Three Women: Three Attitudes – 2
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors.”- Evelyn Cunningham, Speech,1969
THE WAHIDA SHAH FACTOR: Wahida Shah is a pathetic character. She tried to play a role for which she was not ill-suited. How women live in a feudal system is known to the world, and to her as well. Slave to the feudal lord, and master to the weak and helpless. A chicken in the guise of a hyena, she perpetrated her aggressiveness on a docile and helpless fellow woman. She can be likened to a balloon that loses its volume once it’s de-aired.
As expected, she did not lose a moment by licking the dust just to save her seat. What happened to her ‘Vadera arrogance and her Pharaoh-like pride’ when she chose to go to the house of the very woman whom she had manhandled so disdainfully in the public!. “Main nay koi tashaddad nahi kia; main ne to thappar mara thai”(“ I did not commit any act of violence; I just slapped her”). She is not even worth a worthy mention, because people like her in either sex are spineless - outwardly demi-gods, inwardly earth-worms. Look, what happened to her mentor, the late Ms. Benazir Bhutto. Men manipulated that she should die so that they could rule in her. Remember what Joseph Conrad had said, “Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade…”
THE SHARMEEN DAWN: India West in its March 2, 2012 carries the headlines: “Pakistan’s First-ever Oscar Win”. Lisa Tsering reports, “One of the most disturbing aspects of the status of women in India and Pakistan is brought to light in the documentary ‘Saving Face’. The film depicts female victims of acid violence…” Sharmeen herself says on the occasion, “I think that it reinforces the fact that today you can be anyone and come from anywhere, but if you put quality work out there, that it will be judged on just that”. The two women in the short documentary, Zakia and Rukhsana, who get profiled are symbols of courage, self-esteem and struggle. Zakia tries to courageously do what few women have done; seek justice against her husband who attacked her. She receives treatment and fights for her rights, gets involved with women in the Pakistani Parliament that takes up the issue of acid violence on a federal level.
Women in Pakistan will never see any improvement in their lives unless they seek empowerment, and empowerment in modern times comes through knowledge and through economic self-sufficiency. Husbands will change overnight if women begin to earn because a woman’s earnings impact the family in a far-reaching manner than the male-earnings. Men are, by and large, heedless and spendthrift, they lack financial discipline as they are outdoor creatures. They pick up habits that are just bad; begin smoking, spend unnecessarily on friends, would buy things for bragging that in the list of domestic priority are least needed, etc.
Women, on the contrary, are not just individuals; they are institutions in themselves; they do not drink, they do not smoke; they are exceedingly careful in spending money on frivolous things; they are habitual money-savers; are more family-oriented; they have a passion to decorate their homes, to educate their children. They are good borrowers as experimented in Bangladesh and India because they default the least. Besides, they are matchless home CEO’s as they, through empowerment, will acquire the ability to keep their spouses in line. So empowering women means empowering families; empowering the kids and the societies and ultimately the country. The process has a spiral effect. Men would think hundred times of divorcing them if they earn more.
Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist in 1990 developed a gauge of gender inequality and highlighted the stakes involved therein. He noted that in normal circumstances women live longer (a study shows by 7-10 years) than men, and so there are more females than males in much of the world. But, in places where there is gender inequality, females are less in number than men because they just ‘vanish’. China has 107 men for every 100 females; India has 108, and Pakistan has 111. The reason is obvious, according to Sen. About 107 million females have just vanished from the globe; every year at least another 2 million girls worldwide disappear because of gender discrimination.
Mothers do not get their daughters vaccinated; girls are less brought to the hospital than the boys; few girls are sent to the school as compared to boys; girls are less fed than the boys; girls are less loved than the sons; less is spent on the girls in the form of toys and clothes as compared to boys. Girls are given to understand from the beginning that their stay in the house they are born is transitory; sons are made to believe that the world basically was created for them. Add to this the curse of sex-selective abortions. Even mothers stay biased against their own daughters. The global statistics on the abuse of girls are stunning. “It appears more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine ‘genocide’ in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century”, writes Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn in their prize winning book, “Half the Sky”.
“A society in which women are not taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out”, wrote L Ron Hubbard. Once in Pakistan women learn to cry out that “the emperor is naked”, then every thing will appear in a different light; then the powerless will become powerful. Then no Wahida Shah will not be able to twist her words and say, that her act of slapping was a mere “misunderstanding”.
Nicholas D. Kristof in his book cites multiple examples of how a little help has transformed the lives of women and girls in many parts of the world. In Cambodia a teenager girl was sold into sex slavery; eventually, with little help she escaped from her brothel and help from an aid group, she then built a thriving retail business that not only supported her but also her family. An Ethiopian woman, like women in Pakistan, suffered terrible injuries in childbirth. She later with little encouragement not only succeeded in repairing her injuries but also became a famous surgeon.
Pakistan’s Mukhtar Mai refused to live with the shame she had been subjected to. The Matoi men armed with guns gang-raped her. Four men dragged her on a dirt floor and raped her one after another. ‘They know that a woman humiliated in that way has no other recourse except suicide. They don’t even need to use their weapons. Rape kills her,’ wrote Mukhtar Mai in a letter. She turned her shame into her strength. Brooke Shields paid her a tribute in these words, “lease don’t assume that it’s only a tale of heartbreak. Mukhtaran proves that one woman really can change the world.”
A Chinese saying is that women hold half the sky. Why should this half sky remain under a shadow in Pakistan? There is ample evidence now that proves that helping women can be a successful poverty-fighting strategy anywhere in the world, not just in the booming economies of East Asia. Says Kristof. The Self Employed Women’s Association that was founded in India in 1972 that supports the poorest women in starting businesses - raising living standards in ways that have dazzled scholars. Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world,” Lawrence Summers, the chief economist of the World Bank wrote. All the best economists of the world, namely, Sen, Summers, Joseph Stieglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, and Dr. Paul Farmer, are calling for much greater attention to women in development. China, India, Bangladesh, and all the countries in Far East Asia provide the proof of the above assertions. Why would in Pakistan women stay good enough only for slapping?
The day a Shagufta refuses to take any slapping sheepishly, the day a Habiba Memon dries up her tears and insists on booking the slapping hand, the day a Wahida Shah thinks a hundred times before raising her hand on anybody, the day the police officers (DSP’s) refuse to stand by only as spectators, or act as the custodians of the Waderas - that day a new Pakistan will be born. That day not one, not two, but hundreds and thousands of Sharmeen Obaids will be born, and the world will be there to watch them appearing on the stage receiving their Oscars.
Remember, “The greatest fault in women is the desire to be like men.”. The dawn of that day will take place only once women stop trying being like men; and learn to take pride in being women; once they realize that they are not the scum of the earth; that they are the equal partners of men; that this world belongs to them as much as it belongs to men. Once they become fully conscious that biologically they may be a little less muscular but in intellect and grace, they are the favorite ‘hand-maids’ of Allah. The famous French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville said in 1835. “If I were asked to what the singular prosperity of the American people is to be mainly attributed, I should reply: to the superiority of their women.”
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