and RZ conceptualized the study. SA led the analysis, interpretation of the study findings, and manuscript writing. SA, NI, MZ, RZ and FF contributed to data analysis. SA drafted the manuscript; NI, MZ, RZ and FF revised it critically for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Florian Fischer .

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Abbas, S., Isaac, N., Zia, M. et al. Determinants of women’s empowerment in Pakistan: evidence from Demographic and Health Surveys, 2012–13 and 2017–18. BMC Public Health 21 , 1328 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11376-6

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Status of Women in Pakistani Society: A study in Islamic Perspective

2021, Status of Women in Pakistani Society: A study in Islamic Perspective

A woman in various societies is still considered a second-class citizen and deprived of basic rights enjoyed by the male community. The West has often deemed Islamic women to be backward in a male-dominated world. Quite the opposite, Islam appeared to be the very first religion officially to grant the woman a status hardly ever known before. The research deals to investigate the status of Pakistani women from an Islamic perspective. The Holy Quran incorporates innumerable instructions & commandments concerned equally to men and women. The research paper tends to break the myth that Pakistani woman is being exploited, an inactive, deserted section of society and captivated at the home. The article depicts a concise impression of the Islamic perception of modesty, decency, purity, and virtue particularly concerning Muslim women. This research gives a short reflection on the status of Pakistani women from an Islamic perspective in our prevailing situation. It endeavors to wrap not only the religious but also social, as well as academic aspects. The paper dealing with the Status of Women in Pakistan thus tries to explore various layers of state and society, their functioning, and interplay challenging the stereotypes. The paper aims to construct a consistent& cumulative picture of Pakistani Muslim women. Campaigns for women's empowerment are increasing day by day & highlighted so far but giving it a right sense has not found big literature yet. This paper is just a little step to highlight the status of Pakistani women from an Islamic perspective. Finally, it is concluded that Islam as a religion ensures maximum women's rights. It is our typical social norms, old traditions taken & imported from Version of Record

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Since the creation of woman, she faces many problems in her life. Different societies have their own customs and traditions. And woman faces problems regarding them. Pakistani society has its own influence and civilization which causes many problems of women. In these traditions, one of the bad behaviors is, marriage of woman on wrong time i.e. late marriage or early time marriage. In the result, at least, she faces Problems regarding dowry, Joint family system, Family disintegration, Childlessness, Propensity to violence, Effects of husband remaining alone from wife etc. On the basis of social divisions in Pakistani family system and depiction of woman issues having effects on herself, the significant and their mediation is very necessary, too. Many of these problems has Psychological impacts on woman in her domestic life. In Pakistani society where woman faces domestic and family problems, there economic problems too pester her which include greed for riches and lack of them both pester her psychologically. In this paper, above mentioned problems of women in Pakistani society has been discussed in the light of Islamic teachings.

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It is a well-known fact that the teachings of the Holy Quran did not only relieve womankind from innumerable troubles and the plight of inhuman treatment, but it also elevated their status to the dignity par excellence. Women faced three major challenges in their social lives. Foremost, their position to be regarded at least equally a ‘human’ like men, the second was the security threat and third was their honour. The Holy Quran, with its comprehensive, all-time effective and benevolent teachings, responded to all their social, moral and spiritual needs and bestowed them all-round equality, protection, and dignity. Indeed, the teachings of the Holy Quran led womankind towards dignity from darkness and oppression. This article includes well elaborated description of all three paradigm related to dignity of women that Holy Quran focuses and the same are the elements that are required to be elevated and redefined in the light of Quranic discourse in order to elevate, protect and maintain the status of women at present age. Keywords: Quranic descourse, Islam, Dignity, Equality, Status of Woman.

