Political and Socio-economic Empowerment of Indo-Pak Women

By: Anita Shah Lakyary

Executive Summary

Following the Jakarta Declaration for the Advancement of Women in Asia and the Pacific (1994) and the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for the Action (1995) significant measures have been taken in both India and Pakistan for political and socio-economic empowerment of women. From raising the number of women representatives in the upper and lower houses to increasing the enrolment of girl students in schools, the efforts seem to be manifold. However, it has been noticed that the quality of life of an ordinary woman at the grassroots level has not substantially improved. The violence against women has not reduced and even in some cases increased. Given the fact that with the increase of women's participation in politics, decision-making, and increased involvement in governmental and non-governmental bodies, the exposure has even widened to violence. The predominant economic and cultural features of these countries don’t let the situation get better at the household level. Contrary to the fact that these countries have seen women prime ministers and key political parties are also led by women, an ordinary woman still faces discrimination and injustice.

In Pakistan where the current reformist regime of Musharraf has increased the women's representation to an all-time high — which even is higher than many developed European countries— the daily newspaper reports are filled with heinous crimes against women, ranging from gang rapes by police and panchayat leaders to honor killing. In India, a country of one billion souls, women's representation in parliament has only marginally increased. The majority population of these countries is poor. In this vicious circle of poverty, women suffer the most. Discrimination in employment opportunities and wages, forced labor, and trafficking for sexual exploitation are the key parts of the state of women at the grass-root level.

In many cases, the religion-cultural elements have been advocating and influencing law and policymaking for more denial of women's rights. This situation now calls for re-evaluating the role and value of women's representation in parliament in improving the quality of life of an ordinary woman.

Pakistan and India, both being highly populated counties in the world, are in a phase of cultural and economic transition. While the technology and media are bringing the unprivileged masses to mainstream global trends, the religion-cultural bottlenecks are creating frictions. This frication reflects on overall law and policymaking.

The Region

British India was divided into two separate countries in 1947 which ended three and a half centuries of British colonial rule in India. This division was based on the two-nation theory. The Muslims in India had been advocating initially on intellectual grounds and later politically that India is inhibited by two nations Hindus and Muslims. Thus, later All India Muslim League started a movement demanding a separate homeland for the Muslims of India. This resulted in the division of India into two countries, India, which was basically Hindu but officially secular and the other was a Muslim majority state named the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The territory of Pakistan was spread into two parts at the time of independence, i.e., East Pakistan and West Pakistan, separated by about 1,600 kilometers of Indian Territory.

The partition was followed by several tragic events especially mass migrations of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan to India and Muslims from India to Pakistan. Both countries suffered heavy losses of lives and property because of communal violence which erupted everywhere. The Kashmir issue and other border conflicts resulted in three wars in 1947-48, 1965, and 1971. The last war resulted in the cessation of East Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh. The India - Pakistan border conflicts have yet sustained to remain unresolved, and so is the issue of autonomy to provinces in Pakistan and separatist movements in India.?These cross-border tensions as well perpetuating internal conflicts among provinces, federations, and institutions like the intervention of the army in political affairs in Pakistan have very badly hampered the socio-economic development in both countries.

After the independence India and Pakistan decided to allow free movement of goods, persons, and capital for one year but this accord soon broke down and the volume and the value of trade kept declining; the two countries ignored bilateral trade for the most part and developed the new international trade links. India and Pakistan in their race of arms and for maintaining credible deterrence against each other spend a fat portion of their budgets on Defence, ignoring the provision of basic facilities to their citizens. Pakistan initiated its nuclear program in 1972 in the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and in 1998 in response to Indian nuclear weapons testing; Pakistan conducted its own tests. Besides sitting on nukes both counties substantially spend on conventional arms each year. India spends about 2.5% of its GDP on Defence whereas Pakistan spends 4.5% of GDP compared to the USA which has exceeded its Defence spending to 4% of GDP only after the 911 attacks.

