The Malala incident
provided stark illustration of the distorted mindset, which seeks to
supress half the population in our country, while the public outrage
against the incident demonstrates the prevailing desire to offer women
and girls in Pakistan a better future.
The causes of gender disparities in our country are, however,
multidimensional and cannot be attributed to a sudden surge in extremist
threats alone. The current situation is the result of generations of
neglect and patriarchal norms, which pervade most spheres of public and
private life across Pakistan.
Unesco has just estimated that
an
estimated 62 per cent of Pakistani girls, between the ages of seven and
15, have never gone to school. This ratio is much worse compared with
the 30 per cent estimate for India and nine per cent for Bangladesh.
Education is, of course, not the only problem when it comes to
gender-related disparities in our country. Pakistan now occupies the
last spot amongst countries of the Asia-Pacific region, according to the
Global Gender Gap Report 2012,
published by the World Economic Forum (WEF), based on economic
participation, educational attainment, health and political empowerment.
We cannot blame the gender disparities in our country on religion or
poverty, considering that the status of women is much better in a poorer
Muslim country like Bangladesh, which was ranked 86
th on the same index.
At the same time, however, entities like the WEF are themselves not
without fault, since they aim to propagate an economic system, which is
itself largely responsible for a range of gender inequalities plaguing
most developing countries. For instance, it is pressure from
international development agencies to curb public spending, which has
led to privatisation of public services like health and education. The
uneven nature of globalisation, accompanied by the coerced
liberalisation of developing countries, also forces women to accept
low-paying wages in the informal sector just to ensure household
survival, while multinational corporations profit obscenely from these
discriminatory wages.
However, our government and donor agencies seem equally oblivious to
these broader inequities. Consider for instance the recent press release
stressing how the ministries of finance and women’s development aim to
make greater efforts to provide updated and timely data concerning women’s economic empowerment
to international agencies in order to improve our international
rankings, whereas donor agencies have reiterated their willingness to
help relevant ministries identify means to increase national
competitiveness, which simultaneously empower women.
Better (or even doctored) data collection cannot, however, solve
existing problems on the ground. Also, the much-touted emphasis on
donor-supported strategies, like use of micro-credit to turn women into
empowered entrepreneurs, does not provide a very relevant solution in
the Pakistani context at least, where it is still men who exert control
over finances, even if accessed in the name of their womenfolk.
Women are already bearing the dual burden of household management and
ensuring household survival. However, the problem is that their work is
not adequately acknowledged, respected or remunerated.
Due to their vulnerable position in society, women in home-based
cottage industries, are thus readily exploited by middlemen, who take
advantage of their social immobility to pay them a fraction of the price
their products are sold for. Women’s work in the agricultural sector is
not duly compensated
either and they are denied land-ownership, despite the Islamic laws of
inheritance, since social pressure compels them to hand over their share
of land to their brothers.
Instead of focusing on market-based solutions or becoming more
data-obsessed, it is these underlying problems, which donors and our
state institutions must pay more attention to, in order to help improve
the socio-economic circumstances of women and ensure a better future for
girls in Pakistan.