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Historically, the idea of the welfare state is rooted in the Confucius and Greek thoughts before Christ era but actually this was only an idea and practical welfare state was not found anywhere before Islam. Practically, the beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was the first in the recorded human history who successfully established an Islamic welfare state more than fourteen hundred years ago. Keeping in view, Islam is not merely a religion but a complete code and system of life. It addresses all individual and collective issues of life including state, government and politics. Therefore we find solid principles for Islamic welfare state and society in the Islamic teachings. The divine guidelines of Allah and Nobel teachings of the Prophet ﷺ teach us all fundamental principles about Islamic welfare state and also these principles were implemented in the state of Madῑnah under supervision of the Prophet ﷺ. After kind Prophet‟s ﷺ era the successors of the prophet the righteous caliphs implemented these principles in Islamic state and society. It means the Islamic welfare state has some fundamental principles and features. As well as, these principles contained all those basic laws which are necessary part of the contemporary and modern welfare states in all over the world. It is also noticed that the Islamic welfare state not only protects the worldly affairs of the public but also the human values and hereafter of a person because it is an ideological state. This thing differentiates it from the modern secular states in the West. Then question rises what is the Islamic welfare state and what are its basic principles and how it differ from the modern Western states. In this paper I would elaborate these fundamental principles of Islamic welfare state and its key differences from the secular welfare states in the light of Islamic teachings. Keywords: Islamic welfare state, fundamental principles, key differences from the secular states

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Home — Essay Samples — Geography & Travel — Pakistan — Women Empowerment in Pakistan

Women Empowerment in Pakistan

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Women’s Rights in Pakistan

How it works

“There are roughly 101,715,995 women in Pakistan currently, yet none have reached an equal status with men. Women’s rights have been a fight since the early 1900s for Pakistanis, yet very little has been done, few changes have been made on this subject matter. Females are disgraced in so many different ways, they have basically the same amount of rights as children; they are treated just like them. Women’s rights in Pakistan need to be equalized, but first, they must make many reforms.

Women’s rights in Pakistan are unfair; they need to be equal with men, the access to certain resources and the availability of opportunities are needed for women to live equally to men.

Marriage for women in Pakistan causes lots of problems, women are sold off just another way of showing how to men they are basically just property. If women in Pakistan were not sold off maybe they would have the opportunity to live in equality with men. Women are sold in some parts if Pakistan for what is known as a “bride price” also they must pay a dowry of some sort(Yusuf). “In some parts of Pakistan male members of a family have the social sanction to take a woman’s life if she is suspected of having illicit sexual affairs”(Yusuf). Women basically have zero rights in their relationship, they are sold for a “bride price”, which the bride’s family must pay to the groom. Then they also have to pay a dowry to husband, so they cannot just leave the relationship and lose all of her family’s hard earned money. This shows how women are just like any other item that a man may own. Since he has paid for her she cannot do anything, so she must abide by his every beck and call, giving her no rights. Also, if a woman does any sort of “cheating” then the husband can take her life, if he wishes too. All in all, females being sold into marriage is so unfair and to top it all off, most are sold off underage, as a teen. So, they have little opportunity in the future to make a difference and help other young women now end up in the same situation as them.

Most girls in Pakistan tend to be married off at age 16, because they have nothing else to do in their time; at least that’s what society thinks of them. Being married at such a young age was the culture that all Pakistanis grew up with, all women are to be married by age 18 at the oldest. The only way girls can resist child marriage is to beg their parents to let them attend school for 2 more years, until they are at least 18 years old(Funk & Wagnalls). A woman is expected to stay close with her family because she needs to receive economic and emotional support from her brother and father so she has backing support if she ever gets a divorce from her husband(Qaiser). The society looks upon women so poorly that unless they plan to get extra schooling, they must be married off. In some cases, where even the girl’s parents have no respect or care for her, they will try to sell her off as soon as it is possible for them, anything to get rid of their daughter. Also, she has to keep in touch with her male family members, just in case the husband has no more use for her. So, he gets a divorce and she needs money from them and to immediately remarry if anyone will take her again. Given these points, all women in Pakistan have one fate, they must be married by the age of 18; but sometimes that awful marriage can lead to worse things such as rape or abuse.