More than a third of India and Pakistan’s people live in desperate poverty having no or very nominal access to clean drinking water, education, health, and economic opportunities.?Almost half of the adult population of both countries is illiterate which implies a high ratio of illiteracy in women than in men. On the United Nations’ Human Development Index of the ranking of 175 countries, India ranks 127th and Pakistan 144th. The economic drain owing to the mad arms race, bad governance, corruption, internal ethnic and political conflicts, and instability has exposed the marginalized population, especially women, to more suffering.

Pakistan and India are basically ago-based economy countries, and the economic prosperity has mostly been dependent upon the availability of irrigation water. But in the last couple of years, agriculture has been suffering from a shortage of rain and irrigation water. This has led to deficient yields which have had a direct impact on the peasant men and women at the grass-root level. Women are the major contributors to the agricultural sector in most parts of Pakistan, but their economic situation is worse than that of the men in the country. The women in Pakistan do not enjoy very good economic status and 90 percent of women are compelled to bear the twofold burden of gender inequality and poverty.

The History of Women Empowerment in India and Pakistan:

Before the partition (1947) the Muslim women brought key issues of Indian women in the Parliament including the right to vote, education, political participation, and legal rights. ‘These issues, although not specifically confined to Muslim women, were nevertheless of great relevance to their status in society and thus taken seriously by them.’

Similarly in family law, instituting Muslim Laws of dissolution of marriage afforded women more space for the decision regarding opting out of a marriage contract. These laws include The Child Marriages Restraint Act 1929; The Muslim Personal (Application) Act 1937 and The Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act 1939.?Hence as the independence was near it was presumed that the empowerment of women will be prioritized by the newly independent government.

The social and cultural setup of South Asia and especially India and Pakistan are such that the women do not even realize their victimization as if they get used to it and what they are supposed to get as their rights seems like an extraordinary favor. As Amartya Sen has said, ‘The insecure sharecropper, the exploited landless laborer, the overworked domestic servant, the subordinate housewife, may all come to terms with their predicament in such a way that grievances and discontents are submerged in cheerful survival. The helpless underdog loses the courage to desire a better deal and learns to take pleasure in small mercies- (1984)

After Pakistan came into being the women continued to advocate women's political empowerment through legal reforms. They mustered to the passage of the Muslim Personal Law of Sharia in 1948, which recognized a woman's right to inherit property. The women tried hard to make the government include a Charter of Women's Rights in the 1956 constitution, but it did not materialize. The 1961 Muslim Family Laws Ordinance covering marriage and divorce is still considered to be a milestone in women’s journey towards their empowerment.

In 1971 Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in his electoral campaign floated his famous socialist slogan of ‘Roti, Kapa aur Makan’, food, clothing, and housing for everyone. The magic of this slogan along with his charismatic personality delivered a kind of assurance to the people of Pakistan to heal their wounds of hunger, poverty, and discrimination. But compared to the high hopes a little was achieved during his democratic government. Although when looked at from the perspective of women his government was to some extent gender-sensitive. The constitution of 1973 has many provisions that make women’s status stronger and brings them almost at par with men.?For instance, Article 27 talks about nondiscrimination on the basis of race, religion, caste, or sex for the appointment in the service of Pakistan. Another article 25 discusses equality before the law and equal protection of the law. Yet another article 32 reserved seats for women in parliament and local government.

By all accounts, that period had been described as the most emancipating for women. The women became highly politicized and were most visible politically and in government. (Zia, 1996:3; Mumtaz and Shaheed, 1987). A women’s rights committee was set up in 1976 to formulate legal reforms for improving the status of women.?But Bhutto’s government fell in the following year (1977) and the new military government classified the report as secret and took it out of circulation.

Hudood Laws in the Zia Regime:

General Zia-ul-Haq ruled Pakistan over a period of 11 years from 1977 to 1988. He usurped power from the democratically elected government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and imposed Martial Law. Later on, with a new slogan of Islamizing the country, he started his own “democratic process”.?Zia brought various changes in the legislation. Before his alterations to the legislation, the criminal law was regulated by codified laws of the colonial era i.e., Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) 1860 and Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) 1898.

