When most women in Pakistan return home from a long, often humiliating day at work, the first thing they do is make tea. For someone else. They serve it eagerly — just the right color and texture, otherwise it might be splattered across a wall by an angry father, brother or husband — with a smile, wiping away any signs of strain or tiredness, because almost every day they are making a pitch for permission to continue with their careers.
The tea is a symbol of women’s subservience and domesticity — let us work and we will not falter in the requirement that we serve in the home. As a result, they are workhorses both at home and in the office or factory, as a consequence sometimes falling short at both. Add in a child, a bad marriage or an elderly parent who is ill and everything can easily get out of whack — but only for the working woman.
The participation of women in the labor force in Pakistan stands at 25 percent, according to the latest data from ADB. This is well below the rates for countries with similar income levels, and also much lower than rates for many other Muslim countries. So the social stigma affecting women who work that is prevalent in Pakistan cannot only be blamed on religious conservatism.
Neither is education the only barrier, although it is a significant one. Only 25 percent of women with a university degree in Pakistan are employed. The rest choose, for lack of a better expression, to marinate in the leisure of the patriarchy.
Experts who study the issue of females in the workforce say a lack of mobility is one of the main reasons women do not work even when male guardians allow them to, and even when they need to as a result of gruesome economics. Crime, violence and rampant sexual harassment on the streets are a deterrent to even beginning a job search.
Only 10 percent of women using public transportation in Pakistan are spared routine gropes, shoves and squeezes by conductors and passengers — 90 percent are not. Aurat Foundation, a women’s-rights organization in Islamabad, found that harassment is even more rampant than is reported. Even when not bodily assaulted, women on public transport are ogled and made to feel psychologically uncomfortable. They are forced to hide in the corners when they step out into public places, regardless of how they dress.
What remains tragic is that our economic and social policies do not reflect the needs of women who often have multiple disadvantages on top of living in a male-dominated society, including existing way below the poverty line and being from a minority religious or ethnic community.
Aisha Sarwari
Lately, Pakistan has been celebrating the rise of Sima Kamil, who was appointed president and CEO of major commercial bank UBL. There have been other pioneering women, too: Alfalah GHP Investment Management, First Women Bank, L’Oreal, and Unilever Pakistan have all chosen women to lead their organizations into commercial growth.
Kamil made her name not only as a woman who survived in a male-dominated industry, but also as one who had intersectionality, overcoming the interlocking systems of power that effect the most marginalized in society. The fact that she made it at the top defies the status quo and also drives home the lesson that when women in Pakistan make a point of playing the career game, they often beat their male peers.
What remains tragic is that our economic and social policies do not reflect the needs of women who often have multiple disadvantages on top of living in a male-dominated society, including existing way below the poverty line and being from a minority religious or ethnic community.
One of the largest employers of women with these intersectionalities is the municipalities where, for example, they sweep streets and clean parks. It would make a tremendous difference if they were the focus of inclusion campaigns, financial inclusion especially, and initiatives to digitally empower them, to economically encourage them to bank and save, to get them to learn basic skills to expand their earning prospects, and also perhaps to give them better health protection. These women are exposed to dust and smoke constantly.
More than 74 per cent of manual laborers in Pakistan are engaged in the informal-employment sector, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Domestic workers account for the biggest section of this. Most of these women start off working as children. It is difficult to find a story where such an employee has not been sexually harassed, beaten for minor mistakes or denied a fair wage. This is the most unregulated and undocumented part of the workforce.
Pakistan cannot turn around its economy without reducing the onslaught of violence against women, which affects nine out of 10 of them, according to Thomson Reuters Foundation. The economic cost of this abuse cannot be calculated accurately but it is safe to say this country perhaps would be an economic powerhouse by now had we treated women more like intellectual assets.
An attempted turnaround is somewhat underway. Punjab now has Violence Against Women Centers, laws against harassment of women in the workplace have been updated and strengthened, and the occasional bone is thrown to females in politics.
It is not enough. What needs to happen is a fundamental change in mentality that would allow a woman to come home from work, kick off her shoes, sit on a sofa and have tea served to her, instead of serving it to the men in her life. That proverbial cup of tea must be brought to her as a mark of respect, for her comfort and also as an apology.
– Aisha Sarwari is co-founder of the Women’s Advancement Hub, a grass-roots platform for women to amplify their voices. She has been working on women’s rights for more than 15 years in Pakistan.
Twitter: @AishaFSarwari