Rape or any physical violence towards women is also a common problem, men don’t find women worth anything more than an object. Abuse is a major problem all over the world and it is a strong issue that causes women to feel inferior to men. Rape is when women are taken and used, by a male for their own pleasure. This a major way of making women feel inferior to men, and it is also an evidential example of women being inferior to the male gender. “Women face substantial, systemic challenges in Pakistan. And what most fundamental is the question of violence”(Pakistan Observer). “Several issues are common to women of the region; lack of equal access to education, employment, and health, denial of decision-making powers even when the issues concern themselves, and the prevalence of physical violence within and outside the home”(Yusuf). Violence is most often the worst issue because it is physically causing the women pain, this experience traumatizes most. They face the fear every single day when returning home from “housewife tasks” and they don’t know what could happen on any given day. These women are living in fear that any day any male could harm them in a sexual act or just a physical attack. The women of Pakistan have no rights as it already is, but now they have to go home and become an example of abuse, and have no power or say in the matter. To be brief, abuse is a life traumatizing event that is caused by unequal women’s rights.

Males of the Pakistan society are raised to be these gender stereotypical men they are, all because of the traditions. Traditions are not something anyone can just break once and make them go away. It would take the efforts of many to stop the awful traditions and give women a chance to be equal. In Pakistan, it is bad to have a girl, boys are celebrated girls are not. Except for Malala, she is an example of non-stereotypical actions for women’s rights(Yousafzai). Usually, when a girl is born it is a disappointment because girls are the lesser sex. This is a sexist act that is taught and passed down through the culture of Pakistan. This is an awful tradition that is working against women’s rights all the way from the start of life. Maybe is the Pakistani band together and tried to prevent little mistakes in the cultural beliefs from the start of a generation. Then they could abolish this gender stereotype causing many unequal rights from the start of the new time for Pakistan. Altogether, everyone has traditions, but these traditions are disowning a gender, the culture is not respecting females from the minute they are born; people need to learn respect from birth, not inequality. Females are the reason that most males can function, they help with everything around the house and bare their children. Women in the workplace already face long, extravagant hours and minimum wage, on top of that they have to do chores all around the house before and after a long day. Women have no fair opportunities they are forced to do all the housework, it is the standard that they must abide by being a female in the country of Pakistan. Women have to work around the house and work a job for pay. They wake first and sleep last, they clean and prepare the house, then go off to work for very long hours and receive minimal pay(Qaiser). The women do all of the housework and have to also make an income for the family. Most girls cook and clean for the husband and support the rest of the family. Then they have to go to work or do some sort of business to make money and provide an income for the family. After all that they usually have a child, they need to care for and look after. Women work so hard every day in Pakistan and get little in return for their services to their husbands. Thus, women are the ones running so many things, yet they are still available to little rights.

A key reason why Pakistan is making little to no progress in the women’s rights improvements is that the rest of society doesn’t care. Society is not just going to fix its problems on its own, people, both men, and women need to be making an effort. Women all ages, no matter what the condition of their rights is, they should attempt to help, a little difference can go a long way, especially in situations similar to these. It may be difficult due to the lack of resources but if the society becomes stronger as a whole it will already be taking a large step to help. The people of Pakistan, especially the men are making no effort to help any of the issues. They are perfectly okay with the horrible, unfair society. The people of Pakistan especially the men are making no effort to help any of the issues. They are perfectly okay with the horrid society running(Pakistan Observer).“In Pakistan, only 29 percent of women did something to help the issues or made a significant economic contribution”(Yusuf). The men simply just do not care about the women’s problems, as long they are fine, no need to make any changes. Even the women are making a little effort, less than 30% are attempting to make a difference in the issues. Maybe if the society worked together as a whole they would have reached a better outcome, equalized rights. Therefore, the lack of societal help is an issue that can be changed by the voice of the people. All that needs to happen is the people need to work as a whole and try to make a difference and support others when they attempt to make a chance as well.

The government in Pakistan is very unstable and that is an issue because no one can take charge of the country and set the society straight. Pakistan has so many other problems that the government is focused on so they have no time to work on anything else, such as women’s rights. Women in Pakistan don’t have their constitutional rights, and the country has such an unstable society and government that no ruler is able to help them(Pakistan Observer). Jamil Junejo who has a masters degree in human rights, agrees that democratization is “an essential requirement and the state could galvanize change in great ways of it took those responsibilities seriously”(Dawn). Also, Pakistan has a “lack of political commitment and implementations of laws”(Dawn). Pakistan lacks the resources and commitment to start the build-up of a new government from the horrible state it is currently in. Even a human rights scientist agrees that they need to do something soon otherwise the government will take a turn for the worse. The government of Pakistan needs to get back in control of both its country and its people. In this situation, a strong, powerful government would really help out with a lot of problems, by creating a frontal force that will make people obey their laws, and give women equal rights in Pakistan.

