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Gender Studies
SZABIST Introduction to Social Sciences
August 2010
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Gender Analysis
! What is Gender?
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Women today in Pakistan..
Literacy level (2006) for adult females 40 % vs males 68%;
youth 58% female and 79% male
Economic activity rate (adult) female 21 % and male 84% -
Total female labour participation 19%
No statistic from Pakistan on female wages in comparison to
male
23 seats in political office
Population (2009) women ~ 88 million, male ~ 93 million
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convenience of subservience
Over 75% of Pakistani women live in rural areas in abject poverty &
16% qualify as literal and Pakistan has one of the lowest rates in the
world of female participation in the labour force
Jalal argues for middle and upper class women submission can be
socially rewarding.
A striking proportion of lower middle, middle, and upper class
women, those particularly belonging to commercial and business
groups, actually endorse the states Islamisation policies.
Main point is that there is a BIG gap between individual awareness and
collective action.
In Pakistan, like around the world, the class origins of the leaders of
feminist movements have been the decisive factor in the articulation of
womens issues at the state level.
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Relationship of the Pakistani state with
women
Pre Partition (late 1920s)
Muslim women lives were dominated by the domestic sphere and
it was only in response to educated Muslim men wanting to marry
educated women that Muslim women began to receive schooling
outside of home.
In the 1930s upper and middle class urban Muslim women were
attending English medium schools hundreds, or even thousands.
In 1914 Anjuman e Khawatin was All India Muslim League for
Women
Women were welcome to participate in the Pakistan movement
but most of them did not as independent but linked with their men
the most prominent members of the Muslim Womens league
were the mothers, wives, daughters or sisters of influential Muslim
politicians
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1947-1961
Jalal argues that the post colonial state was the ultimate
guarantor of the social order, whose moral underpinnings in
the South Asian, and Pakistani case, was held by women.
In 1949 when the Muslim League council refused to consider
electing a woman candidate for the office of Joint Secretary
the women staged a walk out and days after Begum Rana
Liaquiat Khan laid the foundation of APWA (All Pakistan
womens association) still exists today.
1961 the Family Law Ordinance which improved the rights of
women in marriage while curtailing the rights of men.
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1970-1980
More and more women taking their place alongside men in the
public domain and the Bhuttos regimes liberal leanings helped
During the Bhutto era in 1974 a cross sectional study showed
though that 98% of women felt they followed traditional values
while 72 % of housewives and 46% of women employed outside
the home accepted the cultural dominance of men
1973 women became eligible to join the Civil services and the
constitution drafted in the same year defined equality for all
citizens as one of the basic principles of its fundamental rights
policy
1980 - Backlash of social conservatism with General Zias
Islamization policies greatly affecting women across the country
through the Hudood Ordinances.
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Gender & Social Policy
! Social investment paradigms
! Examples in Pakistan
! Income support
! Employment support
! Human rights, violence against
women & legal issues
! UN Millenium Development Goals for
Pakistan
! Goal 3. Promote gender equality and
empower women
! Target 4. Eliminate gender
disparity in primary and
secondary education, preferably
by 2005, and to all levels of
education no later than 2015
! Goal 5. Improve maternal health
! Target 6. Reduce by three
quarters, between 1990 and 2015,
the maternal mortality ratio
! What are some of the ways a
gender analysis has impacted
social policy in developed and
developing countries?
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Social Location Exercise
Gender
Class
Age
Ability
Race
Family structure
Sexuality
Education
Nationality/
citizenship
Religion
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Quizzes
! http://www.unicef.org/sowc07/quiz/index.html
! http://quiz.alteringtime.com/