This is as safe as women are in Islamabad, the hub of foreign diplomats, consulates and foreign staff. One would cringe thinking what it must be like in smaller cities and rural areas concealed behind the murky expanse of obscurity and routine under-reporting. Only a total of three rapists had been convicted in the 235 cases reported to the police in the capital city during the last five years, according to a capital police report of June 2022. The document claimed that 14 rape cases were under investigation, 15 cancelled, while sentences were awarded in only 3. During the period between June 2017 and June 2022, 33 suspects were acquitted and 170 cases remained under trial.
The World Economic Forum grades Pakistan as the second-worst country in terms of gender parity, ranking at 145 out of 146 countries. Besides its geographic proximity, Afghanistan also borders Pakistan on this ranking list, being the worst country in the world on the gender-parity scale. And while Afghanistan’s rulers are confining women indoors with misogynistic decrees, in Pakistan a burgeoning sense of insecurity and a lurking scent of menace are now keeping women from taking safe and swift strides outdoors. One is cooped up by force and the other by fear.
Realities surrounding women’s freedoms in Afghanistan are heartbreaking. With women’s mobility curtailed, education thwarted, attires and attitudes closely policed, it is just not possible for ‘outsiders’ to visualise the endless trauma and hardships that the Afghan women and girls must be enduring.
Likewise, safe spaces are fast shrinking for women in Pakistan. The F-9 park rape go a long way dampening our morale and reinforcing overriding apprehensions and insecurities. The perpetrators of the F-9 park assault acted more like self-proclaimed morality police than rapists driven by lust, punishing the woman then and there – simply for taking a walk outdoors after dusk.
The assailants sent out a clear message: women should not step outdoors for something as frivolous as taking a walk in a sparsely lit park.
This mindset sounds familiar to cause alarm, not only so in relation to our own bigoted cultural norms but also in terms of the ideology being stealthily bombarded onto us from across our north-western border. The emboldening of Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan would entail clamping down on women’s rights and freedoms by resorting to violence, spreading terror and creating an environment of blatant insecurity. The culture of terrorism is not confined to bombings alone and does not emerge in isolation. It drags along with it all the ideological evils that are linked to extremism – women’s suppression being the fundamental vice of the extremist ideology.
The assailants sent out a clear message: women should not step outdoors for something as frivolous as taking a walk in a sparsely lit park.
According to the National Police Bureau, the total number of rape and gang-rape cases registered in Pakistan from 2019 to 2021 was a whopping 11,160: as many as 4,637 rape/gang-rape cases were registered in 2019, 4,133 in 2020 and 2,390 cases were filed in 2021. Conviction rate was an abysmal 0.2 percent.
Representatives of the Ministry of Human Rights also revealed that an appalling 63,367 cases of violence against women were registered between 2020 to 2022. According to the survey, these reported cases could be the tip of the iceberg since societal stigma and fear of retributive violence prevent women from reporting incidents of sexual assault, violence and harassment.
Spaces for women were never risk-free in Pakistan but with a rise in terrorist attacks in the country, women’s policing is also witnessing unprecedented highs – as developments across the border influence peace and security in the country. Unwarranted policing has lead to not only an uptick in harassment and acts of violence against women, but also reckless vigilantism that seems to have become a shameful trait of our society, frequently employed with impunity against the helpless, the weak and those easily surmountable. Starting from workplace harassment to enduring harassment in public transport to harrying at marketplaces and on roads, women face it at every step. What is worse is that the redressal system for women experiencing harassment, discrimination, victimisation, and humiliation is grossly flawed, while harassment continues unabated because there is no transparency or accountability at any step along the way.
Spaces for women were never risk-free in Pakistan but with a rise in terrorist attacks in the country, women’s policing is also witnessing unprecedented highs – as developments across the border influence peace and security in the country.
In digital spaces women encounter cyber bullying, black mailing, impersonation, non-consensual information, unsolicited messages, threats, sexist cyber attacks, hate speech, moral policing, slut-shaming, body shaming and what not. Online spaces are also becoming more and more unsafe and hostile, keeping pace with real life spaces – despite more laws being enacted to protect women against harassment of all types.
The repeated backlash against Aurat March every International Women’s Day is another attempt to police women’s voices by adherents of narrow cultural and militant ideologies. The TTP escalated threats against women who march for rights of half of this country’s population when they doctored a video of the Aurat March accusing its organizers and participants of blasphemy and obscenity. The ensuing social media disinformation campaign against the organizers of Aurat March underscores how exclusionary, unjust and unsafe Pakistan remains for most of its 102 million women.
This escalated backlash against women’s activism emphasises not only the need for more rights movements but also the dire necessity to overcome the dominant patriarchal narrative about religion that falsely portrays demanding women’s rights as inimical to Islam. Right-wing criticism against the Aurat March stems from a simplistic dichotomy that renders feminism and Islam irreconcilably opposed ideas.
This false dichotomy upheld by the TTP and conservative ultra-rightists has been cemented by mainstream interpretations of Islam that use a patriarchal cultural lens and systematically exclude feminist narratives propagated by Islamic traditions. The religious narrative has so fully absorbed patriarchal cultural ideals that those who challenge toxic patriarchy are accused of challenging Islamic doctrines.
The Human Rights Watch in its Annual World Report 2022 alleges extensive rights abuses against women in Pakistan. “Violence against women and girls including rape, murder and domestic violence are endemic in Pakistan,” says the report. Such reports and their findings only endorse Pakistani women’s everyday experiences in the real and virtual realms.
With International Women’s Day a few weeks away, and the country in the middle of a political, economic and security turmoil, one can only hope that further controversies and undue confrontation would not be whipped up this March 8.
The UNFPA vies to end gender-based violence by 2030 through empowering women and girls by educating them about their bodies and rights and engaging men and boys to change their attitudes. While sustainable awareness raising approaches may help achieve the former, the latter might be the most formidable task at hand in order to diminish the evil of gender-based violence.