Women’s Rights in Pakistan

Saima Shah has started a discussion on an important issue, that is the status of women relative to men in the Pakistani society. I am going to attempt to further expand this topic.

In dealing with the issue of treatment of women in Pakistan, we are
dealing with an issue of culture or the norms of a people. That's
something that is taken for granted because we are born into it, and
by the time we

are old enough to understand and question, the
standards by which we judge have already been defined in our
minds. From one point of view, therefore, it is difficult to disentangle the
effects of one's upbringing in trying to understand one's upbringing
itself. However, one can still try to understand the sources of our
norms and see how they relate to what we see in Pakistan in our daily
lives.
If I were to name one source for our norms it would have to be
Islam. Islam defines the rules of living on a personal and a public
level for individuals in our society to a large extent. It is however
not as straightforward as I have stated for two principal reasons.
First, because "Islam" itself is a loaded word. It refers not only to
the idealistic vision of Islam, but also to the reality
of Islamic societies today. The ideal and the reality are
inseparably intertwined, and in my view they drive each other. In an
ideal Islamic world, there are certain prescribed rights for different
segments of the society, which may or may not be reflected in the real
world. Even the elucidation of the ideals of Islam, especially when it
comes to legal issues like women's rights, is not very
straightforward. It depends on the interpretation of the Quran and the
corpus of Hadith by Islamic scholars and can be attested to by the
variations in the interpretations of different aspects of Islam by the
different sects. Conversely, a breakdown of these rights in the real world
points us back to an idealistic vision of Islam.
I am sure we are all aware of the major changes brought about by
Islam over its predecessors. Amongst other things, Islam
instituted obligatory inheritence to females, banned female
infanticide, gave an explicit right of divorce and ownership to women,
and clearly defined laws that protect against rape, unjust
accusations and social abuse (like prostitution) of women. Islamic
traditions also greatly elevated the status of motherhood and
family. Muslims are taught to respect women as mothers, sisters, wives
and daughters. The well known hadith that "Paradise is under the feet
of mothers" attests to the high esteem given by Islam to motherhood in
particular and women in general. The rights and previleges given by
Islam to women were revolutionary at the time, and were not matched by
the West for example, until almost 1400 years later.
However, in our daily life we see that women in Pakistan are not even
granted their Islamic rights. Our daily news abounds with cases of
maltreatment of women to all degrees, women are customarily barred
from inheritance, divorce and a say in their marriage. For all
effective reasons, women in Pakistan are at the mercy of other males
belonging to their families. And like many other things, these things
are not even talked about, much less justified by some Islamic
rationale. One can then conclude that they are the vestiges of some
older traditions that live with us even today.
This leads me to the second reason, which is that our culture is not
purely Islamic in the first place. Like all other revolutions or
movements in history, Islam is not disconnected from the environment
around it. The implementation of Islamic ideals grew on the existing
cultural framework that preceded it instead of completely
displacing it and starting from scratch. In a very tangible way,
the reality of any Islamic society is still strongly linked to its
pre-Islamic precursors. Like all other religions, Islamic societies in
different parts of the world carry an unmistakable tinge of the local
cultures they were implanted in.
The situation is further complicated if one considers that Islam
itself grew out of a pagan background, and if one were to take the
view that it never completely superceded its predecessor, even the
ideals of Islam carry some remnants of what it displaced. To
ease the discussion, however, I will choose to divide the issues into two
categories. First the indigenous cultures of
Pakistan, and second the idealistic vision of Islam, in which
I will not explicitly discuss the relation of Islamic ideals to their pagan
predecessors.
(1) Indigenous cultures:

I will start off by stating that this category is very hard to
define. After all, culture is a dynamic entity subject to many
different effects. To simplify this matter, I will therefore, only
concentrate on two aspects of the native culture. First is the
occupational aspect , or what most of the people in Pakistan do for
a living, and second is the effect of local pre-Islamic cultures
of Pakistan, by which I mean the extent to which the
traditions, that were present before the general
population in an area converted to Islam, are applicable today.
(a) The Occupational aspect

