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Women
on the go All
that extra talk Keeping
me, myself in mind My
right to choose women’s day Only
a degree of freedom
This March 8, we at TNS do not want to
focus on women in politics, harassment at workplace, discrimination at home,
crimes against women, acid throwing, domestic violence, women’s movement
or even feminism. No we do not want to celebrate womanhood either. We just
want to know what young women think about their lives in general. It is not that everything negative
happening to women has suddenly come to a halt. Or a villainous anti-woman
tide has swept everything Yet this list of what women have done and
are doing must be pitched against another list — one that talks of what
women did not or could not do. The latter list we presume is many times
longer than the former. Straddling the line between these
heartening episodes and the looming pessimism, we want to see how young
women respond to what is happening around them. Through them, we want to
know how and if young men are changing too. Are we breaking stereotypes, are
we conforming or are we doing both. If the young women have been allowed to
exercise choice in matters of education, does that choice extend to other
spheres — like careers, life partner, dress code, or in just having an
opinion of their own. Beyond these important questions, what does it mean to
be moving around in this society as women, within families, in institutions
and offices and on roads in public transport, dressed in jeans or hijab or
both. We have randomly picked young women in our
midst who we thought had an opinion on the subject and asked them to write
very subjective accounts. It is in these accounts that the society must find its answers.
All
that extra talk A popular breakfast show on television
recently cited a study which claimed that women talked more than men. After
giving biological ‘proof’ — that women had 30 per cent more of the
language protein ‘Foxp2’ and hence produced a far greater number of
words — the host then opened the question to the audience, which was
mostly female, and asked them whether they thought this statement was true. Many callers agreed with the hypothesis
wholeheartedly, saying that men had to spend more time working so they
didn’t have time to talk as much as women did. Another caller said that
housewives talked more because they were more comfortable discussing their
feelings and emotions. This discussion took place on Feb 25, three
days before the first ever women’s day celebration in the USA in 1909.
More than a century later, women continue to reveal biases towards their own
gender and reaffirm traditional roles; which makes me wonder how much
progress we have made in terms of social attitudes. Talk is political. “Talking more” is
often equated with silliness and emptiness of mind. And not just in our
culture. We are often told that “silence is golden” and that an “empty
vessel makes most noise”. “When words are many, transgression is not
lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent,” says the Bible. Go
back all the way to Mirat-ul-Uroos and you will find that the perfect woman
— Asghari — is wisely reticent as opposed to her scatterbrained and
stupid garrulous sibling — Akbari. So it isn’t entirely coincidental that
one caller on the breakfast show said that while she did talk too much, her
husband didn’t mind because otherwise the house seemed empty and silent. Listening to the discussion on television,
it was clear that studies like these focus on categorising both sexes —
women as infants and men as aloof and emotionally retarded. It’s very hard
to take a talkative woman seriously. Similarly, to deny men the right to
feel is to constrict them in what Tony Porter calls “The Man Box” — a
code of masculinity that emphasises strength and even violence that is
divorced from softer emotion. It is to ascribe both sexes into an accepted
code of behaviour, which denies them the complexity of being human.
