FROM SACW

28 April 2008

No longer worried about becoming a ‘free sex zone’

By Haris Gazdar

High politics in Pakistan will continue to provide its share of thrills and frills, but this is an appropriate moment to take stock of the politics of the most fundamental relationship that helps to shape all others - that between women and men. Social policy retain huge potential for challenging patriarchy in many subtle but fundamental ways, and the present array of political forces offers as good an opportunity as any for pushing ahead with such an agenda.

At its base Pakistani society is deeply patriarchal and patriarchy sets the parameters for virtually all other institutions including markets, social networks and systems of dispute resolution, party politics and even the state. Statistical measures such as the sex ratio and gender differences in literacy, health, labour force participation, and voter turnout tell a striking but incomplete story. The issue is not just female disadvantage, though the disadvantage is severe and pervasive. The quantitative indicators are merely reflections of the ways in which the patriarchal family extends its reach across society, and reproduces itself over time.

Public space is clearly a male domain across Pakistan, and this goes a long way in explaining gender differences in health, education, labour force participation and political activity. Pakistan is not that different, of course, from many "traditional" societies in terms of its gendered division of space. The strength of the patriarchal family is projected through broader caste and kinship group networks or tribal organisation, extending norms that regulate interaction between women and men. These norms can persist and get reproduced even in the face of gender-neutral formal rights of citizenship, urbanisation and economic change.

The role of Islam in all this has been widely misunderstood. It is all too easy but lazy to point to Islam's prescriptive tone with respect to women's mobility and autonomy to explain the persistence and reproduction of patriarchal norms in Pakistan. The responsibility for this association of Islam with social conservatism lies largely with Islamic "modernists" such as the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, the late Maulana Maudoodi. Maudoodi and other contemporary interpreters of Islam were not interested in the sociology of existing "traditional" communities in Pakistan. Their main focus was on the construction and maintenance of patriarchal control in the "modern" setting of urban life, educational and employment opportunities, and gender-neutral formal rights of citizenship. Maudoodi and his ilk are not the sources of patriarchy in Pakistan - rather, they provided intellectual and ideological props for the perpetuation of traditional patriarchal norms in a changing world

The ideologues offered sustenance to Zia-ul-Haq's military regime in the 1980s and lent him the desperately needed Islamic credentials. State policies actively discouraged women's entry into the workforce, and encouraged the "moral policing" of public spaces. The Hudood laws promulgated under Zia-ul-Haq's martial law government in 1979 placed the full ideological and coercive apparatus of the state at the disposal of the patriarchs.

Amendments brought about through the Women's Protection Act of 2006 took away the bite of Zia's Hudood laws through drastically altering the procedure of filing and pursuing a complaint. Pervez Musharraf proclaimed the Women's Protection Act as a sign of his regime's enlightenment and its commitment to reform. In fact there was a split in his own party over the issue, and the smooth passage of the Act was made possible by the support received from the then opposition, the Pakistan People's Party. The debate leading up to the change of law was revealing and historic. Religious parties and their allies in the Musharraf camp justified their stand as a defence of Islam and morality against vulgarity. It was said that the law will turn Pakistan into a "free sex zone". Despite this emotive, if absurd, rhetoric, the public mood had swung decisively against the religious lobby. So much so, that the issue has disappeared from public view without a trace.

The Jamaat-e-Islami and its fellow travellers were right in fearing changes in the Zia-era religious laws. They know that the state wields enormous, if subtle power, through its ability to create economic incentives and symbolic gesture, to effect changes in the gendered division of space.

The "normal" course of social policy too will continue to create new opportunities for challenging tradition. There is a proposal on the table for doubling the number of women employed by the Lady Health Workers Programme - a health and family planning service delivery scheme that already employs some 1,00,000 women in rural areas. Many of these women are the first ones in their communities to have taken up paid formal sector jobs. The steady increase in the provision of government schooling facilities for girls in rural areas has had an unintended consequence. There has been a mushrooming of low-fee private schools across the country that have taken advantage of the availability of young educated women - some 2,00,000 of them on last count - who are keen to take up paid employment.

In the political dramas that lie ahead social policy issues are unlikely to make an appearance. Thankfully, the debate about whether Pakistan would be a "free sex zone" is not high on the list of issues that preoccupy the big guns in the political parties, the parliament, the presidency, the judiciary and the military. Unlike many other countries, in Pakistan the depoliticisation of women's issues at the top is a minor blessing. It means the resumption of normal business - of hiring more Lady Health Workers, making contraceptives more easily available, creating more job opportunities for female teachers, registering women voters and letting young people choose their life partners without incurring the wrath of the state. (Economic and Political Weekly, 19 April)