Daily Times

A handful of lawyers went to the Peshawar High Court last month to get an FIR( First Information Report) registered against the organisers of the Aurat March. Before going to the court, they tried their luck at the police station, where an SHO refused to oblige them. The court, however, is empowered under Section 22-A of the Code of Criminal Procedure to act as ‘Justice of Peace’ and order the registration of an FIR against an offence in the event that the police fail to do so. Thus, last week the police were left with no choice but to do the needful, though they made no arrests.

The lawyers alleged that those who had attended and participated in the Women’s March, held to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8, used derogatory language against the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Hazrat Ayesha. A similar petition was filed before a lower court in Lahore, which the judges dismissed. They acknowledged that the protest passed largely without incident and that women had the right to highlight their plight through peaceful protest. Those who did not seek due process preferred to doctor footage of the Aurat March to make it appear that blasphemy had been committed, contravening Pakistan’s social and cultural values.

Every year millions of women come out on to the streets under the banner of the Women’s March, throwing a spotlight on the prevailing inequalities they have to endure. This is a clear indication that women’s empowerment lacks ownership and remains unfinished business. In March 1911, Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland became the first countries to honour International Women’s Day; sharing an agenda to support women’s right to vote, hold public office, access vocational training, and enter the labour force and participate without discrimination.

Every year millions of women protest under the banner of the Women’s March, spotlighting prevailing inequalities. This is a clear indication that women’s empowerment lacks ownership and remains unfinished business

Over the last couple of years, Women’s Day has assumed a special place in the lives of Pakistani women. Rather than participating from the sidelines or holding seminars that do not go beyond the four walls — women of all stripes and colour throng to the streets to air their grievances and demonstrate solidarity with another. Though this in itself was sufficient to give the religious right cause for concern, it was the Aurat March’s slogan — “Mera jism, meri marzi” (my body, my choice) — that these groups found hardest to swallow. Rather than seeing mutiny against objectification, the dissenters mistakenly saw women expressing the desire to use and abuse their bodies any way they want.

The #MeToo movement brought to light how women have had to surrender, at times by force, their bodies to get ahead in their careers. Nothing is more devastating to a woman than the feeling of being objectified, or worse.

Women have come a long way in achieving a certain degree of liberation from the patriarchal system that treats them as subversive beings. It indeed has proved a long walk to freedom and the journey is still ongoing. Imagine being part of a political system that did not recognise women’s right to elect parliamentary representatives, or the equivalent. This meant there was no gender sensitivity on issues concerning women. Which also meant that women were not taken as citizens of their own country. Without being counted as part of the community, each woman lived to fight each day for her rights to have a decent environment both in the public and private sphere; the home and the workplace.

With advent of the Industrial Revolution, women were dragged from their homes to work in factories alongside men. This additional labour was crucial to Europe’s rapid economic advancement. Also, following two devastating World Wars, a vast number of women were left widowed and found themselves left to the mercy of the state for sheer survival. Therefore making them part of the factors of production was easier and more profitable than feeding, while they sat at home. But because women had little or no representation at the state level and had yet to break countless glass-ceilings — they remained underpaid and undervalued. It was common for women to work for fourteen hours a day and six days a week, for next to no pay. In this ‘taken-for-granted’ environment, it became difficult to perform, especially when women were also expected to care for the family back at come. Protests and reform rallies kicked off to underscore the question of women’s rights. It took the Suffragettes more than 100 years to win the right to vote. They protested, debated, sat for years with the state machinery to sensitise and inform them of existing gender inequality and discrimination. Today, these issues form part of the international discourse. Indeed, this came full circle during the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, where Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the time America’s First Lady, delivered her now famous speech: Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.

This changed the gender landscape in substantial ways — many countries, including Pakistan, reformed laws, for example, to allow women to pursue careers in a favourable environment. Notwithstanding the leap from being recognised as mere citizens to actual human beings — women’s empowerment is still not recognised as representing the inalienable rights of women. Unless and until this changes — the struggle will have to carry on.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Lahore (durdananajam1@gmail.com)