Categorising in terms of gender leaves no room for individuality. It
dismisses rather than describes. But I suppose, particularisation doesn’t
make good talk show material. After all, generalisations are comfortable,
which is why such surveys abound. It is tiresome to see studies based on
such questions: studies which investigate which sex has the heavier brain
(read: which sex is more intelligent) which sex is better at multi-tasking,
which sex is more prone to violence and hysteria. They have relevance only
because they resonate with the stereotypes that people want to reinforce. I wish that the talk show had shown greater
responsibility than citing an isolated study to create a trite round of
questioning. If it had investigated further, it would have seen that the
claim that women talk more than men as been disputed and disproved time and
time again. Dr Louanne Brizendine in her book, “The Female Brain”
claimed that women used 20,000 words a day as compared to men’s 7000. Mark
Liberman, professor of phonetics at the University of Pennsylvania conducted
another study to show that any difference, if it existed, was negligible and
in no way representative of an entire gender. If we want to empower women, we need to
look through such biases critically; examine the politics behind such
‘proofs’. Breakfast shows can be one way to reach out to an audience to
teach them to investigate generalizations and deconstruct them, not reaffirm
them. But when a friend heard my objections, she
laughed. I was told that this was ‘just’ a woman’s show and the
demographic left no room for such serious discussion. And that in itself seemed to be a comment
on the situation of women in this country. The writer’s recent novel “How It
Happened” has already won considerable critical acclaim
Keeping
me, myself in mind Before my birth my
parents had been keenly anticipating a daughter, unlike most families in
this half of the world, they were disappointed when my older brother turned
out to be a boy. They were ready for me,
their darling daughter, who would be a beacon of love and care in the
household. This misconception had more or less evaporated in the fit of
tantrums I threw by the time I turned seven. To quote my mother, I was
‘impossible”, more unruly and stubborn than both my brothers (another
one came after me). The only time I would behave would be when other people
were around. In front of outsiders, I was the daughter everyone wanted,
perfectly girly in my frilly dresses, complacent, quiet and shy. For me, it had always been
a comparison between what my brothers had and what I had, and so I grew up
acutely aware of some of the differences that exist in society — very
subtle in our household but more exaggerated in the wider society. At ten, it was my refusal
to serve guests just because, as a girl it was my duty; at sixteen, a
reactionary refusal to cook, while my brothers excelled at it. My parents
were willing to listen and change their perspective on things, where they
found me right. However, there was still an underlying concern about social
acceptability. It always worried them that in my apparent immaturity and
lack of understanding of issues on a larger level, I would isolate myself
and become a social pariah. During my teens, I also
did not want to stand apart from the crowd. If the other girls in my class
were not allowed to wear sleeveless clothes, I pretended it was something
wrong too; if they were not allowed to have male friends then I told them my
parents disapproved too, the reality being totally different. I always had more freedom,
but then I did not want it. It was only later in my A-levels that I actually
understood its importance and then I wanted the freedom to make every
choice. I realised conformity was not necessarily the most positive of
concepts and so began the struggle that continues to date. It’s a struggle to break
traditional boundaries of men and women, making the available choices more
vast. It’s in the simple things for someone like me, travelling in a
rickshaw despite being told by male friends and other people’s concerned
parents about how unsafe they are. They allow me to be mobile, without the
burden of a car or having to ask someone. There is a certain type of
satisfaction to be derived from travelling around the city in a rickshaw
clad in skinny jeans and short tops. There is a refusal to choose a career
simply because it appears to be more women-friendly, something I’ve been
told by various people since grade eight. Women ultimately have to
become homemakers, my mother told me as I entered my twenties. There is a
general consensus that I will eventually come around to accepting that role
as my supreme duty. There is no use explaining that I might want something
else for my life that does not involve making marriage the only purpose and
dedicating my entire life training to be a good wife. The greater challenge does
not lie in making my mother or any other woman I know to understand this but
to explain it to men around me. A large majority of them have seen their
mothers be only homemakers and so cannot perceive a marriage or relationship
that looks unfamiliar. They have always seen their fathers take precedence
at home and so expect the same type of exalted treatment. When you actually block
out the opinions you hear and do something previously considered a taboo,
personally or socially, it occurs to you how simple it had always been. The
challenges to being your own self as a woman appear greater from afar; close
up I’ve realised it was always about changing my own mind. The writer is a graduate
student
My
right to choose I grew up in an
educated Pakistani household that espouses high moral and religious values.