Occupationally speaking, most of the people in Pakistan are farmers,
labourers or keepers of livestock. On a superficial glance, one may
conclude that since these activities are physically demanding,
in a competitive market, men with their inherent advantage in physique
would populate these areas. Since they would win over women in the
task of bread-earning, this will be one reason why women would be
confined to the roles of home-makers. This economical marginalization
would define the social hierarchy of women.
Moreover, the a priori impression that men are economically
more valuable than women, would also lead to a social wish for
producing more boys than girls, and more effort would be spent on the
upbringing of males versus females. A family dependent upon farming and
labor always welcomes the addition of new hands to help in the chores,
and a woman who gives birth to sons, as opposed to daughters, is in
herself valuable. Fertility, and in particular, producing males would
become a desirable trait in women. In a perverse extension of this
trend, a woman by herself, would become an economical liability, and would
need the supplement of a dowry to enable her settlement in a new home.
Men, in general, also have lower life expectancies than women, which
in turn further increases their economical value. In the presence of
hostile conditions (like war), the average difference in the life
expectancies (which is usually of the order of 5 years) may be sharply
increased, further increasing the economic value of the
men. Therefore, in a society that attaches economical value to men and
women, especially when making of a livelihood is not an easy task, a
hierarchy of men and women is inevitable. Through a combination of
inter-dependent economical and social factors, the leadership
of a society also goes to the men. In the case that the leadership of
a society becomes a monopoly of one sex, a systematic discrimination
against women becomes more likely. Therefore, in reality, though men
dominate the fields requiring physical labor, women comprise a large
and unacknowledged portion of the workforce. This is so because women
do not have the proper representation in the leadership and policy
making of a society.
The fertility rate for Pakistani women is high, and in addition, the
personal investment of a woman in child-bearing and child-rearing is
much, much more than for a man. In addition, women are essentially
unfit for labor during pregnancy, and have to be taken care of.
For a woman, who is very likely to be pregnant about once every two
years, economical security is essential for the well-being of her
children, whether it comes from a (dedicated and caring) husband, or
it comes from her own blood and sweat. For a woman who is not capable of
supporting herself economically, a quiet acceptance of whatever may come
to her in terms of her married life, as long as she is economically
supported by her husband, is a workable strategy. And when men control
all the resources in a society, they have the option of choosing their
mates.
There is clearly a lot to be considered in relating the effects of
local economic and political conditions (and perceptions) on the
relative social hierarchy of the two sexes, and I have only begun to
skim the surface. One of the key reasons why such
social hierarchies may get set up is because there is a biological
difference between men and women: As I have mentioned before, the
investment of women in the reproductive process is much greater than
that of men. This simple observation alone can explain a lot of
the differences we see in the attitudes of men and women towards sex
and marriage for example. From that point of view it is a pure
gender issue, that is not confined to Pakistan alone but men and
women all across the world. Societies on the other hand choose
to set up particular hierarchies and social strategies in order
to address this natural difference between men and women. Those
particular choices are not sacrosanct, and require change with
changing times.
It is also noteworthy to consider that Pakistani women lack two things
in particular: education and birth control. Both of these things have
the ability to empower women to break the present social (primarily
economical) hierarchies. Education gives people more control over the
decisions of their lives, as well as more occupational
opportunities. Birth control helps by breaking the vicious cycle of
(almost) permanent pregnancy and poverty. Strangely enough, or perhaps
expectedly, Pakistani women have had to face a lot of opposition from
their families in these two areas. Overall in Pakistan, the literacy
rate for women is almost half of that for men, and contraception, for
all practical purposes, is an unknown word.
(b) The effect of non-Islamic ideals

