Women’s leadership: ‘Choose between privilege and empowerment’

ECP additional secretary says everyone will be accountable for bad behaviour at the polls regardless of gender.

LAHORE:

The Election Commission of Pakistan has provided training to 700,000 personnel to ensure the safety and security of voters and to make the elections free of intimidation, said ECP Additional Secretary Afzal Khan on Thursday. Khan was speaking at the First National Networking Summit on Women’s Leadership which was held in the city.

The summit was organised by the Search for Common Ground Pakistan and the Insan Foundation Trust under the Women’s Initiative for Learning and Leadership (WILL) - a campaign aiming to highlight the struggles and achievements of women politicians in Pakistan.

Khan said training was provided to ECP staff, and the security personnel who will be working with the ECP, to ensure safe, secure and free elections. “The staff has been trained to acknowledge the presiding officers as their bosses.”

Khan added that everyone would be accountable for unfair behavior, including women. Recalling the case of Pakistan Peoples Party member Waheeda Shah who had slapped a polling officer in 2012, Khan said such incidents would not be tolerated. “Waheeda Shah did not slap a polling officer, she slapped the Election Commission of Pakistan.”

He said the ECP had tried to facilitate women’s participation in elections this year but regretted that the ECP’s proposal that the results from a polling station where women voters were less than 10 per cent be considered void had not been accepted.

Justice (retd) Nasira Iqbal voiced a reservation over the questions being posed to prospective candidates by returning officers. “These are the questions to ask while recruiting people to a mosque or in a religious capacity.” Justice Iqbal also noted that several political parties that were giving out tickets to female relatives of influential party members. “One can either enjoy the privilege of being a subordinate or be ready to pay the price of working towards empowerment,” said human rights activist Dr Rakshanda Parveen. Dr Parveen said that in a patriarchal society like Pakistan’s, women were often excluded from progress due to societal biases. Dr Parveen said as a young woman she had faced resistance in all spheres of her life. “Merit is unfortunately highly disregarded in our society.”

Caretaker Minister for Health and Women’s Development Salima Hashmi said women’s performance in the recent assemblies was a cause for celebration. She said it was unfortunate that despite their achievements, women failed to receive credit for the work they did. She said education was important in order to counter social regression.

A recommendation for setting up a Women’s Political Party also emerged during the session, Perspectives from Practitioners. However, no agenda was developed for the party. Afzal Khan invited women political workers to get a party registered.

The last session, Leaders: Perceptions, Portrayal and Reality, looked at how women were portrayed in the media. The News on Sunday editor Farah Zia said journalistic ethics were often not practiced in blogs and on the social media. “Journalists nowadays focus more on making their blog pieces dazzling and readable disregarding any and all journalistic ethics.”

Zia said that while women were not beyond accountability, action’s against them should not be on account of gender-based discrimination. Zia also said that editorial judgment had evolved and attempts to malign individuals were now discouraged.

“Women exercising free will and independent decision-making are portrayed as alien species in our plays,” said actor Sania Saeed. She said given the lack of regular content analysis, there was no objective critique of what was aired. This, she added, had led to deteriorating quality and erroneous perceptions of women.

“There is only seth or state media in this country - there is nothing in between,” said Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation Director General Murtaza Solangi. He said that the practice of judging the quality of content by its rating had polluted journalism and broadcast media. “The decision on what goes in print or on air rests with the managers.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2013.