The foreword of the book “The unfinished revolution: voices from the global fights for women’s rights” categorically points out that “”It’s a time of change in the world, with dictators toppling and new opportunities rising, but any revolution that doesn’t create equality for women will be incomplete. The time has come to realize the full potential of half the world’s population.”The book created a very striking opinion regarding the status and the rights of the women. However, the revolution of which Christine Amanpour talked about does not seem near in Pakistan specially. This deprivation of the rights of the women is escalating the discrimination against the women interminably. As a result of it, rights of women in Pakistan are encroached ruthlessly.
Unfortunately, mostly female children are exposed to the gender discrimination and their rights are violated. Straightforwardly, women who are living in urban areas are mostly educated and professional and they enjoy much better life and status than the illiterate women. The condition of the women who belong to areas like Balochistan and KPK, is miserable in comparison to the women of other parts of the country.
Furthermore, in rural areas in the four provinces in Pakistan, women are discouraged to acquire higher education because their culture does not allow. On the other hand, the women associated to the urban and modern areas are encouraged to get education so that they may join the technical or professional courses or institutes. However, when they attain professional or technical degree, they are also not allowed to work. They are not allowed to carry out the economic activities. As a consequence, their professional education goes into the bin. This is the major drawback as it leads the nation towards the economic disaster. No doubt, gender discrimination exists almost in all societies and economies of the world but this feature of gender discrimination is very much common in Pakistan.
According to the general office for population family planning, the idea of distinguishing men from women came from the impacts of Confucianism and the awareness of the people about life. Men were taught to have a duty of continuing the ancestral line
Additionally, the root cause of this wide gap within the genders and among the genders seems to be ”culture”. Cultural mode of interaction creates the social constructions. These constructions as a result formulate some questions. And these questions include: Is it through culture that we come to know who men and who women are? And what kind of relationship do the two have with each other? Questions like these and many more lead the women to be oppressed, depressed and mentally fatigued.
About half of the ‘mankind’ consists about women and they are treated as second class citizens all over the world specially in developing states.They are oppressed in different sectors of life. They are even entitled by renowned feminist writerslike Simon d Beauvoir as “second sex”. In the developing countries, one of the living examples is Pakistan which has been in contradiction with women since independence in 1947. Women’s lives are controlled and shaped by various gender discriminatory structures. Their contribution to the production and physical hardships are not acknowledged. A woman suffers in education, health and gender biased feelings and recreational practices.
According to the general office for population family planning, the idea of distinguishing men from women came from the impacts of Confucianism and the awareness of the people about life. Men were taught to have a duty of continuing the ancestral line. In that society, not having a son meant to be disrespectful towards the ancestors. Going on with this wrong conception, women are likely to lose the role in community. Though Confucianism is not present in Pakistan with one percent, still ideologies like these persist.
In this manner, as a human being, a woman is denied from her own identity. In some parts, she is considered as commodity owned by her father and brothers before marriage and then by her husband. She does not have the power to make a decision for her own life. Usually, girls are not asked about their marriage. Parents arrange their marriages with the man of their own choices. It has been discovered that if a couple is involved in some unethical practices, then the girl alone is blamed. Similarly, if a female marries twice or thrice, she is considered as unacceptable but the situation is totally different in case of males. A woman is looked down upon. In some parts, she is even considered characterless in such conditions. We are living in a male dominated society that’s why females are pushed to the walls. Even parents themselves introduce gender discrepancies, so how could we blame other people for that.
Besides these all, Pakistan ranks high on the top of countries with rampant discrimination. It is such a country where religion is often used as pretext to bind shackles around girls’ feet. Being a girl in this patriarchal society is hardly not less than a crime. From infanticide to honor killing to other abhorrent traditions, such as wanni, being a woman in Pakistan is a tall order. In the same way, Illiteracy, domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, honor killing, prostitution, acid attacks, child marriages and some of other consequences which women have to bear for the crime of being born as women. Such injustices discourage and demotivate females at high level. The real change will gradually disappear in order to eliminate gender discrimination. If this country demands a proper and perfect change, then the gender discrimination must be rooted out.
The writer is social researcher and is interested in social issues