Daily Times

Dr Shehzadi Zamurrad Awan’s first book Women & Social Change in Pakistan by Cambridge Scholars Publishing was released on October 1.

The book highlights the impact of education, the rise of media, legislation and executive measures towards women’s rights, political process and civil society on women of Pakistan’s largest province by population, Punjab. This scholarly contribution informs the debate on women’s issues in the larger Pakistani context discussing their placement in society. This is her first book, previously she has contributed to several books and published articles in renowned journals worldwide.

About her book, Dr Awan says, “While writing this book, Pakistani women remained my source of inspiration. Their hardships and resilience were the main motivating factors for my writing.”

She argues that without raising women’s real issues through the analytical and academic lens, no change for development is possible in the lives of Pakistani women.

The author has pointed out that the extant literature on women’s issues in Pakistan has been mostly focused on themes of violence, abuse and discrimination as well as much of the debate on women’s placement in Pakistani society is put forth from the perspectives of women’s rights organizations and feminist standpoint. Hereby, the author intelligently spots the threat of bias towards over-representation of women’s rights violations and underrepresentation of social change and victories towards women’s uplifting across the social classes, which demands equal attention in the academic debate. Hence the author in this book highlights the nexus between social change towards women’s issues and rising challenges in contemporary society and how it can be understood in the specific Pakistani context from an indigenous scholarly lens.

The book comprises eight chapters, each discussing the impact on women of key variables of social change. It begins with reflections on women’s placement in Pakistan’s sociocultural environment, political and economic domains and identifies agents of change transforming the landscape of women’s place in Pakistani society. The following chapters then each discuss the variables including distinct sociocultural environment of Punjab province, political discourse in a historical perspective, women’s education and its related outcomes, evolving political process and legislation around women, different domains of media i.e. print, electronic and social media, and finally the civil society as it evolves and impacts women’s lives. Dr Awan expansively discusses elements of Pakistani culture, its religious panorama, Punjab’s cultural dynamics, gender policies throughout the country’s history and women’s rights movements and how the education of women leads to transforming other areas of their lives.

This book is an inside account of the lives of young women and men studying at the tertiary level. Detailed interviews, surveys and group discussions from male and female university students have been employed for understanding how the aspirant youth population perceives their place in society, especially young women as they navigate their everyday life in a specific social context. Moreover, the stories, comments, and opinions of these women provide an interesting account of what impacts this study’s variables have on their lives. The book is not limited to young students’ insights, however. Dr Awan further explores the views of legal experts and women’s rights activists as well, making this study more comprehensive and contemporary. By presenting an academic debate on socio-cultural, legal, political, and economic aspects of women’s rights in Pakistan, Dr Awan’s research enables its readers to understand the dynamics of gender discourse in Pakistan generally and in Punjab particularly from multiple angles.

Finally, this book is informative and well supported by the personal experiences of the author and her surrounding world. The data and evidence collected for this study offer a deeper understanding of Pakistani society from women’s experiences in relation to the modernizing agents that catalyse the transformation of women’s lives. The book indeed serves as an important contribution to the academic debate from an indigenous gender standpoint and a critical entry to the mainstream feminist narratives. Thus, the book offers significant value for informing and inspiring reflections from other academics, political leadership as well as civil society to reflect upon and evaluate the contemporary debates and mindset towards women’s placement and undertake necessary course of action for an inclusive and sustainable future.

The writer is an author and PhD Fellow at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research interests include development, gender and higher education