Most of the people who live in Pakistan today, had ancestors who
converted from one of the indigenous religions of the Indian
sub-continent. The effect of those religions, though much suppressed,
has not been washed out from our daily life. Some of the common
practices like the extended wedding ceremonies, or some of the rituals
one sees at the shrines of pirs and faqirs, are two examples. I am no
expert in the field of pre-Islamic beliefs of the people who lived in
Pakistan, but one can ask to what level those religious ideals still
exist in our psyche? We have all heard of, and seen, some of the
examples of maltreatment of women in some areas with predominantly
Hindu populations for example. Widows, divorced and infertile women
were treated as less than normal human beings. That, by itself, does
not point to whether such all such treatment is actually endorsed in
Hinduism, for example, per se, though many people have strongly argued
that Hinduism does not grant many rights to women. (Since I am not a
scholar of Hinduism, I will not go into the doctrinal aspects.) While
some of those injustices may have arisen out of inherent differences
in the treatment of men and women even in an idealistic Hindu society,
others might have been cases where religion was used as an excuse to
justify oppression.
The traditional occupations of people and the effects of their
non-Islamic ideals are inter-related. India is the homeland of a
number of indigenous religions, and they presumably grew within
societies centered around agriculture and labour. Therefore, they too
implicitly or explicitly carry some of the norms of the societies
around them.
Now I will turn my attention to how women are regarded in Islam.
(2) The Idealistic vision of Islam:

Muslims do not like to talk about the issue of women in Islamic
societies because of the extent to which it has been negatively
publicized by the West. There are many historical reasons: For
example, Islam's
spectacularly fast growth, and achievement of high civilization were
looked upon enviously by other competing forces (religions). Once the
Islamic lands were not strong enough to withstand the onslaught of an
imperialistic West, a massive ideological war was launched against
Islam, in which Islam was deliberately and incorrectly targetted. Many
of the myths about the "backwardness" of Islam that abound in the
popular Western media today are connected with this period of systematic
stigmatization of Islam and Muslims.
However, that does not mean that there are no genuinely debatable points here for Muslims themselves. Though one may argue that it is not correct to judge an idealistic Islamic society based on Western principles (since how does one know
that the Western principles are correct in the first place), I will nevertheless present six principal ways in which Islam treats women differently than men in an attempt to understand how they determine the norms of the Pakistani society. They are the following:
(a) Islam explicitly treats two women equal to one man as a witness in
a court of law.
(b) In matters of inheritance, the general rule is that a woman is
entitled to half the inheritance of a man.
(c) Islam explicitly allows a man to have upto four wives at a time,
whereas a woman can only have one husband at a time. It is easier for
a man to divorce a woman than vice versa.
(d) Islamic injunctions clearly define a man as the dominant
partner in a married couple, and even allows the man to beat the woman
lightly if she disobeys him.
(e) In matters of faith, women are generally considered to be weaker than
men. For example, there is no female prophet in the Islamic
tradition.
(f) Islam also prefers a segregation of men and women, and the women
(as well as men) are expected to cover themselves properly. However, the rules
for women are clearly stricter than those for men.
On the other hand, with regards to the six categories that I have
pointed out above, the answer of Islamic scholars has been that Islam
treats women as different but equal . That may very well be
true in an ideal Islamic society, however, one is clearly led to note
the following.
Point (a) implies that for legal issues women are inferior to men, and
therefore, are not as fit as men to be witnesses, lawyers, judges or
leaders. In a public social hierarchy, women are effectively barred
from the top positions. Point (b) sets the scale for the economical
standing of women (relative to men) explicitly. With the exception of
women entrepreneurs, women are economically dependent on men. Points
(c) and (d) define the sexual hierarchy among men and women. I will
concede that one needs to keep in mind the fact that the
institution of marriage in Islam, is also a way of socially and
economically protecting the women. However, still, the relative sexual
hierarchy of men and women is clearly delineated. Point (e) states
that women are also more prone to desire and temptation, and therefore
do not reach the pinnacles of spirituality as often as men do. Granted
that the final arbitrator in all spiritual matters is Allah, however, the
spiritual standing of women relative to men, on average, is considered
to be lower. Point (e) is also intimately connected to points (a) and
(f). With point (a) because Islam does not recognize the artificial
divide between the "Church" and "State", and point (f) in order to reduce
distracting worldly desires in an Islamic society. Point (f) by itself
also has a crucial bearing on the public and economic standing of
women, since being a successful leader or an entrepreneur involves
daily contact with people of both sexes.
By setting the relative legal, public, economic and sexual hierarchy of
men and women, Islam confines the domain of action and influence of
women in a society relative to men. People could react to this
heirarchy either by compensating women in some other ways and not
blatantly believing in an inherent social inferiority of
women. Or they could extend this hierarchy to all levels of a society
and openly expouse a belief in the inferiority of women. Regardless of how
people react to this, or whether women are indeed equal to men in
principle, the central point remains that as far as the
public life of an individual is concerned, men are more empowered
than women in Islam.
If such a hierarchy had been established for a segment of the
male population of the society, we would have no qualms in proclaiming
that segment as being socially inferior to the rest. However, for women, the
traditional answer is different but equal . Now, I do not
consider myself to be a scholar on Islam, but neither are
most of the Muslims in the world. When I look at the relative
hierarchy of men and women, I have to conclude that Islam proclaims
women to be socially inferior to men. After all, if they are
legally, economically, spiritually and sexually inferior, not
much more is left to the social hierarchy. Therefore, regardless of
what Islam idealistically intends to do , in the real world, I
find it very hard to believe that Muslim men would not consider
women to be socially inferior at one level or another.
All of this is compunded by the fact that, for whatever reason, men
may choose , for reasons having nothing to do with Islam, to
treat women as inferiors. In that case, one can hardly come up with
anything better than a religious argument. If God says so, then it has
got to be so. Religion in that case becomes an instrument
wielded by one part of the society against another. In the case of
Islam, given the clear cut instructions (a)-(f), it is hard to argue
that people will not come up with ways to exploit it.
(3) Few more words ...

