New polling laws stir winds of change
Women vow to defy men who have banned their vote for 71 years in Pakistan village
MOHRI PUR: Men banned women from voting in the village of Mohri Pur sometime around 1947 and they have obeyed ever since – until this year, when changes to Pakistan’s election laws and women’s attitudes could shift the dynamic.
At least, that is the hope of many women meeting beneath a Jambolan tree in the village 60km from the central Pakistan city of Multan.
Whether the men watching angrily as the women speak to AFP reporters will allow them to follow through when the nation goes to the polls on July 25 is another question.
“They perhaps think that women are stupid ... or there is an issue of honour for them,” said Nazia Tabbasum, 31.
Village elders banned women from voting decades ago, claiming that visiting a public polling station would “dishonour” them.
Socalled “honour” describes a patriarchal code across South Asia that often seeks to justify the murder and oppression of women who defy conservative traditions by acts such as choosing their own husband or working outside the home.
“I don’t know where their honour goes to sleep while they lie down at home ... as their women work in the fields,” Tabbasum added scathingly.
But the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has declared that at least 10% of voters in each constituency must be women, otherwise its results will be voided.
Nearly 20 million new voters have been registered in the rapidly growing country, including 9.13 million women, the ECP said.
It is another step in women’s long battle for rights in Pakistan, a deeply patriarchal country of some 207 million people.
The shift also sets the stage for a standoff in conservative rural areas like Mohri Pur.
“The main reason is that these are the areas where women are not allowed to even come out of the house,” said Farzana Bari, a gender expert and rights activist.
The ECP’s rule change should improve things, though Bari warned that within each constituency there could yet be pockets where women are prevented from voting.
In 2015, men stopped women from voting in a local poll in Lower Dir, in the northwest. The ECP promptly cancelled the result.
In Mohri Pur, located in Punjab province, women do work outside the home and some receive education, yet the vote ban holds.
Bismillah Noor, a member of the district council who arranged the meeting under the Jambolan tree, said the men are stubborn.
“I’ve been trying since 2001, but nobody listens to me,” she said. “In 2005, men told me their women didn’t want to vote so I should not force them.”
The determination she hears from the village women now gives her hope, but progress is fragile.
In 2015, one woman, Fouzia Talib, became the only one in Mohri Pur to vote in local elections. She was ostracised.
Now, she is unsure if voting on July 25 for politicians she believes will do little for the area is worth the backlash.
“I will see,” she said. — AFP