KARACHI:
Women constitute around half of our total population. The country, therefore, cannot afford to see half of its population lag behind in any respect. For us to progress as a nation, we need to empower our women. And journey towards empowering women starts from home. It’s the parents, mothers in particular, who should give confidence to their daughters — starting off from providing them good education. The parents should treat sons and daughters equally and not indulge in any kind of discrimination. This equal treatment is sure to strengthen the weaker sex mentally, to start with. And this strength is sure to come handy when a girl steps out of her house to receive education or perform a job at office or simply cross the road or go shopping.
Involvement of women in national affairs is a must. And an educated woman is better placed to take part in nation building, thereby serving the country and the people. Since education gives confidence, an educated woman has the wherewithal to face the very many gender-based problems rampant in our society like abuse at home and outside; harassment at workplace; sexual exploitation; early marriage; women trafficking; etc.
Unfortunately, according to reports, around 650 million women worldwide have been married before the age of 18; and 71% of overall human trafficking involves girls and women. Over 2.7 billion women don’t get treated equally at the workplace. They don’t get the same opportunities as men. Almost 16% of women don’t earn more than men because there is a gender pay gap and nearly 82 million women around the world have no legal protection against discrimination at the workplace. Only 25% of women participate in parliamentary affairs just because of discrimination, fear and violence.
What we need to do to empower our women is to: provide them good education; make them aware of their legal and human rights; increase job opportunities for them; give them equal treatment in all respects; assign them leadership and decision-making roles, be that at home, in office or at societal level; increase their political role, starting from the grassroots; etc. By taking these steps, we can truly empower our women and lead them to the path of development and prosperity.
Dua Zafar
Karachi
Published in The Express Tribune, September 24th, 2022.
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