Daily Times

Empowering women does not mean one has to create complexes in men. That would create a decades long movement to create perfect gender equality. Empowerment is about evolving as a human being. It doesn’t mean one has to create another kind of sexism. This was said by the well known Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut who is known for her strong feminist roles and her confrontational personality.

These days when someone talks of empowerment it is usually ‘women’s empowerment’ that dominates the discussion. Specifically, in a country like Pakistan where a considerable number of women have to face social ills like honour killing, rape, sexual harassment and marital abuse obviously needs women’s empowerment. However, there are a number of social, political, economic and religious factors which have to be taken into account. Oppression is an important issue which needs significant investigation.

There are a number of feminist NGO’s and popular feminist figures working in Pakistan to fight against women’s oppression and empower women through different projects. However, one needs to inquire as to what kind of expectations they have regarding their initiatives and who they exactly mean to empower.

Not too long ago, the ‘Girls at Dhabas’ campaign gained significant momentum on social media. The idea was to reclaim public spaces for women in Pakistan. Female Pakistani social media users posted pictures of themselves venturing into ‘Dhabas’ (roadside cafes), which are usually overwhelmingly populated by men, especially those from the working class. Women are usually advised not to visit such places alone. In an interview, Saadia Khatri, the founder of the campaign stated that she thought women’s access to public spaces like parks and streets is crucial to feminism’s central concerns and women’s empowerment. However, the project was criticised because those participating in it were usually women from the upper class. Moreover, since the campaign was limited to social media, which working class women don’t usually have access to. Because of this, ‘Girls at Dhabas was criticised for only focusing on empowering women from the upper class.

It is important to consider how far we can go if we fail address the root causes of problems faced by women and don’t develop a functional framework to deal with them

While ‘Girls at Dhabas was focused on reclaiming those public spaces from where women are excluded, there are hundreds and thousands of women who face maltreatment every day in the spaces in which they freely participate. There are still thousands of women who do not have access to any of these spheres and those are the women who are in actual need of empowerment. No doubt, we cannot disregard the rich history of feminism in Pakistan as rightly pointed out by Saadia Khaatri but at the same time we should not overlook the flaws in feminism which hamper its efficacy. This is just one campaign but similar problems can be traced in many other feminist projects in Pakistan.

Feminist elitism is not exclusive to Pakistan. For example, the recent ‘#me too’ initiative which was started by Tarana Burke, a youth worker and sexual assault survivor. She has been working on ‘me too’ since the mid-2000s — particularly with young women of colour. She focuses on what she calls empowerment through empathy, as reported in The Huffington Post. However, it only became well known after it was taken up by Hollywood celebrity Alyssa Milano in an attempt to reveal the many counts sexual harassment and assault by Harvey Weinstein. The internet was soon flooded with stories sexual assault and harassment shared under the #metoo tags from women all over the world. This phenomenon speaks to the role of elitism and popularity in the feminist struggle which can be seen as self-oppressive with its internal contradictions and short comings.

Last week Pakistani academy award winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obiad Chinnoy initiated a heated debate on sexual harassment through a tweet. This time it was not for a documentary exposing violence and oppression but it was to raise her voice against a real incident. A doctor at AKU hospital sent a friend request to Sharmeen’s sister on Facebook after tending to her in the emergency ward. Sharmeen’s tweet, “Unfortunately the doctor messed with the wrong women in the wrong family and I will definitely report him! Harassment has 2 stop!” is a statement which can be interpreted and analysed in many ways. However, more news made it to the headlines which further complicated the matter. It is claimed that the doctor accused of harassing Sharmeen’s sister got fired by AKUH although the hospital administration has neither confirmed nor denied this course of action. This case has highlighted the conceptual contradictions and inherent confusions in the matter of the feminist struggle and women’s empowerment in Pakistan.

Nighat Dad, lawyer and founder of Digital Rights Foundation, approved this as a case of harassment while Abdul Hameed Bhutto, the in-charge of the FIA cybercrime cell Karachi, said sending a Facebook friend request, which could either be accepted or rejected, was not harassment. Going deeper into the matter, Supreme Court lawyer Khalil Ahmed Siddiqui declared that sending a friend request on social media does not fall under any definition of harassment. However, the act could be against the AKUH’s code of conduct”.

This situation raises many questions regarding law and enactment of law, professional code of conduct and most importantly the use, understanding and implication of the word ‘harassment’, which we clearly lack on a social and institutional level, let alone national. Another aspect of this problem is raised by blogger and activist Ali Moeen Nawazish who stated “I don’t think he harassed her by sending a friend request. But, it was unprofessional. Yet, I think firing is too extreme and wouldn’t have had happened if it wasn’t an influential celebrity in question.” His statement is a direct reference to what Sharmeen said in her tweet and this connects back to the internal contradiction of feminist struggle which has been discussed earlier.

Sharmeen is obviously well aware of her status and position. This played a key role in making it a big deal. Every day there are countless friend requests being sent and received by people in all sorts of personal and social settings in Pakistan which go unnoticed. The action taken on this issue by AKUH is equally questionable and controversial. The hospital administration shared no information on the matter explaining if the case was investigated or not and why, if the doctor is fired what is the code of conduct that he has violated, and how is this sacking justified as a lawful punishment for his act which is still under the debate to be classified as “harassment” or not. It is also absurd that nobody tried to obtain a statement of the doctor to look at this matter more efficiently. This is not to undermine the intensity of the issue but it is important if we want to develop a comprehensive understanding of such problems in order to avoid confusion. Moreover, elitism still remains a core issue in this case as there is no doubt that the response and advancement of a similar case would not be same if it would be an ordinary Pakistani woman challenging it instead of an Oscar winning women’s rights activist.

Henceforth, it is important to consider how far we can go if we fail address the root causes of problems faced by women and don’t develop a functional framework to deal with them. In addition to that, if we continue to ignore the class factor within the feminist activism reproducing the dominant discourses, it will be impossible to bring an actual change as those women who truly deserve this empowerment are not only oppressed by external elements but by the loop holes of feminism itself. Feminist activists derive legitimacy for their activism by speaking on the behalf of oppressed and thus claim to represent those with whom they have nothing in common. Feminists should aim towards a bigger and practical change involving women who do not have resources and platforms to speak against the oppression they experience. Furthermore, in order to prevent falling into the tautological pitfall we need to understand feminism as an equalising claim for men and women rather thana tool for domination of women over men.

The writer graduated from Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan in spring 2016 with double majors in history and political science and a minor in sociology. She aims to pursue a doctorate to pursue her interests in Punjab in the context of decolonization and the comparative study of south Asia and other post colonial states

Published in Daily Times, October 31^st 2017.