Daily Times

Pakistan has been ranked the second-worst country in the world for gender inequality. It is one of the fundamental duties to provide equality to women in a society. Women play an important role in many areas of development and it is about time that role is acknowledged.

A girl is always considered someone’s daughter, friend, sister, wife or a grandmother but her individuality is not recognised. Instead, she is recognised by her relations with the male members of her family. This is a flawed way of looking at the issue of gender equality. it was just a glitter and remember all glitter is not gold. “Because you are a girl”, the sentence starts right hitting into your ears, right from the age of sixteen and to its end till you search to the level that you start saying this to your daughter. In Pakistan we saw many cases relating to girls being publicly harassed, kidnapped and raped which make every women insecure while moving into the society. The reasons for this mistreatment with the girls is the rising gender inequality. Gender inequality may seem a small factor, but it’s actually a real cause of all those violent and domestic issues which women have to face in Pakistan. Even if you’re brought up in a liberal family, that doesn’t mean that, you are free from all the discrimination which conservatives were facing. Gender inequality has no class and status, it exist anywhere and everywhere.

Gender inequality is something that is prevalent in all classes of our society and the government needs to do something about it. Awareness about importance of having equality at home and workplaces should be raised

Usually the study shows that most educated class or upper or upper middle class society were comparatively more open minded and warmly welcomed gender equality, but as things stands, the concept of gender equality is not embraced by any class. Inequalities are seen everywhere, even in the families which are considered educated. Yes the medium of discrimination may be different but the fact is that it does exist. There are different types of discrimination and mental torture, women usually face these days and story of mental torture starts when you turn 15 where your mother starts teaching you how to sit, talk, walk, dress up and laugh in a correct manner whether you want to speak, sit, dress up or walk like the way you want, but you stuck with family norms, values and follow up is a must. After 16 till 22, 23 your parents keep on targeting you to do best in your studies, whether we want to do medical or not, but once again, family norms or tradition have to be followed.

After that, the job hunt starts; in these periods of time, you meet many helpful people which make you feel that you are a girl and you have to be dealt as secondary. Whether you want to teach or not, or you know how to teach or not, but you only allow to do teaching and when no choice is left so let’s become a teacher because it’s a ‘respectable’ profession and family tradition has to be followed. As if women are not good enough to do anything else for a living. Luckily once you get a good job, jealously among male members of your own family starts. After getting enough education and you start feeling teaching profession is your career than suddenly parents start looking for a guy for your marriage. Soon you’ll come to know that you are a burden on your parents, it’s time to leave your parents home even if you don’t want to get married or you don’t really like the man you’re marrying, but once a family decides, marriage is a must. No matter how well you studied, or how much you earn, you will be told that your’re incomplete if you aren’t married.

Life is a name of lessons at each point of life; women were confronted with new lessons and experiences. Your mom, dad and brother, everyone is doing an effort to make you strong enough to understand that you’re born to do sacrifices. Every single women of this world commits a sacrifice for their loved one or a family. I know every single person does a sacrifice once in their life, but every man does not have to sacrifice in life. I know many people who even don’t know that true meaning of sacrifice. Sacrifice is a procedure of slandering your rights in front of your family just for your family or for society. Upper middle and lower class jointly make a society and women are a part of it, so it’s clear that it’s everywhere in the world. If you try to speak up from your rights, then for sure you are the most stubborn person in front of the family. Physical torture, mental torture, harassment, child marriage, health and education issues are the branches of gender inequality.

Gender inequality is something that is prevalent in all classes of our society and the government needs to do something about it. Awareness about importance of having equality at home and workplaces should be raised.

Published in Daily Times, November 17^th 2018.