Pakistan
Index
Four important challenges confronted women in Pakistan
in the
early 1990s: increasing practical literacy, gaining access
to
employment opportunities at all levels in the economy,
promoting
change in the perception of women's roles and status, and
gaining
a public voice both within and outside of the political
process.
There have been various attempts at social and legal
reform
aimed at improving Muslim women's lives in the
subcontinent
during the twentieth century. These attempts generally
have been
related to two broader, intertwined movements: the social
reform
movement in British India and the growing Muslim
nationalist
movement. Since partition, the changing status of women in
Pakistan largely has been linked with discourse about the
role of
Islam in a modern state. This debate concerns the extent
to which
civil rights common in most Western democracies are
appropriate
in an Islamic society and the way these rights should be
reconciled with Islamic family law.
Muslim reformers in the nineteenth century struggled to
introduce female education, to ease some of the
restrictions on
women's activities, to limit polygyny, and to ensure
women's
rights under Islamic law. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan convened the
Mohammedan Educational Conference in the 1870s to promote
modern
education for Muslims, and he founded the Muhammadan
Anglo-
Oriental College. Among the predominantly male
participants were
many of the earliest proponents of education and improved
social
status for women. They advocated cooking and sewing
classes
conducted in a religious framework to advance women's
knowledge
and skills and to reinforce Islamic values. But progress
in
women's literacy was slow: by 1921 only four out of every
1,000
Muslim females were literate.
Promoting the education of women was a first step in
moving
beyond the constraints imposed by purdah. The nationalist
struggle helped fray the threads in that socially imposed
curtain. Simultaneously, women's roles were questioned,
and their
empowerment was linked to the larger issues of nationalism
and
independence. In 1937 the Muslim Personal Law restored
rights
(such as inheritance of property) that had been lost by
women
under the Anglicization of certain civil laws. As
independence
neared, it appeared that the state would give priority to
empowering women. Pakistan's founding father, Mohammad Ali
Jinnah, said in a speech in 1944:
No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your
women
are side by side with you; we are victims of evil customs.
It is
a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within
the
four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no
sanction
anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women
have to
live.
After independence, elite Muslim women in Pakistan
continued
to advocate women's political empowerment through legal
reforms.
They mobilized support that led to passage of the Muslim
Personal
Law of Sharia in 1948, which recognized a woman's right to
inherit all forms of property. They were also behind the
futile
attempt to have the government include a Charter of
Women's
Rights in the 1956 constitution. The 1961 Muslim Family
Laws
Ordinance covering marriage and divorce, the most
important
sociolegal reform that they supported, is still widely
regarded
as empowering to women.
Two issues--promotion of women's political
representation and
accommodation between Muslim family law and democratic
civil
rights--came to dominate discourse about women and
sociolegal
reform. The second issue gained considerable attention
during the
regime of Zia ul-Haq (1977-88). Urban women formed groups
to
protect their rights against apparent discrimination under
Zia's
Islamization program. It was in the highly visible realm
of law
that women were able to articulate their objections to the
Islamization program initiated by the government in 1979.
Protests against the 1979 Enforcement of Hudood Ordinances
focused on the failure of
hudood (see Glossary)
ordinances
to distinguish between adultery (zina) and rape
(zina-bil-jabr). A man could be convicted of zina
only if he
were actually observed committing the offense by other
men, but a woman could be convicted simply because she became
pregnant.
The Women's Action Forum was formed in 1981 to respond
to the
implementation of the penal code and to strengthen women's
position in society generally. The women in the forum,
most of
whom came from elite families, perceived that many of the
laws
proposed by the Zia government were discriminatory and
would
compromise their civil status. In Karachi, Lahore, and
Islamabad
the group agreed on collective leadership and formulated
policy
statements and engaged in political action to safeguard
women's
legal position.
The Women's Action Forum has played a central role in
exposing the controversy regarding various interpretations
of
Islamic law and its role in a modern state, and in
publicizing
ways in which women can play a more active role in
politics. Its
members led public protests in the mid-1980s against the
promulgation of the Law of Evidence. Although the final
version
was substantially modified, the Women's Action Forum
objected to
the legislation because it gave unequal weight to
testimony by
men and women in financial cases. Fundamentally, they
objected to
the assertion that women and men cannot participate as
legal
equals in economic affairs.