The search for the reasons why women have fewer rights than men in
Pakistan is a long and arduous one. I have mentioned some of the
factors that I think play a role. As I mentioned in the very
beginning, disentangling the effects of upbringing in a patriarchal
society from one's conceptions is difficult. However, I think that the
system perpetuates because no one stops to question its relevance
today. Men and women are brought up in a society which blatantly
believes in and preaches the superiority of one sex over the
other. Perhaps they root their reasons in both Islam and sheer
economics. Either way, men grow up believing that they are superior,
and women grow up believing that they are inferior, without ever going
through an unbiased test of their assumptions. Men would attest to
the inferiority of women in tackling everyday affairs, for example, by
quoting their clumsiness without realizing that what they are dealing
with is a lack of experience due to a socially sanctioned
segregation and containment of women. They would not realize that
their evidence is only a reflection of the partial treatment
of society towards the women, and not a true measure of the inherent
capabilities of women. Unfortunately, such perceptions tend to
perpetuate, fueled (and "vindicated") by their own effects. This aspect
of common reasoning is very hard to point out and defeat, however, it
is not impossible.
Even in the West, for example, it is still popularly believed that women
are inherently inferior to men when it comes to analytical
tasks. Despite the fact that dozens of studies have shattered that
myth, people (and in particular some women) still continue to believe
it. They derive their justification from the weaker performance of
females in scientific and mathematical subjects relative to the males
without taking into account the effect of preparation allowed to
each. Such attitudes are changing though, as attested by the growing
number of females in the "hard" scientific and mathematical
disciplines.
Regardless of what the exact causes are, the fact remains that the
women of Pakistan do not enjoy the same status in the society as
their male counterparts. The question is what to do about it? Before
asking that question, I would ask, what do we envision our society to
be? Are we satisfied with the present feudal society in which
physical labor (or at least its supposed requirement) reigns supreme?
In that case, I think that there is no way out for the women of
Pakistan -they are trapped in a system that rests on a supposed
superior economic value of the males. Women, in such a system, will
remain poor, backward, oppressed and economically dependent in all
probability. Or would we like to have a modern industrial society
where tools and technology are our allies? In that case, men and women
are equal partners in the work force that relies on skill. If we want
a modern society, then it is imperative to empower the crucial half of
our population, namely the women of Pakistan, economically,
educationally, politically, and legally. Education of women at all
levels is essential, and should be pursued not only by individuals but
also as a part of state policy. We need political representation of
women's issues and their projection into the populace, and finally
special provisions in the constitution to help the systematically
oppressed women of Pakistan to assume their roles as equals in the
future of Pakistan.
Given the current status of affairs and our thinking, I think it will
take nothing short of a miracle to achieve that.