Daily Times

Five years ago, #metoo took Pakistani social media by storm-thousands of women came forward to share their stories in the hopes of shifting social attitudes towards gendered violence. Two-thirds of young women reporting workplace harassment in the UK have brought the discussion back under the spotlight and reaffirmed that women do not feel safe anywhere. While Pakistan has made significant advances towards eliminating gender-based harassment on paper, little has changed in practical terms. If anything, the revelations about the sheer pervasiveness of harassment-and institutional failures to address it-have proven just how hard it is to extinguish.

With increased female participation in the workforce, comes a harassment epidemic that blisters the Pakistani woman’s life nearly every day. It is estimated that nearly 93 per cent of women in the private and public sectors have been subject to sexual harassment at some point in their professional lives-we see female anchors casually ridiculed by their male colleagues every day on television. Female lawyers were demeaned in court, and female judges were undermined.

In Pakistan, patriarchal values trump nearly everything else. Harassment, in particular, is trivialised as the norm, emboldening those in positions of authority to exploit unequal power dynamics in the workplace. Despite recent legislation strengthening the protections afforded to female employees, implementation is largely inconsistent, leaving women with no reasonable legal recourse in the event that they are harassed.

Inappropriate gesturing and words have grown increasingly common in the workplace these last few decades, largely due to the immunity granted to perpetrators during these situations. Meanwhile, women are told to suck it up and navigate these complex situations without any external help. There is no question that harassment affects performance, specifically, productivity. Some find it easier to just quit their jobs. Most are simply fired or excluded from promotional opportunities if they choose to report their harassers or refuse to indulge them.

But most women don’t report harassment at all, largely because it continues to flourish in the structures that are meant to prevent it. Unlike in other countries where #metoo turned workplace harassment into a reputational risk, it continues to be heavily minimised in Pakistan. The burden of uncovering misconduct still rests largely with the victims instead of the institutions that are meant to protect them from precisely these kinds of violations. *