The bubble that I grew up in was fairly homogenous. Most of the people I
interacted with came from more or less the same socio-economic strata as me
— they were all Muslim and more or less had the same mindsets. I would
champion girl’s education when it came to arguing with my maids for
educating their daughters or given an open forum to debate otherwise. In
other matters, I always took a pro-choice stance when it came to issues
where women had to decide what to do with their lives. It has been recent
that I have started to associate myself as a feminist. When you are as deeply
immersed in homogeny, only when you are jolted out of your niche’ you
begin to question. When you are out of your comfort zone, only then you
critically analyse what you and your beliefs stand for. Believe it or not,
for me it happened when I left Lahore and landed in a bastion of diversity
and intellect at a liberal arts university in the United States. Let’s go back to where I
started. I am a feminist. Yes, a Muslim, Pakistani feminist. Before you
label me as one of those crazy types, I suggest you understand what I am
made of and what I stand for. For me, feminism is an amalgamation and fusion
of some basic beliefs I have held on to my entire life. When I started
understanding them more, I labeled them under the specific category they
fell. When I confessed openly that I am feminist, I got judged and many
eyebrows were raised. Back to my explanation of
feminism, for me it is more of an intellectual commitment than supporting
the political movement that started in the West in the nineteenth and
twentieth century. My definition of feminism seeks justice for women in all
spheres of life, supports the end of sexism of all forms, and gives women
the right to choose what is right for them without being subjugated or
labeled. It includes a variety of moral and political claims, but it is
always asking and answering questions through constructive and critical
dialogue. This process only starts when something makes me feel grossly
uneasy at heart. One example is that of the
generic Pakistani male with double standards. He, who will confine his own
wife to the four walls of his house, not let his daughter go to school
because she might have the potential to interact with the opposite gender,
but will fix his gaze on the women he sees in the market. His eyes will
follow these women, make them uneasy but he will be shameless and will not
stop looking. This man is unacceptable to the feminist inside me. Another thing that bothers
me is the useless boundary between women who cover their heads by choice and
the women who criticise them for doing so and vice versa. If a woman wants
to cover herself up for merely religious reasons, it is her right to do so.
If another wishes to wear red lipstick, blow dry her hair, and wear jeans,
it is absolutely her right to do so. Women should not condemn each other’s
freedoms but respect it rather than politicise it. Under the Kemalist
ideology, headscarf was banned in Turkey, which was an infringement to the
right of choice that women have. In the same way, Zia-ul-Haq ordered all
newscasters who appeared on the television to cover their heads. This gave
women no choice of their own. I think, as a society, we should move past
judging women with what is on their head and judge them based on what is in
their head. I recently attended an
event that was hosted in my university. It is a movement that is based on
giving women the right to dress the way they want to without labeling them
in a derogatory fashion. At the walk, it was interesting to see women
dressed in all kinds of garb, from bikinis to hijabs. While I see the roots
of the patriarchal foundations being shaken to its core in the West, I
don’t see the required change taking aplace at home. This worries the
feminist in me. I decided to label myself
as a feminist because the gender inequality in Pakistan worries me; the way
women criticise other women worries me more. Many local television soaps
have become almost nauseating. They make everything worse by giving women
the roles of muted housewives whose only entertainment in life is pranking
upon their mother-in-laws rather than an entertaining an independent brain
for a change. I am feminist because I
want to dress up in a particular fashion without being judged or without
being labeled. I am a feminist because I don’t like it when my friends
complain the guys stare at them. I am a feminist because a young girl in my
country had to take a bullet for raising her voice for the right to educate
herself. I am feminist because I feel that there is more to being a woman
than just being an eye candy. If you still want to raise your eyebrow at me
for being a feminist, please go ahead. After all, you also have the right to
choose. The writer is a freelance
journalist, studying in the US
It would be
academically dishonest and historically unfair to limit the personal and
political realities, struggles and accomplishments of Pakistani women to
contemporary developments only; ours is a rich and complex chronicle of
events from the colonised days to the supposed post-colonial times. I use
the word ‘supposed’ deliberately because I firmly believe we still have
a considerable lot of decolonising to do within the realms of intimate and
public spaces. I came back to the
motherland after September 11. My personal narration of life as a Pakistani
Muslim girl who spent her childhood and adolescence flying over oceans from
one home to another home resonates within the working immigrant diasporas
but my life in Pakistan for the past decade or so has taught me lessons that
can be shared with anyone in the surrounding region or even the whole world.
