by Fatima Masood
…the roots, the power, the supremacy lies with every person but women.
It is perhaps a good time to give every reader a disclaimer, to protect the fragile ego of the very society we are a part of, to emphasize the very fact that the roots, the power, the supremacy lies with every person but women. It is time we accept the blatant nature of this very statement before wrapping our falsely infected minds with the hope of a miracle, a change, something and someone to re-define what it means to be a woman in Pakistan.
52,370 cases of violence
We started the new year with extensive shows of striking fireworks, delivery of messages to get better to the people we love, to be kind but we forget that kindness, goodness, humility are all virtues and virtues do not form until the primary notions of humanity: security, safety, just being and acting like humans remain unfulfilled. When the human race kills, assaults, abuses, we go way back – back into the alleys of darkness, into the places where brutality resides.
In the year 2021, 52,370 cases of violence, particularly sexual harassment, kidnapping and murder were reported out of which 8719 received media coverage only; many more remained unreported.
It is intriguing how all these figures and facts still remain untapped when it comes to practical implementation and constitutional changes. It has become a need, a medium of sustenance, a way to channel your humanity, to maybe stop listening and start acting. Your happy posts about how privileged of a woman you are might be a gleeful reminder for you and those you love but there are women who, with every passing minute, get closer to the verge of vulnerability, breakdown, a shatter of all hopes, all possibilities.
writing down the exasperation of a woman might be the only freedom of communication we get in Pakistan.
A country where a woman is gang- raped in a family park, women journalists are threatened for their work and choice of clothing, underage girls are married (given away) as valuables barely reaching the worth of prestigious men, women of the minorities are abducted and forcefully converted to Islam, where a religion that offers every right, every freedom of choice to women is exploited at the hands of the ‘all-knowing’ ulemas… the where’s and women will continue but my words will fall short. It’s despairing because writing down the exasperation of a woman might be the only freedom of communication we get in Pakistan.
It is crucial to understand that girls become women earlier than boys become men. The heaps of responsibilities, the pressures that function to create a framework for a socially accepted woman and the society’s expectation to make women understand the consequences of deviance walks way ahead in the life of a girl: hence, their early stroll down the difficult road to understanding femininity. The birth of a girl, still in most parts of the country, is considered a lamenting liability. This is then continued to see if the mother of the girl can give birth to a boy. The mother, often without her consent, is then tested, analyzed and examined to see if she performs well and gives birth to an ‘heir’. God forbids if that does not happen, the
mother becomes a woman who has to take care of all the girls she gave birth to, might be under consistent violent attacks at the hands of her male counterpart while the girls may become a source of unskilled and unpaid workforce before they are introduced to the beauty of the vicious cycle again: marriage, children, violence, repeat.
Is optimism still an option?
In a country where feminist movement by the name of Aurat March gets public attention for its controversial tagline and not for the problems of women that started the movement in the first place, where objectification of the opposing gender, from exhibiting a number of provocative banners to putting up offensive content on social media, is considered to be the best possible solution by a handful of radical feminists, where career-oriented women are stereotyped as ‘rebellious’, where draping a shawl and learning how to cook gives you a high score for a righteous woman, where the dignity of a man does not get hurt by a woman being
publicly stripped in a public place, where a woman who steps outside her house amidst the staple male stare is a target of workplace harassment…. is optimism still an option?
there is always a way to initiate betterment…
There might be negligible hope to alter the status of women in Pakistan but there is always a way to initiate betterment. It might be far more reasonable to talk to your women, ask them
about the obstacles they go through, give them enough confidence so that they become a ladder of strength and ascend to heights that only a few recognize. They are your women, your talented, beautiful,
passionate, relentless and intelligent women, they are and will become a part of your life in every role. Tell them you’re proud of every little effort they put in that role as respecting them, honoring them, appreciating them might be the start to a bigger change, one that identifies them as equal and reverent beings, one that results in them being treated and loved as humans.
Equal and reverberant beings…
Note: source of all the pictures included in this post is Freepik.com
خدمت نامہ 