The main reason that Pakistan has a weak government is that they have no one strong enough to lead it. Leaders are supposed to be the ones in charge of their countries. The rulers of a country are supposed to control the government and take care of all the major issues, but in Pakistan, that is not the case. Pakistan once again has poor resources, they have no leader that is willing to take so much time to work hard and seriously fix the broken government. Benazir Bhutto has taken a few bad steps, but all she has improved is a minimum of 5% of jobs for women in state employment(Yusuf). “Muhammad can be seen as a figure who testified on behalf of women’s rights”(Qaiser). Bhutto has taken little steps like trying to improve the employment rate for women, but it not very successful. They need a strong leader with similar beliefs as Muhammad because he is a leader who defends women’s rights completely and focuses on finding equality. The citizen of Pakistan need to be tamed, they need someone to keep them in check, so they follow the laws, and the new strong leader they need desperately. In the end, the leaders hold a very important role in the bettering of the country, they need to take responsibility and fulfill their duties as leaders of their country.

Ultimately, Pakistan is in need of some major help, they need better laws protecting women, resources, and to reform their whole political society. They have many issues that need to be resolved, which can be done by making the slightest of steps towards an equal environment with males. Females rights in Pakistan are out of line unequal; they should be equivalent to men, the entrance to specific assets and the accessibility of chances are required for all women to live in equality with men. In Pakistan, women are treated on a whole different level than men are. They have no ways of finding equality and the main problem is the country as a whole. The country needs a strong government, society, leader, the people need a better culture, marriage laws, work treatment. Women in Pakistan are just not given the same lifestyle that the men are living in.”

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A Short Paragraph on Pakistani Women

Pakistani Women Paragraph

The women of Pakistan are working in almost all spheres of life in our country. Though the scope for women in Pakistan was limited previously. It can be seen now that women are working satisfactorily in every walk of life. Previously teaching and nursing were deemed professions for women but due to a suitable increase in the number of women in the country, many new professions are now open for competition for women as well. A woman, now, cannot be kept limited to her house.

The reason for this is the rapid increase of women population which is nearly fifty-one percent of the total population. Pakistani women, nowadays, are working in banks, offices, private firms, hotels, departmental stores, hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, government offices, etc. They have joined the Armed Forces as well and are even flying aircraft of Pakistan Air Force. Indeed, the road to the success of a country is incomplete without the participation of women.

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"Will Work Openly Like Any Man": How Pak Women Are Facing Economic Crisis

According to the united nations, just 21 percent of women participate in pakistan's work force, most of them in the informal sector and almost half in rural areas working in the fields..

Urban households in Pakistan have come under increasing financial pressure

Amina Sohail veers through heavy traffic to pick up her next passenger -- the sight of a woman riding a motorcycle drawing stares in Pakistan's megacity of Karachi. The 28-year-old is the first woman in her family to enter the workforce, a pattern emerging in urban households coming under increasing financial pressure in Pakistan.

"I don't focus on people, I don't speak to anyone or respond to the hooting, I do my work," said Sohail, who joined a local ride-hailing service at the start of the year, transporting women through the dusty back streets of the city. 

"Before, we would be hungry, now we get to eat at least two to three meals a day," she added.

Amina Sohail leaves to deliver parcels in Karachi Photo Credit: AFP

The South Asian nation is locked in a cycle of political and economic crises, dependent on IMF bailouts and loans from friendly countries to service its debt.

Prolonged inflation has forced up the price of basic groceries such as tomatoes by 100 per cent. Electricity and gas bills have risen by 300 per cent compared to July last year, according to official data. 

Sohail used to help her mother with cooking, cleaning and looking after her younger siblings, until her father, the family's sole earner, fell sick. 

"The atmosphere in the house was stressful," she said, with the family dependent on other relatives for money. "That's when I thought I must work."  

"My vision has changed. I will work openly like any man, no matter what anyone thinks."

'Get her married'

Pakistan was the first Muslim nation to be led by a woman prime minister in the 1980s, women CEOs grace power lists in Forbes magazine, and they now make up the ranks of the police and military.