Zia chose the self-styled Islamization of Pakistan and called it Nizam-e-Mustafa (The System of Holy Prophet Muhammad P.B.U.H). Zia understood that in a society like Pakistan Islam was never an easy subject for argument and question, he used Islam as a shield for his illegitimate power. Zia regime did not leave any stone unturned to make women’s lives down in the mouth. New laws, rules, and regulations unheard of ever before in the name of Islam and Allah were created and implemented.

Zia adopted a series of Islamic laws that were interpreted against the interests of women. The Hudood Laws were presumed as Islamizing the Criminal Procedure Code. The Hudood Ordinance did not take account of women’s testimony and the testimony of two women was considered equal to that of one man. Before that, there was Law of Evidence 1872 that did not differentiate between the testimony of men or women except for the contract of marriage where the evidence of two wakeels was compulsory. Women lawyers were declared incompetent for interpreting Quran. It was debated that a small group of western-educated women, unversed in Arabic were not qualified to interpret Quran. Statements like that given by Dr. Israr Ahmed were common, “The fact that two women are equal to one man is the bitter pill that these modern and educated women must be prepared to swallow in an Islamic Society”.

The other problem was the Ordinance dealing with rape and fornication that were considered almost synonymous with each other. For instance, for the rape case, it was necessary that four, Muslim, males and of good character must be brought who should have witnessed the actual act of penetration according to Section 8 of The Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance 1979, otherwise the victimized woman herself can be punished for adultery or Zina (fornication-sexual intercourse outside marriage) instead of Zina bil jabr (rape).

“Fifteen-year-old Jahan Mina became pregnant after being raped by her uncle and cousin. Her family filed a complaint of rape but since there were no witnesses, the alleged rapists were acquitted. Yet her pregnancy was proof that "Zina" [extra-marital sexual intercourse] had taken place and she was sentenced to 100 lashes in public. The punishment was later converted to 3 years imprisonment and 10 lashes”

The actual movement of women’s rights in Pakistan can be traced back to the Zia Regime. Women Action Forum an organization working for the rights of women was established in reaction to the implications of the Hudood Ordinance against women. ‘In 1982 the first decision of Hudood was handed down. This was the case of Fehmida and Allah Dad, a couple who had entered a valid contract of marriage but against the wishes of their families. The Hudood Law was used as an effective tool of ‘vengeance’, the court sentenced them to death by stoning and 100 lashes each for committing the offense of adultery. The case was later dismissed on appeal by The Supreme Court of Pakistan. The case evoked a strong response at the national level.’

The dictatorship of Zia took many tasks of the anti-women Pakistani patriarchy in hand. “The state moved on to take over the lives of women, to control their bodies, their space, to decide what they should wear, how they should conduct themselves, the jobs they could take, the sports they could play, and took it upon itself to define and regulate women’s morality”. (Khan N.S. 1993)

Pakistan agreed to sign The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on December 3, 1996. Being a signatory to this convention Pakistan assumed the obligation to protect women from sexual and other forms of gender-based violence perpetrated by state agents and private actors alike. As a party to CEDAW, Pakistan is obliged "to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women"[CEDAW Article 2] including "any distinction, exclusion or restriction made based on sex which has the purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment, or exercise by women ...on a basis of equality of men or women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms...” (CEDAW Article 2)

Despite assurances by the Government of Pakistan for making women’s lives livable, there is little evidence of improvement in the status of women as human beings. ‘The constitution of 1973 declared that a woman is equal before the law and that in Pakistan discrimination based on gender is illegal. Yet legally, politically, socially and economically women are more equal to the animals that most of them look after than to the men who own those animals.’

After Zia, the story did not end. The alterations that he made in the legislature have not been easy to change. In 1991 another law named Sharia Law was brought into action and women’s organizations lobbied against this to prevent this from being used as a weapon against women. It resulted in an assurance that the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961 (MFLO) was taken out of its purview.

