Eye witness report from Pakistan

The fight for equal rights and women's freedom in Pakistan

While in Pakistan, Voice editor Alan McCombes talked to some women activists who provide a helpline and campaigning support for working class women in Lahore.

One of the more nauseatingly hypocritical features of the 'War against Terror' has been the rejoicing of politicians and the media at the supposed restoration of women's rights following the fall of the Taliban.
In other countries, especially Saudi Arabia, women are also brutally degraded - but that's OK since Saudi Arabia produces a quarter of the world's oil and is a close ally of the US.
Meanwhile America is to give Pakistan billions of pounds as reward for backing the bombing of Afghanistan. Yet in Pakistan, women face brutal oppression.
In Lahore I spoke to three activists who run the 'Working Women's Helpline' about the conditions facing women in Pakistan today.
The helpline workers meet weekly and go out on the streets in working class areas to discuss with women their rights and their problems.
Much of the work of the helpline involves taking up individual cases, including marital disputes, workplace problems and incidences of discrimination. One specific issue that they are campaigning around is for the right of women to join trade unions. "More and more women are working in factories because they work harder and they can be hired at very cheap rates," says Rahila, a member of the executive of the All-Pakistan Trade Union Federation. Azra and Rahila have both suffered victimisation for trade union activities. Rahila, a telephone operator was charged with being "potentially disrespectful".
"I wasn't even accused of being disrespectful. Just that I 'might become' disrespectful."
Azra was sacked from her job in a hospital. "One woman arrived a little bit late for her work and was slapped by the male doctor. The woman had worked in the hospital all her life so the female activists of the union got together and made a complaint saying this behaviour was unacceptable.
"Initially the doctor was suspended. But then they realized that we were capable of fighting for our rights so they sacked us for standing up for our colleague."
The helpline often has to deal with problems of physical violence and sexual violence in the workplace.
"Some of the factories in Lahore say we don't want any married women. They want young female workers who then suffer constant sexual harassment from the supervisors. They are forced to do whatever their supervisors ask them to do."
Azra describes an incident where a group of women at a factory in Lahore returned to their village after being asked to do overtime. They were ambushed at gunpoint in a bus on the way home and raped.
The Working Women's Helpline went into the village and took up the case. "It became a huge national issue and we eventually managed to get justice for the women."
One of the policies the helpline promotes is the legalisation of abortion. In Pakistan, abortion is totally illegal. As a result many women die from illegal abortions under unsafe conditions.
Many women also fall pregnant after being raped. Unless they can prove they were raped they are then liable to 14 years imprisonment for having sex outside marriage. But in order to secure a conviction for rape, a woman needs to produce at least four witnesses - an almost impossible feat.
"The mullahs are totally against abortion. They want us to have 14 children, 15 children, 16 children," says Farah. "They say children are a gift from God."
I asked why women seem to be quite invisible in Pakistan. In the shops, bazaars and restaurants it is men who serve behind the counters and the customers are overwhelmingly male.
"This is especially a problem in the more working class areas which tend to be more conservative," says Rahila, "That's because people are less educated in these areas. There is also a lot of harassment, sexual jokes directed towards women in the streets. "Sometimes they will take out a small child with them because they feel safe from harassment. It might not be their own child, it might be a young brother or the child of a friend. But it makes them feel safer."
Discrimination against women starts in childhood. Many girls are sent out to work in carpet factories and other industries because there is an attitude that education is wasted on girls. Farah, who teaches adult literacy, relates an incident involving one of her students.
"She copied out a poem that she liked. But when her family saw the poem they beat her up. It was just a simple poem but her family said 'How could you write this, this is vulgar'. They told told her she could no longer attend school."
Farah recently mobilised a large number of women from her community to a peace rally recently. "I live in a working class community on the outskirts of Lahore," she says.
"But many of these women had never been outside their own community, even to go into the centre of Lahore.
"There was opposition from their husbands and their parents. But I managed to persuade them that was important, this was about peace. For the women attending the rally was a taste of freedom, a chance to get out of the house. 'When is the next rally?' they kept asking."
I asked the women about the attitude of Pakistani women to the war in Afghanistan. Do they have any sympathy with the claim that this war will help to liberate women from the tyranny of the Taliban?
Rahila says: "If this is about women's rights, why are they bombing women? It's not just men who are being attacked. Women are being killed by these bombs in Afghanistan. How can you defend women's rights by killing them?"
What is their attitude towards Osama? Do they see him as a hero standing up to the West?
Azra believes that Osama should have given himself up to save the lives of innocent people. But she also says that people in the Muslim world do not trust the West.
"We were very sad to hear about September 11. But people ask why they never tried to produce any proof against Osama, but instead just started bombing."

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