However, much of Pakistani society operates under a traditional code that requires women to have permission from their family to work outside of the home.

According to the United Nations, just 21 percent of women participate in Pakistan's work force, most of them in the informal sector and almost half in rural areas working in the fields. 

"I am the first girl in the family to work, from both my paternal and maternal side," said Hina Saleem, a 24-year-old telephone operator at a leather factory in Korangi, Karachi's largest industrial area. 

Receptionist Hina Saleem talks on a telephone at a leather factory in Karachi Photo Credit: AFP

The move, supported by her mother after her father died, was met with resistance from her extended family.

Her younger brother was warned that working could lead to socially unacceptable behaviour, such as finding a husband of her choice.

"My uncles said 'get her married'," she told AFP. "There was lots of pressure on my mother."

At the changeover of shifts outside the leather factory, workers arrive in painted buses decorated with chinking bells, with a handful of women stepping out amid the crowd of men.

Nineteen-year-old Anum Shahzadi, who works in the same factory inputting data, was encouraged by her parents to enter the workforce after completing high school, unlike generations before her. 

"What is the point of education if a girl can't be independent," said Shahzadi, who now contributes to the household alongside her brother. 

Anum Shahzadi sorts jackets at a leather factory in Karachi Photo Credit: AFP

Bushra Khaliq, executive director for Women In Struggle for Empowerment (WISE) which advocates for political and economic rights for women, said that Pakistan was "witnessing a shift" among urban middle class women.

"Up until this point, they had been told by society that taking care of their homes and marriage were the ultimate objective," she told AFP.

"But an economic crunch and any social and economic crises bring with them a lot of opportunities." 

'We are companions'

Farzana Augustine, from Pakistan's minority Christian community, earned her first salary last year at the age of 43 after her husband lost his job during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"My wife had to take over," Augustine Saddique explained to AFP. 

"But it is nothing to be sad about, we are companions and are running our house together." 

The sprawling port metropolis of Karachi, officially home to 20 million people but likely many millions more, is the business centre of Pakistan.

It pulls in migrants and entrepreneurs from across the country with the promise of employment and often acts as a bellwether for social change.

Nineteen-year-old Zahra Afzal moved to Karachi to live with her uncle four years ago, after the death of her parents, leaving her small village in central-eastern Pakistan to work as a childminder.

"If Zahra was taken by other relatives, she would have been married off by now," her uncle Kamran Aziz told AFP, from their typical one room home where bedding is folded away in the morning and cooking is done on the balcony.

"My wife and I decided we would go against the grain and raise our girls to survive in the world before settling them down." 

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Afzal beams that she is now an example for her sister and cousin: "My mind has become fresh."

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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Pakistani Women Have the Same Chances as Men.

• October 27, 2023
• CSS Solved Essays

CSS Special 2023 Solved Essays | Pakistani Women Have the Same Chances as Men.

Ammar Hashmi, a Sir Syed Kazim Ali student, has attempted the CSS Special 2023 essay “ Pakistani Women Have the Same Chances as Men .” on the given pattern, which Sir  Syed Kazim Ali  teaches his students. Sir Syed Kazim Ali has been Pakistan’s top English writing and CSS, PMS essay and precis coach with the highest success rate of his students. The essay is uploaded to help other competitive aspirants learn and practice essay writing techniques and patterns to qualify for the essay paper.

1- Introduction

• ✓ Disparities faced by women in the economic, political, and social realms represent that women don’t have the same chances as men in Pakistan. However, by increasing women’s participation in the legislature, enhancing education for females, and boosting women-centric policymaking, the country can create more chances for Pakistani women.

2- Why have women started being considered equal to men?

• ✓ Consisting of almost 50% of the global population.
• ✓ Catering the labour shortage issues.
• ✓ Excelling equally among men in a variety of fields, from education to business.

