Women have been marching for rights in Pakistan since independence
When Pakistan was created in 1947, founder Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah repeatedly mentioned the importance of the rights of women in the newly created state.
While many are quick to quip that the religion Pakistan is built on has afforded women all the rights, the stark reality still remains that women are unsafe.
Aurat March 2019 was a great example of women occupying public spaces to demand a more equal state. The backlash women who partook in this movement received showed how unaware people are when it comes to the continuous struggle for women’s rights in Pakistan since independence. The women’s movement in Pakistan has existed in phases since 1947, even continuing through eras of martial law and subsequently Zia’s rule in the late 70s.
Women have been marching and protesting in the streets since independence.
After independence, Muslim women in the country advocated for the empowerment of women through legal reforms. Thousands of women marched in Lahore, led by politician and activist Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz, protesting a bill asking for better economic opportunities for women had been removed from the agenda. The mobilisation of support led to the Muslim Personal Law of Shariat in 1948 being passed, which recognised the right of a woman to inherit all forms of property. During the colonial era, this right had been lost under the anglicization of laws. The same women and their advocacy also led to The 1961 Muslim Family Ordinance which covers marriage and divorce.
The Women’s Action Forum (WAF) is a women’s right organisation that was formed in 1981 to directly oppose military dictator Zia-ul-Haq’s implementation of the Hudood Ordinance. It was implemented in 1979 and aimed to enforce Shariah punishments for zina (extramarital sex), qazf (false accusation of zina), theft and consumption of alcohol. The law was opposed because of its inability to distinguish between zina and rape. A man could only be convicted of zina if there were four witnesses. On the other hand, if a woman got pregnant, she could be convicted of zina, even if she was raped. WAF led several public protests in the mid-80s against state proposals that tried to infringe on women’s rights including directives that called for making chaddars compulsory for government students, teachers and employees and proposals to ban coverage of women by media.
While Pervez Musharraf was also a former military dictator, his era saw some progress in women’s struggle for rights. The most important of these was The Women’s Protection Act, passed by the National Assembly in 2006 in an attempt to amend the Zia-era Hudood Ordinance. Whipping and amputation were removed as punishments and also allowed rape to be proved on grounds other than witnesses, such as DNA evidence and forensics. This law has been branded un-Islamic and thus unconstitutional by some religious parts in the country but the Supreme Court of Pakistan has not overturned it.
Lack of public safety for women remains an important issue in Pakistan. Most women are likely to be harassed when visiting crowded areas and male-dominated spaces. Even something as simple as visiting a roadside dhaba or cycling on the city streets would be a daunting experience. Enter ‘Girls at Dhabas’ and ‘Girls on Bikes’, both movements catered towards women occupying public spaces and feeling safer in their own cities.
Girls at Dhabas, founded in 2015 defines itself as a collective of “women and non-binary folk who wish to occupy public spaces on their own terms and whims.” In an interview to The Missing Slate, a representative of Girls at Dhabas stated: “Men will only stop getting away with harassing women when women become a common sight on the streets, when we start occupying public spaces differently, comfortably, with the confidence that we own them as much as men do.”
The Girls on Bikes movement was also pushed forward by Girls at Dhabas until it became its own entity. It is now not uncommon to see groups of women cycling through streets of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Girls on Bikes also holds annual rallies hoping to bring together women and exercise their freedom mobility and be able to feel safe in their cities.
Women all over the world rally on the International Women’s Day which is celebrated on March 4 of every year and for the past two years, women in Pakistan have organised marches in different cities, where they publicly mention the issues and grievances, asking and marching for safer Pakistan for women. Aurat March is organised by a women’s collective called “Hum Auratein” and aims to include women of all classes in the feminist movement. This year’s march received backlash, with the organisers and attendees on the end of vulgar threats. The intensity of rage many displayed against women protesting peacefully for the rights both the state and the religion legally provides them, showed how even after 72 years and the struggle for equality still remains an uphill battle in Pakistan.
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