Pakistan was ruled twice by a female Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who during her election campaign promised to repeal Hudood Law but after joining office she backed down and compromised on women’s issues. However, during her government, some measures like the first women’s police stations were taken but unfortunately even this has not helped women very much to combat their primary issues of violence and harassment at the grassroots level. Another act was the first women’s bank. But at a macro level, her government happened to be not very effective for fighting the case of women.

Legislation for and against women in India and Pakistan:

In India and Pakistan, the legislation regarding the rights of women has been more sensitized by some individual cases as compared to the situation of women as a whole across the borders. India as well as Pakistan has a history of various cases which not only gained the attention of women’s groups and media but were lucky enough to shake the hard walls of the courts and parliament to bring positive changes in the legislation.

Most of the civil laws in India and Pakistan that deal with family, divorce, marriage, maintenance, guardianship, inheritance for different religious communities are termed as personal law. Hence “the term ‘personal’ when conjoined with the law means the different family laws of different religious communities. The issue of personal law in India became especially controversial for feminists in 1985, with what is known as ‘The Shah Bano Case’. On April 23, 1985, a five-member Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Chandrachund, ruled that a 75 years old woman Shah Bano, was entitled to maintenance by her husband under section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code.”

The Shah Bano case was one of the landmark cases in the Muslim women's search for justice. It was the beginning of the political battle on personal law. In the years of Shah Bano's case, India was ruled by The Congress Government, which gave in to the pressure posed by Muslims. The Muslim religious leaders connected this ruling as an attack on their community and tried hard to change it in their patriarchal interests despite the clear instructions of the Holy Quran about the rights of divorced women. The family law in India and Pakistan has been linked to tradition as well as religion.?This resulted in the enactment of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986. The most controversial provision of the Act was that it gave a Muslim woman the right to maintenance for the period of iddah about three months from the day of divorce. The responsibility of women after three months of iddah was shifted to either her relatives or the Wakf Board. The Act was seen as prejudiced as it denied divorced Muslim women the right to maintenance.

The case led to Muslim women receiving a large, one-time payment from their husbands during the period of iddah, instead of a maximum monthly payment of Rs 500 (around the US $ 10 per month). The cases of women getting lump sum payments for lifetime maintenance are becoming common.

The Law abolishing Sati:

Sati is an old funeral custom in which the widow was burnt alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. The act was imagined as a choice by the widow in the love and submission of her dead husband. The burning of a woman as sati was deemed as an act of unrivaled piety. In practice though, it is believed to have been mostly forced on the widow by various social pressures. Raja Rammohun Roy's a social reformer struggled in the form of petitions, writings, and the organizing of vigilance committees against this practice. As a result, the practice was abolished by law in British India in 1829.

The Law against Child marriage:

The child marriage of girls as young as five years old was common, although child marriage has been outlawed since 1860, it is still a problem in some areas of India and Pakistan.

The Dowry Law:

The custom of Dowry is a derivation from an ancient custom of ''Kanya dan'' ("giving away of the daughter"), where the father presented his daughter with jewelry and clothes at the time of her marriage, and ''varadakshina'' ("gifting the groom") where the father presented the groom with kith and kind are, in essence, the dowry system.

All over India and Pakistan, the booming middle and upper class spend huge sums of their fortune on the dowries of their daughters. The dowries may include anything from bikes, fridges, microwaves, cars to large amounts of cash, bungalows, and apartments. The more the dowry the better options would be available for the girls. Different families from different economic backgrounds may spend different sums of money on marrying off their daughters. It can cost up to $100,000 for a family in India to find a groom for their daughter. Although the law forbids spending more than $150 in dowry payments. This vicious system of dowry has resulted in many social problems on the part of women. The female infanticide also is a result of this fear of dowry that parents prefer a son over a daughter. Because the son will fetch a fat dowry and for the daughter, the parents would need to arrange the dowry. In India, an advertisement advertising abortion had this attractive heading ‘better to spend 500 Rs. Now than spending 500,000 later’ it implies that aborting a female infant would cost only 500 but if she is born then grown up, she will be married off that will require money for the dowry. The greed for dowry by the parents of grooms is resulting in many problems. For instance, demands for money often continue well into the marriage. If the family does not pay, they may have to pay the price with the life of their daughter; cases of newlywed women’s burning to death in stove "accidents" are rampant. Some women are forced to commit suicide by their husbands; others are simply murdered by their husband's family so that their son may marry another woman and bring home a good sum in dowry that the dead woman could not bring.