3- Current status of gender equality in Pakistan

• ✓ Pakistan 142/146 according to World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023
• ✓ Pakistan 161/191 according to the 2022 Human Development Report’s Gender Inequality index
• ✓ Since 2018, ECP has registered 11 million women voters

4- Aspects in which Pakistani women don’t have the same chances as men

• 17.7% of women seats combined in both national and provincial assemblies.
• Only limited female quota seats for women.
• According to the ECP 2023 report, 58 million women registered voters, whereas 68.7% were male registered voters.
• In the 2018 elections, 47% of women turnout as compared to 56% male turnout
• According to the International Labour Organization 2023 report, Pakistan has only 22.6% women in the workforce (lowest among Muslim countries)
• According to a World Bank report, the Average income of women in Pakistan is 16.3% as that of men.
• Only 7% of women are employed in high-pay streams (UN).
• According to the UN Women Count report, only 7% of women in Pakistan have bank accounts.
• Pakistan 138/146 in terms of educational attainment according to World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023
• According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, only 25% of women have university degrees
•  According to Pakistan demographic survey, the literacy rate of women is 51%, whereas of men is 72%.
• According to the ILO Report 2023, 1 out of every four homes in Pakistan employ a child, especially girls aged 10-14 years.
• According to UNICEF, Pakistan has 20 million out-of-school children, out of which 12 million are girls.
• According to UNICEF, 1 out of every six girls undergo child marriages in Pakistan.
• 1.4 million unwanted births and 2.3 million abortions and miscarriages in Pakistan every year
• Pakistan 132/146 in terms of health and survival according to World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023
• Exchange of daughters or sisters to keep marriages intact
• Forced marriage of minor girls as compensation to end disputes.
• Considered normal if men do so, but character assassination of women if they do so

5- Aspects in which Pakistani women stand beside men

• Naila Kiani, 1 st Pakistani woman to summit three peaks above 8000 meters
• Women cricket team
• International tent-pegging championship, Jordan
• Female DC, 1 st time in Baluchistan’s district Nasirabad
• Women Judge of Supreme Court, Musarat Hilali
• ✓NGOs, Media, and arts

6- Ways to create the same chances for women as men in Pakistan

• ✓ Increasing women’s participation in the legislature
• ✓ Enhancing the provision of education to females
• ✓ Increasing women’s participation in the workforce
• ✓ Boosting women-centric policy-making and legal reforms

7- Critical analysis

8- Conclusion

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the world has transformed dramatically in political, economic, and technological aspects. Yet, empowering people without social, racial, or cultural bias remains a distant dream for many countries. Specifically, in developing countries, the situation gets grim where women are still marginalized and not provided equal chances as men. Similarly, gender-related parameters of Pakistan paint a bleak picture, representing that Pakistani women don’t have the same chances as men in political, economic, social, and cultural aspects. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023, Pakistan is 142nd out of 146 countries. This shows the shocking situation of discrimination faced by women in the country due to various factors like poor literacy rates and few women entrepreneurs. Thus, in the political domain, women are under-represented in the legislature and have a massive gap in the number of voter registrations of men and women. Furthermore, women have limited access to education in the social domain, with almost half of their population illiterate and 1 out of 6 girls undergoing child marriages. Thus, increasing women’s participation in the legislature and workforce by undergoing women-centric policymaking and legal reforms can help create more chances for Pakistani women. To conclude, Pakistan direly needs significant reforms to overcome the challenges due to unequal opportunities for women as men in various fields. This essay elaborates on numerous aspects in which Pakistani women don’t have equal chances as men and provides ways to bring gender equality to Pakistan.

Since the first quarter of the 20th century, women’s rights movements have been on a roll, keeping in view the depravity faced by women globally, increasing awareness among women and motivating them to work alongside men in all sectors of the workforce. Moreover, the emergence of WWI brought various poor impacts on the participating countries as most men were playing an active part in the war, and there was an extreme labour shortage. So, in order to fill that gap, women started playing an active role in the workforce.

The global agencies paint a horrifying picture of gender parity in Pakistan. World Economic Forum’s report 2023 places Pakistan at 142nd position among the 146 countries in terms of the Global Gender Gap. Moreover, the 2022 Human Development Report’s Gender Inequality index ranks Pakistan at 161st spot out of 191 countries. On the other hand, one positive in this regard is that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has registered more than 11 million female voters on the electoral rolls. Still, there are various aspects in which Pakistani women don’t have the same chances as men.

