Women Empowerment Should be on Political Agenda

Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day 2015 Theme: MAKE IT HAPPEN

LAHORE: Gov­ern­ment cel­e­brates women’s day by reviv­ing their promise to empow­er women. Pak­istan has laws regard­ing women empow­er­ment and is also sig­na­to­ry to Con­ven­tion on the Elim­i­na­tion of Dis­crim­i­na­tion against Women (CEDAW). Every year gov­ern­ment makes some announce­ments and a few polit­i­cal state­ments for women devel­op­ment but women at grass­roots lev­el are still await­ing fruit­ful result of these state­ments.

Promi­nent women in their fields shared their views with The Laal­tain on the sta­tus of women in Pak­istan and government’s efforts regard­ing women empow­er­ment.

Dr. Rif­fat Haque, the Head of Gen­der and Women Stud­ies Depart­ment of Alla­ma Iqbal Open Uni­ver­si­ty, said that slow and steady wins the race per­fect­ly match­es the strug­gle of women’s rights in Pak­istan. Pak­istani women can ‘make it hap­pen’, with patience and con­tin­u­ous efforts for their rights. Dr. Haque has been part of many nation­al and inter­na­tion­al projects imple­ment­ed in the coun­try for the empow­er­ment of women.

She said gov­ern­ment is mak­ing good efforts by intro­duc­ing new laws like Child Mar­riage Restrain­ing Act but imple­men­ta­tion of these laws has remained an issue. She said, “There is a dire need to cre­ate aware­ness among mass­es, and sen­si­tize state insti­tu­tions includ­ing judi­cia­ry and police. Lack of aware­ness among women about their rights is one of the main rea­sons for atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against them and they even don’t know that their rights are vio­lat­ed.” Dr. Haque fur­ther empha­sized that media per­sons also need to be sen­si­tized on gen­der issues. They should avoid sen­sa­tion­al­iz­ing sto­ries about women and need to learn to respect their free­doms and choic­es.

She fur­ther added, “We are just cel­e­brat­ing Women’s Day as we cel­e­brat­ed Valentine’s Day. We should think why we cel­e­brate this day. Many women break the silence and come to pub­lic spaces, but they have to face the issues as our soci­ety at large still does not accept work­ing women. Only a change in mind­set can bring a change in soci­ety and end gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion. The process of atti­tude change is slow but must nev­er stopped.” No mat­ter how good laws are on paper, they mean lit­tle if they are not imple­ment­ed in let­ter and spir­it. Dr. Haque sug­gests that women have to make it hap­pen with zeal and moti­va­tion, and they should also bring men in the whole process.

Shehrbano Taseer, a jour­nal­ist, opined that polit­i­cal par­ties should encour­age their women polit­i­cal work­ers to speak on women issues. She added while shar­ing her expe­ri­ences, “I have had meet­ings with women par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in 2013 to make a report on local gov­ern­ment elec­tions. Dur­ing the inter­views, I real­ized, most of the women par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are not aware about their roles. These women have no agen­da oth­er than par­ty pol­i­cy regard­ing women. Most­ly women par­lia­men­tar­i­ans have no pow­ers with­in the par­ty orga­ni­za­tion to form a strong opin­ion on women devel­op­ment.”

She said that cul­tur­al per­spec­tives play impor­tant role in women’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the polit­i­cal process. The ratio of women vot­ers will be dif­fer­ent in cities than in vil­lages or in more con­ser­v­a­tive areas. In local gov­ern­ment elec­tions of 2002 women polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion was about 33 per­cent but now in our Nation­al Assem­bly the per­cent­age of female rep­re­sen­ta­tion in only 20 per­cent, while the gov­ern­ment claims to have giv­en ‘fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion’ in their women empow­er­ment pack­ages. “But I am hope­ful because at least they have space among pol­i­cy mak­ers. It will take time for women to rec­og­nize their strength and get togeth­er to lob­by­ing for their rights and pro-women pol­i­cy change”, she added.

In recent years, woman par­lia­men­tar­i­ans have been very active on women relat­ed leg­is­la­tion. A few days ago three amend­ed bills – Anti-Rape Laws Bill, and Anti-Hon­our Killings Laws Bill, and Tor­ture, Cus­to­di­al Death and Cus­to­di­al Rape Bill – passed from sen­ate, two of them moved by a female par­lia­men­tar­i­an Sughra Imam. Shehrbano added that the pur­pose of the amend­ments in the bills is to address lacu­nas in the exist­ing laws in order to improve con­vic­tion rates and bring the cul­prits to jus­tice.

She said that women par­lia­men­tar­i­ans need more aggres­sive approach to enforce imple­men­ta­tion of laws regard­ing women pro­tec­tion and empow­er­ment.

