Being thankful that the debate about whether Pakistan would be a “free sex zone” is not high on the list of the powers that be and presuming that sexual freedom enables the death of patriarchy and the consequent empowerment of women, this note raises a number of issues concerning the women’s movement in Pakistan and its relationship with the state.

Afiya Shehrbano Zia (afiyaszia@yahoo.com) is a women’s rights activist and researcher based in Karachi.

Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

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Gazdar’s arguments may be partially understood by looking at his source – the World Bank (WB) country study. This report was unanimously and publicly rejected by women’s groups and political activists in Pakistan, such that the government could not endorse it.1 The WB report was critiqued for “blaming the victim” and for basing the source of all women’s issues on culture and tradition, rather than a militarised state that was supported by the international community and the WB.2 That Gazdar should legitimise the report by quoting it in his article merely affirms the disconnect between social policy advocates and the political women’s movement in the country. On a personal level, it is a revealing analysis on how (sensitised) men see women’s issues in Pakistan today.

Patriarchy’s Impact on Women

There are a couple of methodological issues in his article that bear noting, including his separation of “high” politics with presumably “grounded” service delivery and a social policy that would, in his view, “subtly challenge patriarchy” in the country. That is not a novel conception for the second wave women’s movement that has spent nearly three decades directly and “subtly” confronting the state and religio-cultural norms. This romanticisation of a grassroots gender revolution either fragmenting the class movement with their preoccupation with womenspecific politics, or for the westernised feminist training projects that the “women NGOs” corner. Other liberal men, more savvy or genuinely sensitised, have joined the bandwagon and are experts themselves on gender issues – after all, gender is about both, feminine and masculine identities.

That is where Gazdar’s analysis flounders. While he makes relevant observations on the quantitative aspects of gender discrimination in the health and social sectors and political decision-making, I would challenge his understanding of the impact of patriarchy on women, sociologically. Anecdotal reference to “burqa clad” women in Karachi taking the veil as a deterrence (against male attention) is contestable. Not just methodologically but also in terms of analysis. Certainly we have observed a growing and dangerous rise in the tide of social conservatism escalating over the past decade and recognise that this dates further back to general Zia ul Haq’s regime of Islamisation. However, what needs to be acknowledged is that today, universally but particularly in Muslim contexts, the veil can no longer be analysed as a one-dimensional tool of oppression or “liberation”. Whether we like it or not, the veil can be simultaneously a symbol of patriarchy as well as that of defiance and resistance, both cultural and very political.

Certainly women do not want to deal with the male gaze as they negotiate their way into labour market but not because they want to “remain cheerful through their day” as he says. Rather, it is an offensive expression of potential male violence and a threatening reminder of the power that men assert on women in public life. Gazdar’s reasoning that harassment limits women to home-based work and prevents their equal access to the market is also contestable when read against earlier studies by his colleagues.3 The research

DISCUSSION

shows that most home-based workers are married women who combine household chores with waged work. In other words, unequal access to markets is not just because of harassment but primarily due to women’s double burden of domestic responsibilities as determined by patriarchal norms. Will social policy tackle such obstacles within the “private” realm and how will it do so without the state’s involvement?

Further, sexual harassment in only part of a more structural and material reason for the deliberate creation of a dual-labour market in capitalist economies. Relegating women and minorities to the secondary, more fragile and career limited one, privileges male workers as it benefits capitalists. Harassment is merely then an insurance policy to maintain these deliberate divisions in labour and in the market. Hence, merely flooding the market with lots of trained women may be symbolically and personally empowering and quantitatively relevant. However, it does not challenge the quality of the market nor male attitudes, particularly not with regard to sexual harassment. Social policy needs to change market structures rather than attem pting to push through reform by evading patriarchal behaviour or avoiding the state.

State and Culture

That is why the state cannot be ignored. Gazdar attempts to understand violence as a patriarchal norm with reference to Nafisa Shah’s doctoral work on honour killings in interior Sindh. He quotes an example from the study on how patriarchal violence is strengthened when men from marginalised groups gain social parity with neighbours, by inflicting violence on “their own” women. However, he is incorrect in suggesting that this is some sort of a privatised cultural expression of violence whereby women can hopefully struggle out of this bind through education or employment.

In fact Shah’s thesis points out clearly and damningly of the collusive role of the state in such cultural articulations of violence – ideologically, materially, legally and administratively. She identifies the local semi-judicial system of the ‘jirgas’ (tribal assembly of elders) as supported by the local administration, which further uses state structure and authority for enforcing decisions on whether a woman has dishonoured the community/tribe. Then the “settlement” is decided usually materially or through rape or exchange of women. The state is routinely entrenched in and exploits gendered roles as defined by itself as well as cultural norms. Women are immobilised in this mutually beneficial patriarchal relationship and without the state playing any overt role in this systemic cycle of violence. The state is let off the hook, however, when this is blamed on traditional patriarchy and bad social policy.

In addition, sexuality is pivotal in honour crimes and suggesting that its a positive development that a liberal state discourse should side-step this debate, is akin to merely sweeping it under the carpet. De-linking sexuality from the state’s business and relegating it as a “private” issue does not pronounce the death of patriarchy. Further, this thinking puts the lady health visitors’ scheme in grave policy danger because it may easily be perceived and accused for pursuing (a private and hence) anti-state agenda.

It is also important to remind Gazdar that while Nafisa Shah has earned her national assembly reserved seat and the women’s movement supports her completely, there have been some 36,000 women councillors at local bodies level who have been politicised since the Local Government Ordinances 2001, passed by the Musharraf government. While Gazdar may consider high politics a drama, surely these women warrant a mention within social policy recommendation. Their inclusion as local bodies representatives would only strengthen, if he likes, social reform at a “low” political level.

Revivalist Islamic Scholars

Gazdar holds responsible those Islamists who seek to modernise Islam and yet promote patriarchal tradition through progressive interpretations. He argues that those such as “Maudoodi and his ilk are not the source of patriarchy in Pakistan” but they “provide intellectual and ideological props for the perpetuation of traditional patriarchal norms”. Gazdar’s point is well taken but his target misplaced. Rather than Maudoodi’s ilk, there is an entirely new crop of upper class revivalist scholars, some of them entrenched in elite educational institutions, such as the Lahore University of Management Sciences, defining the intellectual Islamic revivalist discourse.

In addition there is a host of post 9/11 generation PhD students, churning out doctorates that seek progressive debates on social issues within the Islamic framework. Not only do they head departments and publish at local institutes, they even run programmes at south Asian centres around the world. In fact, many of these academics write consultancy reports for the WB and even the government, recommending social and economic policies. It would be naive to assume that the very porous boundaries of religious patriarchy have not, under neoliberal or progressive masks, managed to entrench themselves across all institutions in Pakistan.

Gazdar accepts the power of state ideological support in effecting changes in gendered division of space. But then goes on to suggest that therefore, the state should simply not “enforce the writ of the patriarch” and this will allow the “normal” course of social policy to follow. The depoliticisation of women’s issues at state level with regard to their sexuality and mobility is for Gazdar a “blessing in disguise” for it allows the “resumption of normal business” such as the lady health visitors and other such schemes.

This sterilised division between state debate and public discourse and the argument that temporary suspension of the issue will allow the women’s agenda to flourish, is the kind of liberal male social