Health–tick. Education–tick. Women…?

It was the old-timers. Those of us working in development in Northern Areas in the 80s and 90s, sitting together and comparing notes. It was agreed that whatever our organisational objectives may have been and they differed, there were three main goals. Education in a difficult and complex terrain riven by active and deadly sectarian conflict. Health services for poor and isolated communities. And the development of women and their integration across the spectrum — social, political, educational and in the workplace.

Over the course of a generation, there was agreement that in large part the first two if not fully achieved were on the way. It may be another generation before completion but the evidence was there. The new 30-bedded hospital at Sikanderabad and the girls’ high schools that were actually proliferating across Nagar, a place where education for girls was virtually non-existent 20 years ago. Self-congratulatory nods. Then there was the third goal. Women, and things took a darker turn.

All of us remembered the millions of dollars that came into both the government and NGO sectors. We remembered the programmes that were set up, the earnest discussion, the gradual inclusion of more and more women in the wider debate, probably peaking at the 2005 Valley Conference at which close to 50 per cent of the participants were women. We toiled away with the flipcharts and markers and whiteboards and produced reams of distilled common sense around a range of matters of common concern and not only women and then — the silence.

We ruminated. What happened? How come we did the education and the health and not the women? Maybe we thought that solve the first two and the third will as if by magic solve itself. After all, there was women engagement in both sectors, women were vital parts of the bodies that recruited those few who were able to work in the rarefied atmosphere that existed in the INGOs, NGOs and parts of the public sector at the time. There were women working, a few, at policy development level. Surely it will roll on from there…surely. But it didn’t. Women remain confined to that narrow band of elite professionals, the doctors, dentists, teachers and perpetual addressers of conferences and workshops — oh those workshops — that create an illusion of development that is in reality a micron thick on the surface of the ocean of women for whom nothing at all has changed or shows any sign of doing so.

Where are the women in retail, serving you across the counter? Talking to you on mobile phone top-up services? Selling cars or even bicycles? Taxi and rickshaw drivers? Running post offices? There are a tiny number in each instance and I am sure they can be found if you dig deep and long enough, but the essential path into employment is missing, the path that leads to a job, because the gate that opens on to the path is controlled by men and they have little or no interest in increasing the flow of traffic.

A generation of women is being educated to the point at which they confront a blank wall. Millions of girls are going to school to do nothing when they close their textbooks for the last time and bid farewell to their school days. Whilst their education cannot be said to be entirely meaningless — it may lead to smaller family sizes for one thing — as things stand they are on a path to nowhere and those of us chewing over where we missed the mark on women had something of an epiphanic experience.

What we missed was how to weaponise the workshop. Workshops are a wonderful way of doing nothing and getting a decent lunch along the way. Unless they are mandated to action the piles of paper that are gathered up at the close of proceedings, to take action and yes empower the women who attend and contribute and feel a glimmer of hope, then they are for the most part a waste of time, effort and money. What we missed was the making of the tools to give to the women so they could dig their way out. Damn.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 21^st, 2018.

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