I don’t want to live in a country where we need pink rickshaws to keep women safe from male ‘beasts’
RAWALPINDI: Yesterday, I was driving to Islamabad from Rawalpindi with my mother. On Ammar Chowk, we noticed a biker who looked a bit different. Behold! It was a woman clad in a chaddar driving a motorbike. To get a better glimpse and to show the woman my appreciation of her bravery, I tried to speed up after the girl. While admiring her skill and courage, my mother and I noticed two boys on another bike closely following the lady. My mother asked me to overtake the boys so that she could try and usher them away. As we overtook them, my mother rolled down her window and shouted, “Koi sharam nahin hai? Khabardaar jo tang kiya usay!” (Do you have no shame? Don’t you dare tease her!) The boys instantly changed their course, but I felt scared for the girl. My mother recited a Quranic verse for her safety as I watched her fly away on her bike.
Thousands of us Pakistani women are on the road every day. The daring girl was riding a bike which is a rare sight in Pakistan, but many like me are commonly out on the roads driving a car or walking alone on the roadside. I asked a few of my female friends about the number of times they have been harassed on Pakistani roads and none of us could put a figure to it. From shameless staring, to name-calling, tailgating and even stopping cars near female pedestrians and asking them to hop in, these stories are frequent and all around us.
Is this how we expect our female population to live? Is this the kind of society and social behaviour we want our daughters to be raised with? I often stumble across online posts by Pakistani men ridiculing Indian men by calling them ‘rapists’. However, if our men have the guts to shamelessly harass women in public, in broad daylight and in busy areas such as the main Islamabad highway, I can only imagine what happens in other areas of the country.
I don’t want to live in a country where we need pink rickshaws to keep women safe from male ‘beasts’ or where you need a five-year-old male ‘protector’ to be able to walk on the road. We cannot expect any social, economic or political reform without protecting more than half of our population. Each one of us is responsible for this deplorable situation. I urge the men and women around us to speak up and take action. Make sure you note the number plates of any person who harasses you or take a picture of the person if you safely can and file a police report. If you feel it is safe to do so, groups of people should non-violently stop offenders from harassing women on the road, talk to them and, if needed, report them to the police. It is only after we recognise a problem and own it that we can move towards solving it. Let us make female harassment on the roads of Pakistan a taboo. Let us all do our bit to eliminate this shameless behaviour towards women. And, if we are too selfish to do it for the greater good of society and the world, let’s do it for our own sisters and daughters.
Maeedah Babar Chishti
Published in The Express Tribune, May 14th, 2015.
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