Women and Pakistan

Looking over the annual gender gap index

THANK God for Mississippi. This was a popular saying in southern US in general and Texas in particular whenever states were ranked by socioeconomic indicators. Why? Because these generally backward states used to manage to avoid the shame of getting the absolute bottom slot because the state of Mississippi used to get that dubious distinction.

For us in Pakistan, we had “Thank God for Afghanistan”. Our north-western neighbour, perpetually in a state of civil war, has saved us the dubious distinction of being at the region’s rock bottom since a decade or so when the Indians and the Bangladeshis surpassed us in development indicators. That is what we were thinking when the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap index came out. We didn’t get the bottom slot, yes, but not because of Afghanistan. It was war-struck Yemen that came in at the bottom. Yes, let that sink in, ladies and gentlemen. Afghanistan fared better on the gender index than us.

The index seeks to measure the disparity between the genders in four key areas: educational attainment, health and survival, economic opportunity and political environment. We know the images that would have jogged through your mind when you read these four categories. You always knew things were bad. Just not worse-than-Afghanistan bad.

There are a couple of points to ponder here for the powers that be. First: the realisation that reproductive rights for women contain the elixir for a number of the problems of the developing world’s women. If you were to plot out the demographics on a graph, you will see the clearly discernible change that Bangladesh saw when the clergy was engaged in the population planning apparatus.

True, our own clergy cannot be engaged to do the same because the state has engendered a powder keg.

The writing on the wall is clear. We need to get our act together. Not to imply that the males of our country are in an enviable position, but it is clear that the potential of the women is nigh completely locked up in socio-cultural shackles. More should be expected of the country that elected the first female prime minister in the Muslim world.