In terms of the political domain, the under-representation of women in the legislature is the first instance of Pakistani women not getting equal chances as men. The representation of women in the legislature is not even in accordance with their population in Pakistan, which stands at about 50%. This is evident from the ratio of women in the federal and provincial legislature, which stands at 17.7% as per the fixed women seats. Thus, the under-representation of women is obstructing the much-needed policy-making for women, which is only possible when there is a significant number of women in the legislature.

Second, the burgeoning gap in women’s voter registration and women’s voter turnout is another major aspect showing women not getting equal chances as men in Pakistani politics. According to the ECP 2023 report, Pakistan has 58 million women registered voters with 68.7 million male registered voters, representing a huge gap of more than 10 million. Moreover, the women’s voter turnout stood at 47% while that of men at 56%, showing a gap of 7%. However, the eastern neighbour of Pakistan (India) recorded 0.7% more women votes as compared to men in their 2019 general elections. Thus, the huge gaps in women’s voter registration and women’s voter turnout are further strengthening the claims of patriarchal segments of Pakistani society that women have no role in politics.

In addition, the sluggish ratio of women in the workforce is the first example of Pakistani women not getting equal chances as men on the economic front. Women in Pakistan usually face hurdles while finding a job due to difficulty in commute, a suitable work culture, and workplace harassment, which reduces their participation in the workforce. It is evident from the International Labour Organization 2023 report, which states that Pakistan’s workforce consists of 22.6% women and the rest are men. This ratio of working women in Pakistan is lowest among Muslim countries. Thus, Pakistan is forced to face rampant economic shocks as a major chunk of its women population is not participating in economic activity.

Second, there is an enormous gap in the wages of men and women in Pakistan. Citing various reasons, the HRs don’t agree on giving women the same wages as men. Also, most of the rural women are associated with low-wage agricultural labour, which contributes to decreasing the overall wage average. On average, the income of women in Pakistan is 16.3% of men, according to the World Bank report. Furthermore, as per the UN, only 7% of the working women in Pakistan are employed in high-pay streams. Thus, the discrimination in equal wages of men and women plays a major role in the country’s economic downturn as it discourages women from involving themselves in the workforce.

Third, women in Pakistan have limited access to financial services like bank accounts. Even in elite families, the control of domestic finances is in the hands of the male head of the house. According to the UN Women Count report, only 7% of women in Pakistan have their own bank accounts. Thus, this limitation of their access to financial services shows a huge inequality in the provision of chances to women and, in turn, hurts the economic progress of the country.

Furthermore, in the social domain, there is a huge disparity between the educational statistics of men and women in Pakistan. In most households, educating boys is considered necessary as they will earn while educating the daughter is not considered necessary as she will get married. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023, in terms of educational attainment, Pakistan stands at 138th spot out of 146 countries. Also, a huge number of Pakistani female students don’t even get a chance to be admission to a graduate degree program. This is evident from the report of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, which shows that only 25% of women have university degrees, and most of them are unemployed. Regardless of the university degrees, the overall literacy rate of women in Pakistan stands at 51% as compared to 72% for men. Thus showing that women don’t have equal chances in terms of education and literacy as men in Pakistan.

Second, rampant female child labour in Pakistan is also a depiction of unequal chances of growth due to gender biasness. A lot of minor girls are employed even in various prominent households. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) Report 2023, 1 out of every four homes in Pakistan employ a child, especially girls aged 10-14 years. The major reason behind this menace of child labour is the staggering number of out-of-school children in Pakistan. According to UNICEF, Pakistan has 20 million out-of-school children, out of which 12 million are girls. Thus, these 12 million reported and many unreported out-of-school girls end up doing child labour mainly in the houses of elites, depicting unequal chances for women as compared to men.

Third, child marriages of girls in Pakistan are also a major aspect in the provision of unequal chances to women in the social domain. The phenomenon of child marriages is still mostly rampant in the interior parts of the country. According to UNICEF, 1 out of every six girls undergo child marriage in Pakistan, with 1.4 million unwanted births and 2.3 million abortions and miscarriages every year. Also, in terms of health and survival of women gender, Pakistan ranks at 132nd spot out of 146 countries. Thus, all these parameters regarding child marriages unite to paint a horrible picture of equal opportunities for women and men in Pakistan.