Asking for a dowry in exchange for an agreement of wedding has been deemed illegal since 1960. Despite this, there have been many cases of attempted murder of newly married women whose parents are unable to pay the dowry amount requested by the in-laws, which can be both initially excessive and increased after the marriage. One report [Kitchen 1997] claims that at least 5,000 women die each year because of dowry deaths, and at least a dozen die each day in 'kitchen fires' thought to be intentional. Despite the connections to the custom of dowry, these are a form of domestic violence and a result of pure greed.

‘Certain laws were adopted during British Rule for removing the disabilities from which women had been suffering for more than 2000 years: Sati Abolition Act of 1829, Widow Remarriage Act of 1856, The child marriage abolition act 1860, The civil marriage act 1872, The married women’s property act 1874, The age of consent act 1881; abolished, at least by law, the marriage of girls below 12 years of age, The child marriage restraint act 1929; made it punishable to marry a boy under 18 or a girl under 15 years of age, The Hindu marriage disabilities removal act 1946, marriage within the same cast validated’.

The problem of dowry is equally severe in Pakistan just like India. But to date, no satisfactory measures have been taken either by the judiciary or other governmental machinery. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), the extreme form it took included driving a woman to suicide or engineering an accident through infamous “Stove burning” usually when the husband, often in collaboration with his side of the family, felt (or made to believe) that the dowry or other gifts he had expected from his in-laws were not forthcoming or/and he wanted to marry again or he expected inheritance from the death of his wife. During 1997, the Lahore press reported an average of more than four local cases of women being burnt weekly, three of the four fatally. Police follow-up to these cases was negligible, with only six suspects taken into custody out of 215 cases reported in Lahore newspapers during the year. In 1997, there was not a single conviction in a “stove-death” case in the country.

Most of the cases that go unreported are the violence against women, especially by husbands and in-laws. In the religion-cultural setup of Pakistani society, it is considered taboo if the family matters cross the doorstep. Hence, violence against a wife by the husband, daughter by her brothers or fathers, or even mothers by their sons is considered a private family matter. The violence against women can go to extremes as far as acid throwing and wounding or cutting different body parts especially hair and nose as a punishment and for causing humiliation to the victim for a lifetime. Although Pakistan Penal Code Section 337 Q states that, ‘The compensation of causing [literal meaning destruction] or the severing of an organ, found singly in a human body shall be equivalent to the value of diyat’. However, where such harm is inflicted on a woman by a member of her own family, a woman seldom receives the benefit of these laws.

If women are not able to give birth to a male child that may also result in various physical and emotional punishments. For instance, just to site this case will explain the heart of the issue.

After giving birth to five girls and being continuously tortured by her husband for not conceiving a boy, Faizan Mai, a distraught thirty-five-year-old Pakistani woman, killed herself and her two youngest daughters in 2002 by jumping in front of a moving train when her husband declared he would marry another woman that could give him a son.

Women’s Political Representation:

Pakistan

The reserved seats for women in the National Assembly remained 6 – 10 seats under the constitutions of 1956, 1962, and 1973. However, in 1985 the number was increased to 20. The subsequent elected governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif could not increase any number in that and later these seats were increased to 60 by the government of General Pervaiz Musharraf.?At the local government level, where 5 percent to 12 percent of the seats were reserved for women through indirect elections by the councils themselves, women constituted only 10 percent of the membership in 1993 (8,246 out of 75,556)

