Tag: violence

It’s not quite so simple

Problematising the challenges for gender equality is fraught because too much research takes a unidimensional approach to the issues. Some state ‘the problem is religion’, with both Christianity and Islam labelled as patriarchal constructs that hinder women’s development and equality. Of course if you belong to one of those religions you may argue otherwise. There are women within both of these faith traditions who argue cogently for the emancipatory nature of their faith. So yes, the problem is complex.

Too often simplistic articulation of the problem denies the agentic nature of women’s engagement with and through their faith tradition. Everything about women and how they negotiate their everyday is subsumed under a rubric of their passive socialisation within religion to oppose gender equality.

However, the question that is not answered is how do men and women live their faith differently? What are the negotiations they engage in everyday that enable them to navigate the complexities of the religious and social dynamics that mediate their lives? How do they bargain with their faith, its institutions and traditions, its beliefs and practices, to challenge the barriers they face?

Working in a women’s college in South Asia, I was struck by the different ways women’s education enabled them to negotiate with socially and religiously embedded structures. As an outsider looking in I could only see structures that appeared antithetical to gender equality. As I spent time living in the community, and in some small way began to see how women lived intentionally and purposefully rewriting the rules of those structures, their agency became evident.

I had heard outsiders describe education for these women as simply a ticket to a better marriage, dismissing the education they engaged in as largely meaningless. What I began to see, however, was the ability education gave these women to negotiate who they married, what they brought to the marriage and how the marriage was navigated. Yes, education enabled them to negotiate in their marriage and that was a meaningful was of challenging old norms that would otherwise dominate their lives.

It is too easy for us to disregard the acts of agency of other women because they are not as we imagine their world should be. The path of change can only be defined by those who must pioneer it. Simplistic articulations of problems can blind us to the change that is happening in women’s everyday negotiations and navigations.

Does Internationalisation of local issues help women’s rights?

When Muktar Mai was gang-raped on June 22, 2002 at the behest of the tribal jirga, or panchayat, the incident should have finished there. Many women before her have suffered such a fate and out of honour/shame have committed suicide soon after. Mukhtar Mai did not accept her fate and fought back. Her story brought a range of issues pertaining to women, the government’s lack of will in addressing them, and the clash between cultural and religious norms and women’s rights, into the public arena where they were and are debated, discussed and written about. It also provoked increased discussion on what ‘civil society’ might mean for Pakistan as activists confronted what they term ‘barbaric tribal customs’.

The issue has become an international flashpoint for the government and embroiled the President, General Pervaiz Musharraf, in an ongoing international debate on rights versus image. Sept 13, 2005, in an interview with the Washington Post, President Musharraf said the talk around Islamabad was that women get themselves raped to get a visa for abroad and make large sums of money. President Musharraf continually sought to defend his handling of the Mukhtar Mai case, claiming its internationalization has tarnished Pakistan’s image abroad and, he has attempted to scapegoat women’s organizations and activists by publicly accusing them of seeking to harm Pakistan in their demand for reform or the way they articulate it. The spotlight has been put squarely on laws and customs that adversely affect women.

The Government then initiated an international conference in Islamabad on Violence against Women, a direct response to the national and international outrage over its inaction on this issue as highlighted by the Mukhtar Mai case. The internationalization of a local incident highlighting rights’ abuse created almost unprecedented opportunities for women to negotiate forcefully for change.

How women engage with the State, society and other power brokers are telling in terms of the changes they are able to achieve. Internationalization of issues becomes a double-edged sword, and one on which women’s negotiations for change rise or fall. At times, governments react with cosmetic measures that appease foreign powers putting pressure on them. At other times they resist and restrict the activities and work of local initiatives for change.

When international attention is brought to bear we need to be careful to work in service of local initiatives, understanding the broader picture, while not forgetting the need for justice for every women and her story.

Featured image: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-muktar-mai-thumbprint-opera-20170616-story.html