Beginning in August 1986, the Women's Action Forum
members
and their supporters led a debate over passage of the
Shariat
Bill, which decreed that all laws in Pakistan should
conform to
Islamic law. They argued that the law would undermine the
principles of justice, democracy, and fundamental rights
of
citizens, and they pointed out that Islamic law would
become
identified solely with the conservative interpretation
supported
by Zia's government. Most activists felt that the Shariat
Bill
had the potential to negate many of the rights women had
won. In
May 1991, a compromise version of the Shariat Bill was
adopted,
but the debate over whether civil law or Islamic law
should
prevail in the country continued in the early 1990s.
Discourse about the position of women in Islam and
women's
roles in a modern Islamic state was sparked by the
government's
attempts to formalize a specific interpretation of Islamic
law.
Although the issue of evidence became central to the
concern for
women's legal status, more mundane matters such as
mandatory
dress codes for women and whether females could compete in
international sports competitions were also being argued.
Another of the challenges faced by Pakistani women
concerns
their integration into the labor force. Because of
economic
pressures and the dissolution of extended families in
urban
areas, many more women are working for wages than in the
past.
But by 1990 females officially made up only 13 percent of
the
labor force. Restrictions on their mobility limit their
opportunities, and traditional notions of propriety lead
families
to conceal the extent of work performed by women.
Usually, only the poorest women engage in work--often
as
midwives, sweepers, or nannies--for compensation outside
the
home. More often, poor urban women remain at home and sell
manufactured goods to a middleman for compensation. More
and
more urban women have engaged in such activities during
the
1990s, although to avoid being shamed few families
willingly
admit that women contribute to the family economically.
Hence,
there is little information about the work women do. On
the basis
of the predominant fiction that most women do no work
other than
their domestic chores, the government has been hesitant to
adopt
overt policies to increase women's employment options and
to
provide legal support for women's labor force
participation.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
commissioned a
national study in 1992 on women's economic activity to
enable
policy planners and donor agencies to cut through the
existing
myths on female labor-force participation. The study
addresses
the specific reasons that the assessment of women's work
in
Pakistan is filled with discrepancies and underenumeration
and
provides a comprehensive discussion of the range of
informal-
sector work performed by women throughout the country.
Information from this study was also incorporated into the
Eighth
Five-Year Plan (1993-98).
A melding of the traditional social welfare activities
of the
women's movement and its newly revised political activism
appears
to have occurred. Diverse groups including the Women's
Action
Forum, the All-Pakistan Women's Association, the Pakistan
Women
Lawyers' Association, and the Business and Professional
Women's
Association, are supporting small-scale projects
throughout the
country that focus on empowering women. They have been
involved
in such activities as instituting legal aid for indigent
women,
opposing the gendered segregation of universities, and
publicizing and condemning the growing incidents of
violence
against women. The Pakistan Women Lawyers' Association has
released a series of films educating women about their
legal
rights; the Business and Professional Women's Association
is
supporting a comprehensive project inside Yakki Gate, a
poor area
inside the walled city of Lahore; and the Orangi Pilot
Project in
Karachi has promoted networks among women who work at home
so
they need not be dependent on middlemen to acquire raw
materials
and market the clothes they produce.
The women's movement has shifted from reacting to
government
legislation to focusing on three primary goals: securing
women's
political representation in the National Assembly; working
to
raise women's consciousness, particularly about family
planning;
and countering suppression of women's rights by defining
and
articulating positions on events as they occur in order to
raise
public awareness. An as yet unresolved issue concerns the
perpetuation of a set number of seats for women in the
National
Assembly. Many women activists whose expectations were
raised
during the brief tenure of Benazir Bhutto's first
government
(December 1988-August 1990) now believe that, with her
return to
power in October 1993, they can seize the initiative to
bring
about a shift in women's personal and public access to
power.
Data as of April 1994
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