Tooba Altaf
The Global Gender Gap Index Report 2020, released by World Economic Forum, placed Pakistan at 151 out of 153 countries, third to only war-torn Yemen and Iraq. Revealing the widening gender gap, the figures speak a sorry state of women empowerment in the country. Empowering women, while acting as a tool to narrow the gender gap, also ensures the entitlement of the basic human right to women i.e., exercising control over their lives.
The concept of empowerment as the degree of autonomy and self-determination is vital to the private and public life of a citizenry. Capitalizing on this conception of empowerment as the process of controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights, serves as a convenient tool to understand women’s empowerment. Hence, Women’s empowerment refers to the process of increasing women’s access to control, over the strategic life choices that affect them the most. It also entails an access to the opportunities that allow women to fully realize their capacities, encompassing economic, political and socio-cultural processes.
Gender equality and women empowerment is the goal five of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Pakistan, has been one of the few countries to embed these SDGs in its official policy documents, such as vision 2025. Women comprise 49% of the Pakistan’s population, which means the well-being of Pakistani society in general, depends on women’s well-being, in particular. However, Pakistan’s poor performance on the various indicators used to gauge women’s empowerment, reflects the plight of women’s rights. A large proportion of Pakistani women are undereducated and ill-informed, lack access to finance and social services and suffer physical and mental abuse of various kinds.
At every step, women face challenges and obstacles in making their own choices and determining their own path in the lives, they wish to live. A glimpse into the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017-2018, is a tell-all account of the real conditions, women are living through. Around 49% of the women had no education at all, which not only reduces women’s access to information and awareness about their rights, but also employment. The impact it has, on the upbringing of the future generation is also dire, disadvantaging the society at large. 28% of the women reportedly faced physical violence since the age of 15, with majority preferring to stay silent on their sufferings. Much of this silence has to do with the loopholes in our criminal justice system. Coming towards the health and reproductive rights, Pakistan has one of the highest fertility rates in the world, standing at 3.6 births per woman. Compounding the issue, is the lack of access to maternal care and high infant mortality rates, nation-wide.
Yet the issue of women’s empowerment has hardly been on the agenda of our policy makers and has failed to impress our patriarchal masters. Patriarchy and misogyny, entrenched in the structural relationships of power, continue to dominate the private and public spheres of women’s lives. Taking cue from a simple instance of women’s identity in our society, women for long had been represented by men rather than going by her own name, and still continues to do so in some parts of the country. Ironically, women herself take part in endorsing misogyny, depicting the extent of their unawareness about their own status.
So, where does the solution to all these problems, which are turning into challenges, lie? The answer might be in, addressing the women’s empowerment issues through targeted critical interventions both in public and private sectors, bringing deep policy reforms and implementation mechanisms. It also requires to bring about changes in societal attitudes towards women’s basic rights, elevating our standards from merely raising the slogan of equal rights.
The author Tooba Altaf is an International Relations graduate, while working as a Researcher at the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), Islamabad.
