KARACHI:
Life is not easy for women. Worse still, if a girl is born in a society rooted in patriarchy and feudalism like ours, she is just a little above a commodity. It rends my heart to see numerous girls suffering at the hands of this male-dominated structure every day.
I am originally from a village but I have been residing in Hyderabad for a long time. I am shocked to see that conditions like stress, trauma and anxiety that evoke fears here are considered an inherent feature of womanhood in the rural side. It is not only the societal conditioning of women to be passive that has ruined their lives; it has to do as much with the prescribed role of a man too. Men are taught to be aggressive and bigoted toward women. It is even alright, they are told, to be alcoholic, cruel and womanising, because after all, they are men. Any gentleness toward women can bring their masculinity in question. Regrettably, a lot of this mess is done on the pretext of religion. Islam is misinterpreted by society to deprive women of their agency. Women are told that it is a sin to stand up to the men around them. This is sheer nonsense. The Holy Quran explicitly declares that all people — men or women — are equal before Allah.
There is no justification for the plight of women in Pakistan either, with Article 25(2) of the Constitution explicitly prohibiting any “discrimination on the basis of sex alone”. Alas! the lived reality is different with women’s rights either being outright denied or diluted. The crying need to address this gender asymmetry can be gauged from the words of Bacha Khan: “If you wish to know how civilised a culture is, look at how they treat its women.”
Bibi Rida Shah
Hyderabad
Published in The Express Tribune, November 18th, 2023.
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