I learned several facts
that didn’t make life perfect necessarily but it made it enriching and
meaningful. I learned all those lessons from the beautiful, bright Pakistani
women around me, including my mother, grandmother, teachers, students,
friends and the women I met on the streets, in rallies, at conferences whose
names I will never know but their faces and voices remain etched in my mind. I learned that there are
countries within a country. A woman’s sovereignty is defined by the
borders she creates around herself while living in a patriarchy; it is the
first step she must take to uphold her mental and physical autonomy. While
growing up in both USA and Pakistan, I learned that no place in the world is
safe for a girl because patriarchy operates in multiple forms. In USA, patriarchy
beguiles society into believing it is ‘progressive’ by dehumanising
young girls through mass media hyper-sexualisation and predator capitalistic
consumerism. In Pakistan, patriarchy dangerously misleads society into
claiming it is ‘benevolent’ for women by exploiting and manipulating
tools like religion and tradition. On both sides, we see the
sovereignty of women constantly and recklessly violated. But this is not to
say that all hope is lost. I have seen women in my society challenge and
dismantle the hegemony of all sorts of oppressions in their unique and
individualistic ways. From the rural female
workers in labour unions who protest fearlessly for their wages to the young
women that enrolled in my university’s master’s degree programme so they
could “take public policy into their hands” to the young girl I taught
in matriculation who told me she was studying to become a doctor so she
could open a clinic in her father’s village to the transgender woman Sanam
Fakir who is currently contesting an election poll all the while maintaining
a charity and computer centre for her community to every single woman in
Pakistan who has toiled to make something out of her life. I believe we all are full
of promise but we need to do more. I learned that we can
challenge sexual harassment only by occupying public space and raising our
voice in all spheres of life. Misogyny thrives only because we blame the
victim instead of the criminal. I learned that our cultural obsession with
marrying young men and women off is counterproductive, and I am pleased to
know that many Pakistani youths are questioning this norm actively but there
are plenty who still fall in this trap. Marry only when you are established
so that the wall you lean against in tough times is no other person than
yourself. I learned that we need to
encourage our young women to read and think more consciously and critically
about the world that they were born into and the lives they intend on
living. I learned that our self-evaluation as women is a radical notion in a
hostile patriarchy; don’t let anyone dictate your worth to you based on
appearance, class, gender, caste or ideology. Live by the terms that appeal
to your sensibility as a human being and adopt a lifestyle that empowers
you. We’ve come a long way
yet we have a long way to go. There is a lot more that has to be done in
terms of legislature, social, political, religious, economic and cultural
empowerment for women and contrary to popular belief, it is possible and
there are pragmatic and intersectional ways to go about it. On this International
Women’s Day, I salute all the women who have toiled before us and continue
to do so. I am positive we can and will carry their legacy forward. The writer blogs at
mehreenkasana.wordpress.com
Living
through the void As I sit in Hong
Kong’s rapid transit railway to move from one island to another, I notice
it has a lot of women. Most of them are white-collar workers, menial
labourers and students. Like most developed countries, Hong Kong’s women
population outnumbers men by a few per cent. And, therefore, you see a lot
of them on the streets, working, walking and enjoying equality. My mother didn’t have a
brother and her father was very resentful of this. When my twin and I were
born, she was over-burdened with the thought of more girls. Eventually, we
were brought up by our paternal grandmother, who considered us little dolls
(meri guddiyan), more than anything else. Unlike my mother, who was
a doctor, my grandmother was a semi-literate village dweller whose sole
contact with the outside world was for buying vegetable and clothes.
