Laraib Nisar
For years society has played the role of a determinant for making or breaking social norms, values, and behaviors. Since societies decide the appropriate role behavior for different statuses, they have the ability to bring or resist social changes and phenomena bearing such changes. But unfortunately, the Pakistani society seldom forgets to play the critical role in even the cases that need immediate societal action. One such case is the phenomenon of women empowerment, despite our state religion i.e. Islam and the State itself being the greatest advocate of women’s rights, the society has largely normalized marginalizing women and defying the rights provided to them by the state through the constitution.
In most developed societies, upbringing patterns, education, and the media are employed as a tool to promote progressive and tolerant values which allow citizens to live freely without any sort of gender based discrimination. It is essential for all of us to understand the our responsibilities as a citizen and play a role in promoting and supporting not just women’s empowerment but also all the other causes that require societal action.
Since homes are the first schools for children, it is essential that parents and other elders at home understand their responsibility in upbringing the child. Values like respect and tolerance for all, accepting and respecting others’ identities, ideas, and POVs, believing in equal opportunities for all, knowing their constitutional rights and performing their duties and responsibilities towards others effectively, speaking up against the wrong, breaking stereotypes and peaceful coexistence in the society must be inculcated in children from a very young age. It must be kept in mind that only verbally communicating such values isn’t enough, Children learn what they observe around them, and so the family members must create an environment where they practice the aforesaid values themselves so that children can learn from them.
The second important tool that the society can provide for the noble cause of women’s empowerment is education. Though the duty of education is to create a distinction between what is wrong and what is right, but unfortunately, sometimes our education does the exact opposite and instead of creating more enlightened, progressive citizens, it creates citizens that are even more conservative and patriarchal. So our education sector has failed in leading the society towards enlightenment and progress. It is essential that the curricula be updated in such a way that they become able to advocate women’s and other marginalized communities’ rights, along with highlighting the importance of the phenomenon of women’s empowerment and the gains Pakistan can achieve if it effectively utilizes its women, who constitute more that 50 percent of the total population.
Media being the third most significant tool to advocate women’s empowerment, has an important role to play in forming public perceptions and opinions. But unfortunately, the Pakistani media industry seems unaware of the fact that media is not supposed to be just entertainment, it is also supposed to play a role in informing the general population, about the issues posed to them along with the solutions. That is why the term ‘infotainment’ industry is used for media these days. Media channels need to understand that they can present interesting and enjoyable programs that are scripted in such a way that they can pass on some proper values. Moreover, our media industry usually portrays only few categories of women like helpless, evil, mean, and self-centered, which eventually forms a malign public narrative about women, the media should instead air programs that highlight and promote educated, self-sufficient, empowered women who are capable of achieving huge goals in life.
Moreover, we as responsible members of society need to raise our voice against any wrong that we observe. For this we need to step outside of this couch warrior sort of environment that we’re pretty much in, where we believe that just by putting up a post on social media is enough Facebook or if they tweet about it, they’ve played their due role in ending a problem, and make substantial practical efforts to advocate women’s empowerment.
The author Laraib Nisar is a Defense and Strategic Studies’ graduate, working as a Research Associate at Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) Islamabad.
