WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
By
Pamela Philipose
Rubina Khalid, member of the Pakistan Senate,
representing the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, wants
to try and monetise women's contribution by bringing them into formal
employment because as long as women are economically dependent on their
husbands, fathers or brothers their status will not change. (Credit: WFS)
Delhi (Women’s Feature Service) - Once known as Pakistan’s North West
Frontier region, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is one of the country’s poorest and most
conservative provinces. Straddling
It is from this unlikely scenario that three feisty women members of
parliament (MPs) - Rubina Khalid, Bushra Gohar and Farah Aaqil - have emerged
and are bringing a new dynamic to politics, both at the local and national
level. All three were part of a parliamentary delegation that visited
As is the case in
Khalid is disturbed that the status of women in
Unlike Khalid, who joined politics only recently, Senator Farah Aaqil
from
Today, 17 seats out of a total of 104 seats in the Senate, or Upper
House of Pakistan’s parliament, are reserved for women; while out of the 342
seats in the National Assembly, or the Lower House, 60 are reserved for women.
Aaqil hopes that in time their presence will grow. “We have already been able
to change the terms of political discourse. I think women politicians are more
conscious about social issues. Because they are more grounded and generally
less corrupt, they tend to be more effective,” she says.
Aaqil’s own experience bears this out. One of the first concerns she
took up when she joined politics as a member of the provincial assembly of
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa was child abuse in a local school. “It was the very first
time for me – I was a housewife before that – but I took courage in both hands,
and soon after taking oath went on to
talk about this terrible, horrible issue in the provincial assembly,” recalls
Aaqil. The case involved a group of teachers who were sexually abusing
succeeding batches of students for almost 30 years, without being brought to
book. Once Aaqil took up the case, she came under fire from her male colleagues
who questioned her right to raise such a socially abhorrent issue in the
assembly. But her brave intervention paid off – the teachers got arrested, and
there was a judicial inquiry into the issue.
Sooner or later women politicians like Aaqil, who want to change the
status quo, are forced to confront religious fundamentalism and feudal
mindsets. Bushra Gohar, a member of the National Assembly, was a women’s
activist for nearly 19 years before she decided to join mainstream politics at
the invitation of the Awami National Party, of which she is today the central
vice-president. In fact, her first political gesture was to take on the
fundamentalists, who had banned the playing of music in public places – a
tragic proscription in a region like the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that has a very
rich and ancient tradition of Hindko and Pashto folk music. “I decided to defy
this ban by telling my party to welcome me into its fold with folk music. All
the folk artistes of the region were invited and we had a very lovely musical
evening,” Gohar smiles.
Mainstream politics gave this MP the space to take more effectively the
very issues that she had focused on as an activist, and today she is a very
active member of the women’s caucus that the woman Speaker of the National
Assembly, Fehmida Mirza set up to bring women parliamentarians together so that
they can have a greater impact. Gohar believes that the two biggest hurdles
before
In
Addressing fundamentalism is an even more formidable challenge,
especially since fundamentalists use violence to impose their writ. Interestingly,
it is the women parliamentarians who have shown more grit in facing up to them.
In 2011, after the assassination of
The rising tide of violence hurts women the most. While
It is a rare male politician who would espouse such an issue. “Male
politicians tend to go with the status quo. We, on the other hand, try to make
the most of the limited spaces allowed to us,” adds Gohar. In her region, for
instance, when fundamentalist politicians held a jirga (consultative assembly),
she and her women colleagues decided to hold a women’s jirga to articulate what
they want. Concludes Gohar, “In this way, we give confidence to women who
believe they cannot speak. Now many women and young people are considering
getting into politics, and that bodes well for the future!”