Moreover, in the cultural domain, the menace of Watta Satta is still prevalent in the interior areas of almost all the provinces. In this ill cultural practice, daughters or sisters are exchanged to keep marriages intact. Thus curbing the provision of equal chances of growth to women as men in Pakistan.

Second, the ill approach of Wani is also prevalent in some areas of Pakistan. In this practice, young girls are forced to marry the elders of the opponents to end disputes and protect the masculine members of the family. Thus clearly showing that women in Pakistan have unequal chances as men.

Third, women are stigmatized in Pakistani society whenever they seek divorce from their husbands. Not only this, some people even resort to character assassination, but when men do so, it’s considered normal and represented as a show of their masculinity. Thus indicating limited chances for women in Pakistan as compared to men.

However, there are some aspects in which Pakistani women stand beside men without any discrimination. First, the participation of women in outdoor sports. In this aspect, a female mountaineer and a mom of three kids, Naila Kiani, became the first Pakistani woman to summit three peaks above 8000 meters. Also, Pakistani women’s cricket has achieved various milestones in the recent past. Thus, in various sports, women have equal chances as men.

Second, in the civil services and judiciary, women have an open ground where they compete with men and have equal chances of selection as men. This is evident from the appointment of 1st female deputy commissioner in District Nasirabad of Balochistan, a post that someone could imagine only a man. Moreover, the appointment of a woman judge of the supreme court for the 2nd time represents the level of playing for men and women. Thus, in civil services and judiciary, women have equal chances as men.

Third, women actively participate in activities of NGOs, media houses, and arts. These segments show the will of Pakistani women to work and contribute to nation-building. It has been noticed that sometimes, the number of women working in NGOs and media houses surpasses the number of male workers. Thus, here also, women have equal chances as men to excel in these fields.

After analyzing the aspects in which Pakistani women don’t have the same chances as men, it becomes important to suggest some measures in order to create the same chances for women as men. Indeed, the first step in this regard is to increase women’s participation in legislature. As women are almost 50% of the total population of Pakistan, there should be at least 50% seats in the legislature for women. On these seats, only women should be allowed to contest. In this way, Pakistan can create equal chances for women as men and can uplift the status of women in society. Also, this will enable women to play a constructive role in the progress of the nation.

Moreover, the provision of education to women can also help in creating the same chances for women as men. This will help raise the women’s literacy rate and impart much-needed skills in them to raise their social status. In this way, Pakistan can create an educated generation because an educated mother can educate the next generation. Thus, educating women can help in closing the gender gap in terms of education and will open doors to multiple career opportunities for Pakistani women.

In addition, by imparting much-needed technical skills to women, the government can increase women’s participation in the workforce substantially. By doing so, the government can overcome the menace of looming economic crisis and can help in creating more chances for women as men.

Furthermore, boosting women-centric policymaking and undergoing legal reforms to provide them with social protection can help create more opportunities for women and make them equal to men. These include the provision of safe public transport criminalizing and setting enormous penalties for domestic abuse and harassment in the workplace. By doing so, the country can create more chances for women.

After an insightful investigation, it is clear that Pakistani women don’t have equal chances as men in political, economic, social, and cultural domains. Even though nearly 50% of the total population of Pakistan, women have been deprived of their basic and constitutional rights. This, in turn, hurts the country in moving towards the path of sustainable progress in the long term. Other than the country’s progress, the suppression of women is incurring various psychological disorders among them, making them vulnerable to exploitation.

In a nutshell, Pakistani women don’t have equal chances as men in almost all aspects. For example, in the political domain, the under-representation of women in the legislature and a burgeoning gap between the number of women voter registration as compared to men hinders the country’s progress. Moreover, in the economic domain, women face a huge wage gap as compared to men, and this restricts their participation in the national workforce, which stands at 22%. Furthermore, on the social front, more than half of the women population in Pakistan is illiterate, thus increasing their numbers in child labour and child marriages. Additionally, in the cultural domain, women in Pakistan face various stigmas and ill practices like Watta Satta, Wani, etc. All these factors unite to present a gloomy outlook of the chances women are getting in Pakistan as compared to men. Thus, it is high time to undergo serious reforms if the government of Pakistan wants to curb this discrimination among men and women and want to move on a path of sustainable progress.

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