Daily Times

Living is Pakistan is difficult. Those who can, have either left or are trying to leave. I do not blame them because I did the same. The Nawaz government is not bothered either since Mr Wani informed him of a NASA study. According to that, modern civilisation is heading for collapse within a matter of decades because of growing economic instability and pressure on the planet’s resources. He forgot to mention, however, that sophisticated civilisations — the Roman, Han and Gupta Empires — collapsed because the elite of society opted for a ‘business as usual’ approach to warnings of disaster until it was too late.
I left Pakistan crying because of a woman (Benazir Bhutto, 1990 elections) and cannot return because of another. It is normal to think that men do not cry or that only sad things make people cry. This is what you believe when you are a child but as we grow older, one starts crying not when things are awful but when they are unpredictably tender, innocent or kind. You notice that movie scenes that make us tearful are not necessarily the depressing ones but the ones where we encounter a particular grace and loveliness that feels heartrending. Tears reflect that our lives are harder than when we were young and our pining for uncomplicated kindness is all the more intense.
We associate tears with sadness and sadness with women in more ways than one. We also think of women as gentle, colourful and fragrant. They build consensus, construct compromises and sustain a deep desire to nurture children. They are an integral part of our urban and rural economy, and contribute to the office and factory workforce, crop and livestock production, cottage industry and family maintenance activities. They are the heavenly fire that suddenly starts blazing in the darkest hours of family adversity. Despite all this endowment, we expect them to stay small, quiet, sweet and modest in their social roles. We do not mind if a woman is a good writer, painter or nurse as long as she is a good mother, good wife, good looking and good tempered.
I find it disconcerting that women work in stereotyped jobs that offer less pay than to males. They face barriers on promotion to management positions because of conscious and subconscious systemic gender bias. Even when elected, women tend to hold lesser-valued cabinet ministries. Pregnant and married women suffer discrimination in hiring, promotion or performance appraisal because of assumptions about their ability to work and take care of responsibilities. We have laws to protect women from discrimination but there is ignorance and resistance — sometimes called a ‘glass ceiling’ — to the enforcement of these laws and a politicised resistance to any remedial affirmative action.
A woman’s worth is still measured by her looks while men count their blessings based on power, money and intelligence. This ‘beauty paradox’ creates a no-win situation as the public wants them to be attractive but not so beautiful that it is distracting. I wish mathematicians at Harvard University could also figure this out. They found recently that three simple questions could determine whether your relationship lasts the distance. They are: do you like horror movies, have you ever travelled around another country alone and would it not be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat? If you find someone that answers all three of the questions the same way you do, the two of you are a perfect match.
Who is to blame for the plight of women in Pakistan? Our Hindu heritage, where women had no property rights, died with their husbands and were not permitted to remarry? In Judeo-Christian traditions the first woman was believed to have been derived from man, providing the basis for gender inequality. There is the Arab influence where women are veiled and segregated because they are expected to sacrifice their comfort and freedom to service the requirements of male sexuality. How about the historical argument that women are not strong hence suitable only for roles and jobs befitting their status in the food chain? If nothing else works, we can always rely on sexist jokes: “Why did the woman cross the road? I don’t know, but what was she doing out of the kitchen?”
Islam gives women equal rights to men. Allama Iqbal used to say that if an atheist examines the Quran academically, he might deduce that it was the creation of a female. A significant minority believes that Pakistan was created to establish an Islamic state. While we wait, all other religions, cultures and nations have improved the fortunes of women albeit through political, social and legal struggle. We, on the other hand, have taken away the rights given to them by their culture, religion and the laws of the land. The bad news is that a regressive and hypocritical culture of segregation, house binding, polygamy, lesser need for education and child marriage for females is being promoted. If someone like Gordon Brown questions child marriage as wrongly proposed by the Council of Islamic Ideology, Orya Maqbool Jan pounces on him, failing to remember that Mr Jinnah opposed child marriage inside an elected Indian Assembly when blinkered mullahs were agitating in its favour outside.
The hypocrisy of our attitude towards women is unbelievable. Each time I visit Pakistan, I see that the number of hijab wearing women has gone up. What has also increased is the number of men publicly leering at women, privately watching pornography and committing crimes (rape, dowry deaths, domestic violence) against women. Female members of parliament and the civil service put up with so much sexual harassment that one wonders about the plight of women on the lower rungs of society. Evidence suggests that individual strategies for improving the situation are unlikely to succeed and may have negative consequences for the workplace, and even lead to increased sexual harassment. The nation will have to stand up against those who burn books and girls’ schools. The government needs to enforce the law on perpetrators of discrimination, harassment and crimes against women. This war will eventually be won when, taking a leaf out of Rosa Parks or Malala’s book, women come out fighting for their own rights — the road to their emancipation is paved with the words ‘education, education and more education’.

The writer is a consultant psychiatrist, senior research fellow and director of medical education in England