Local Level Quotas in Pakistan

Table 1: Seats Reserved for Women

Type of Council Seats Reserved for Women

Union Councils (6,022) ?36,132

Tehsil Councils (305) ?????1,749

Town Councils (30) ????????161

District Councils (96) ?????1.988

Total ????40,028

National and Provincial Level Quotas

Punjab 148 ??????35 ????????-- ??????????183

Sindh ???61 ????????14 ????????-- ??????????75

NWFP ??35 ????????8 ???????????-- ??????????43

Baluchistan ???????14 ????????3 ???????????-- ??????????17

Federally Administered Territory (FATA) ??????????????12 ????????-- ??????????-- ??????????12

Islamabad ?????????2 ???????????-- ??????????-- ??????????2

Non-Muslims ???-- ??????????-- ??????????10 ????????10

TOTAL ?272 ??????60 ????????10 ????????342

In the provincial assemblies, 22 percent were reserved for women. Like the National Assembly, there are seats to be contested in open, general elections. Table 4:

Women’s Representation in Provincial Assemblies

Province ????????????General ?????????????Women ?????????????Non-Muslims ???Total

Punjab 297 ??????66 ????????8 ???????????363

Sindh ???130 ??????29 ????????9 ???????????159

NWFP ??99 ????????22 ????????3 ???????????121

Baluchistan ???????51 ????????11 ????????3 ???????????62

Total ????577 ??????128 ??????23 ????????728

Recommendations for enhancing women’s participation

Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali said: ‘No true social transformation can occur until every society learns to adopt new values, forging relationships between men and women based on equality, equal responsibility and mutual relationship’ (1996:73)

Keeping in view the situation of women in Pakistan and India it can well be understood that the objective of equal opportunities and situating women at equal footings with men at all levels of the society cannot be achieved lest women be a part of legislation and themselves represent their problems at the local and central government. Women need to be included in all the decision-making bodies as actors and not just for filling the gaps to quieten Women’s groups.

There is a rising realization that steady peace and prosperity cannot be achieved till all the institutions work in accordance with democratic norms. Besides the representation of women and other discriminated groups in the institutional framework is brought to equilibrium; to eliminate discrimination from the world over.

Women constitute an average of 50% of the population of every country.

It implies that women ought to represent the same percentage in all the institutions from the legislature to government and from health to education. But a 130-country survey conducted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in 2004 indicates that women hold an average of only 15.4 of the elected seats. The same is the situation in the rest of the institutions.

Obstacles to women's equal participation:

The major obstacle in the way of women’s representation in democratic institutions is the socially constructed Gender stereotypes, which categorize the roles of women and men in any society. For instance, it is presumed that the boss should be a man but the secretary ought to be a woman.

Women who opted for a social or political life had to handle the emotional fall out of strained relationships. Compared with male volunteers, the women tended to be more qualified and to have more political experience.

?????????????politics does not have the same impact on women as it does on men

?????????????political process often falters gender relations

?????????????women often participate as a political subject in political activity in different ways from men

?????????????orthodox political science has been slow to incorporate a gendered perspective into its approach (Silverberg 1990)

The notions of ‘women’s interests’ shared by all women regardless of race, class, and sexuality have become highly contested.

Psychological and traditional barriers:

Women must compensate by being exceptional in the world of politics. Though the job of an MP might be considered less accessible for women in other respects given that it entails a more demanding schedule.

*Social status of the political recruits exceeds that of the population they represent

Political parties:

Ethnic groups or clans may be dominated by a single, strong leader, usually a male, leaving little opportunity for women to enter the political process

?????????????Adherence to international standards for the protection of women’s civil and political rights.

?????????????Inclusion of women in the bodies created for developing the new electoral processes and implementation of peace accords.

?????????????Design and implement new laws to ensure and enhance women’s participation.

?????????????The practical aspects of the electoral process do not indirectly discriminate against women.

?????????????Adopting temporary special measures such as quotas.

?????????????Laws requiring political parties to nominate and support women candidates.

?????????????Create platforms to ensure women’s voices are heard.

In South Asia, where discrimination against women is still very strong. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka have all had women political leaders, but they have gained their positions based on their elite status and family connections rather than their own personal qualities.