Ume Laila, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Home­net, ques­tioned why gov­ern­ment cel­e­brates Woman’s Day only one day, why not 365 days to aware women about their rights? She said gov­ern­ment has been mak­ing announce­ments of women empow­er­ment pack­ages since 2012, in which they promise to ensure fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion in pub­lic sec­tor, women finan­cial assis­tance and bills regard­ing women empow­er­ment. But real­i­ty is not so promis­ing. Home-based Work­ers Bill is still await­ing gov­ern­ment atten­tion. Recent­ly, gov­ern­ment adopt­ed amend­ments in Child Mar­riages Restraint Act, but only increased penal­ty and ignored oth­er lacu­nas of the Act. New laws are good but with­out imple­men­ta­tion they have no val­ue. Gov­ern­ment is used to pre­sent­ing laws and pack­ages on Women’s Day as a col­or­ful wrapped gift and try to use the same gift with new wrap­ping paper on the next year cel­e­bra­tions which shows government’s seri­ous­ness towards women empow­er­ment.

Gov­ern­ment had announced about Day Care cen­ters for work­ing women and this is the only promise we can say is ful­filled to date.

She said that after ten years strug­gle, the gov­ern­ment has final­ly agreed to set up Vio­lence against Women Cen­ter in Pun­jab. These cen­ters will act as one stop cen­ter where rape vic­tim’ com­plaint, FIR, medico-legal inspec­tion, DNA test and psy­cho­log­i­cal treat­ment will be pro­vid­ed at the same place.

The Women Devel­op­ment Depart­ment in Pun­jab is a kind of per­son cen­tric insti­tute and remains seden­tary. The Depart­ment should take ini­tia­tives and play strong role in mon­i­tor­ing and imple­ment­ing the laws and the poli­cies.
Ume Laila fur­ther empha­sized that women devel­op­ment should grow into a polit­i­cal agen­da, one day cel­e­bra­tions are not enough. It should become top­ic of cur­rent polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions on media.

Mum­taz Mughal, Provin­cial Pro­gram Man­ag­er Aawaz, Aurat Foun­da­tion, said that gov­ern­ment announces women empow­er­ment pack­ages every year to score points only. A stag­ger­ing num­ber of 63 points from women empow­er­ment pack­ages still await­ing gov­ern­ment atten­tion.

The gov­ern­ment has failed to imple­ment 2012 & 2014 women empow­er­ment pack­ages. There is no progress on the bills of Domes­tic Vio­lence against Women and Acid Throw­ing Act amend­ments. The finan­cial pack­ages and loans for women were announced and 40 bil­lion rupees are bound in The Bank of Pun­jab but no woman dared to apply for the loan due to its high inter­est rates. The gov­ern­ment announced 33 per­cent women rep­re­sen­ta­tion in pub­lic sec­tor but failed to give incen­tives and cre­ate pres­sure on insti­tutes to cre­ate con­ducive envi­ron­ment for women employ­ment. On the con­trary, women rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the local bod­ies has reduced to 20 per­cent. It is also observed that bud­getary allo­ca­tions regard­ing women projects are too lit­tle to make imple­men­ta­tion mech­a­nisms pos­si­ble.

She said that women helpline desk should be in every dis­trict (36 dis­tricts in total) in Pun­jab, not only lim­it­ed to Lahore.

Nomi­ta Gul, a jour­nal­ist, said work­ing women or even a depen­dent house­wife have to face prob­lems in male dom­i­nat­ed soci­ety despite a num­ber pro-women laws. The work­shops, sem­i­nars, and adver­tise­ments can aware mass­es but with­out prop­er mech­a­nisms only aware­ness can­not solve issues. Laws can be called suc­cess­ful if they are imple­ment­ed prop­er­ly. Women have to total­ly depend on their male coun­ter­parts to give them access and fun­da­men­tal free­doms of move­ment and expres­sion.

Fauzia Viqar, Chair­per­son Pun­jab Com­mis­sion on the Sta­tus of Women, said we should appre­ci­ate gov­ern­ment’ women empow­er­ment plans. As the head of Helpline Desk in Lahore for vio­lence against women, she told The Laal­tain, “Since Sep­tem­ber 2014, we received 1500 enquiry calls and reg­is­tered 127 com­plains from work­ing women fac­ing issues regard­ing depart­men­tal dis­crim­i­na­tions. These com­plains are from all over Pun­jab. After adver­tise­ments more peo­ple are now aware about this facil­i­ty and we get more calls for help and enquiry. Recent­ly, we took action against edu­ca­tion depart­ment in case of trans­fer pol­i­cy regard­ing women. Answer­ing about the delay in women pro­tec­tion bills amend­ments, she said, “It’s bet­ter to do some­thing, even if it’s late, than not do it at all. Domes­tic vio­lence bill is under revi­sion and the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to present some­thing more con­crete. The issue of mind­set is also a hur­dle as misog­y­ny pre­vails among pol­i­cy mak­ers too.”

In real­i­ty the sit­u­a­tion on the ground is per­haps more grave. A woman police con­sta­ble on her duty told The Laal­tain on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty that she can­not com­plain about the harass­ment she faces from her male col­leagues. “The gov­ern­ment has intro­duced new laws but did not fix prob­lems in the old ones. Long duty hours make it dif­fi­cult for her to han­dle house­hold issues. It is also dif­fi­cult to run kitchen with min­i­mal pay and the ris­ing infla­tion”, she lament­ed.