Sometimes, the educated but intellectually lazy women are gender-biased,
while some of the illiterates continue to struggle. Similarly, my great
grand-mother, who was also not educated, was bias-free. While all my doctor
and ‘M.A pass’ aunties considered me as a “burden”. The train moves in an
air-tight tunnel. Each time it starts moving forward, a gush of wind flows
backwards from the holes in the ceilings. It reminds me of the school van
which I took for more than a decade, with its rear-side open. All the educational
institutes I attended were girls-only. Perhaps this is why some of them were
so oppressive. The administration (in school and college alike) always had
this responsibility of preventing us from running away with men. The doors
were always locked. A check was kept on who we went out with at the end of
the day and who came to fetch us. Occasionally, when a young girl was caught
sneaking out, it was a huge scandal. And, of course, the institute didn’t
take the responsibility of this slip-up when the parents came complaining. The train makes brief
stops at several stations, before it reaches the inter-change station. This
is where I switch to another train which will take me under the sea to
another island. Though Hong Kong is an alien country, it has given me the
respect and sense of equality I could never have imagined back home. I am not yet disappointed
in the women in Waziristan who are not allowed to study or the discriminated
minorities in interior Sindh who are forcibly married to Muslim men. The
highly qualified, urban, middle-class dweller let me down: the young woman
on a Fulbright in USA who believes women can never equate men, or the
doctorate from Purdue on a mission to prevent young KCites from dating. Even some of my ambitious
friends have been cowed down into house-keeping by practically successful
marriages. Most have internalised the patriarchal glitch, lost all hope and
become proponents of the system. Occasionally, the train stops between the
stations. This is because the train on the next station hasn’t moved on.
Usually, the passengers clog the doors during the rush hours and delay their
closing. Just like in Pakistan, a little women-emancipating legislation
clogs the narrative and delays real change. Gender discrimination
keeps returning in morning transmissions and newspaper features because
women do face a lot of inequity in Pakistan. The little Urdu fiction I have
read, doesn’t accept us as full people. I see only two types of female
characters — the victim and the rebel. Even writers like Manto, Ismat
Chughtai and Kishwar Naheed have fallen for this trap, along with the new
sensation Umera Ahmed. The women are oppressed into submission or rebel to
rise up at a high cost. I have always tried to
move on from this “either rebellion or submission” conflict. Perhaps,
this is why I write. I want to be a person and not just a woman. But then
someone tries to grab me in the street or an acid burn victim commits
suicide — and it strikes me in the face again. The train stops at the
station where my office is and I board off, along with a string of labourers
carrying heavy cartons that say “Caution: Choking Hazard”. Most of these
well-built carriers are women. The writer is a graduate
student at the University of Hong Kong and a former staff member at the News
on Sunday
By Rafia Khan I belong to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a
conservative society, where being a female throws up many challenges. For
instance, some twenty years ago, because conservative culture, many women of
KPK were not permitted to get education. Even today, it is not suitable —
and often not affordable — for some families to send their daughters to
schools, especially to colleges and universities for higher education. I wanted to be a doctor and I worked hard
to realise my dream. But circumstances compelled me to opt for other
subjects — and instead I got a bachelor’s degree. I wanted to study further once the
bachelor’s degree was obtained. My family members did not allow me to take
admission in a university. It was not that they didn’t want me to. They
basically submitted to social pressure. They were of the view that the
university’s ‘environment’ was ‘open’ and that it may spoil me. However, they allowed me to complete my
studies as a private candidate. It is not easy for girls, especially from a
conservative background, to argue with family members. I was able to
convince my father and brother that university education would benefit me
and that I will not do anything to embarrass the family. Finally, I got permission for admission in
the university. I enjoyed my days at the institution. My teachers and class
fellows, including boys, were cooperative, with a few exceptions though! One
of the good things in the Pakhtun culture is that they respect women — all
women, not just those belonging to their family. As luck would have it, while I was studying
in the university, I got a job as a reporter in a media outlet. My
colleagues are cooperative. They do not send me to sensitive areas, where
law and order can be a problem or where women are not welcome. Truthfully, my journey from college life to
professional life was not all that smooth due to social resistance to
women’s emancipation. But, I think, the culture of how the young
women look at themselves and how the society looks at them is quietly
changing even in a traditional society where I come from. Though in a
minority, the open-minded family that I belong to has given me the right to
make my own decisions, such as choosing a life-partner, of course with the
consent of my parents. The writer works as a reporter in a local
daily newspaper in Peshawar
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else.
There are things happening that are not easy to ignore. More girls and women
are dropping in the schools and colleges than dropping out in even the most
conservative of places. They are internationally being rewarded for their
art and films and writings. Obvious as it may sound, they are flying planes,
and managing the country’s parliament as well as foreign affairs.
