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Dreams
like nightmares are made of the same material. But this particular nightmare
purports to the only dream we can have: a model of development that adores
things and scorns life….
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Eduardo Galeano |
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The majority of Pakistani women belong
to the silent and unmentioned peasantry in the rural areas and the working
class in the industrial centers. It is a poor and virtually illiterate
majority which leads a life of physical hardship involving long hours at
tedious chores, for which there is neither compensation nor recognition.
Most of these women bear the double burden of housework and outside work.
Consequently, they are first to rise and the last to sleep. They must
light the fire, prepare breakfast, have the dishes washed and the house
cleaned before setting out on their 'working' day. After everyone else has
collapsed in bed, these women are still cleaning, clearing and preparing
for the following day. Not only do these women have longer days than the
rest of the family, but being the last to eat, they eat less well and
suffer from anaemia and malnutrition.
Poverty causes the breakdown of the
extended family network, which leaves destitute women to find their own
livelihoods especially among the poorest social segments. Male migration
to cities or abroad also results in women becoming heads of households in
which they are the main income earners. |
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C
R I M E S A G A I N S T U N D E R P R I V I L E G E D W
O M E N (1998-99) |
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- 750 women were raped.
- 26 women were gang-raped.
- 56 women were assaulted.
- 325 were burnt (out of which 206 died of injury).
- 4,741 women were kidnapped.
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- 326 women were raped.
- 1,200 women were kidnapped.
- 32 women were gang raped.
- 245 women were burnt.
- 21 women were assaulted.
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- 68 women were raped.
- 234 women were kidnapped.
- 11 women were assaulted.
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- 32 women were raped.
- 74 were kidnapped.
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| It should be kept in mind that with the kind of notorious police and lower
administrative and judicial setup, especially in the backward rural areas, most
crimes against women never get reported or are hushed up at the initial stage.
Hence the case in tribal areas of NWFP and Balauchistan. |
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CONCERNS OF
MOST VILLAGE WOMEN |
- Deteriorating health of their children.
- Few number of health facilities and the uncaring attitude of the health
visitors.
- Hostile attitude of mother-in-laws and husbands towards contraception,
education and employment.
- Primitive cooking stoves with poor safety mechanism.
- Mistreatment at the hands of most husbands: verbal
abuse, physical abuse, mental torture, etc.
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WOMEN IN
TRIBAL TERRITORIES |
- Life controlled almost entirely by the me and thus have "no say"
in family decisions..
- No exposure to the outside world due to strict "parda system".
As soon as the girl is seven years old, she has to wear a chaddar.
- Most family elders (all male) decline to have their womenfolk identified
and registered as voters.
- Are not allowed to receive education. In some areas they are only allowed
to receive education till age ten.
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B
U R N I N G W O M E N |
| In Pakistan, most of the
underprivileged women are being burnt in what are regularly termed
"stove burnings" -- the victims' relatives say, "the
woman was burnt accidentally while cooking." What has been
happening in the garb of stove burning cases ... it has been used as
facade and the women have been victimized, kerosene oil being thrown
at them and they being put to fire and the stove being blamed.
"It's my fate," says one victim, Noreen, who says her
kitchen stove caught fire. "From childhood, I have seen nothing
but suffering." The reasons for such drastic action are
plentiful. Sometimes brothers burn their sisters for daring to fall
in love or a man wants a new wife. Often, the reason is unbelievably
petty. It can be as trivial as: "why did you use my soap?"
or "why did you overcook the food?" One resident of the
slums, Gulnaz, ran away from home after her adopted parents tortured
her for daring to marry a man of her choice. |
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P
R I S O N L I F E |
| The womens' police stations
staffed by female personnel in Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, and
Rawalpindi remained understaffed. Despite court orders and
regulations requiring that female suspects only be interrogated by
female police officers, they continued to be detained overnight at
regular police stations and abused by male officers. According to a
monthly report of incidents for January, a young woman was raped in
a police station in front of her mother by police attempting to find
the whereabouts of her son, and a wife was sexually and physically
abused in front of her husband to force him to confess to a criminal
charge. The number of such incidents is increasing. According to
human rights advocate Hina Jilani, the majority of women in jails
were subjected to torture and sexual abuse by the jail staff. She
claimed that 85 percent of women were tortured and 62 percent raped
by prison officials in 1996. There is no independent confirmation of
these claims. In 1995 the High Court ruled that no woman should be
kept in any police station overnight without a male person from her
family. According to human rights advocates, these High Court orders
are rarely enforced even today. |
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WIFE
BATTERING |
| Batter seems a simple enough
word. It is often used in the cooking context but prefix the word
"wife" to it, and you have a horrifying truth in
revelation. Wife battering seems to pervade all classes of the
society but is more common amongst the poor. The illiterate male
increasingly gives vent to their pressures by inflicting harm upon
their weaker halves. She not only has to serve their physical needs,
build their homes, raise their children, perhaps even go out and
perform menial chores, but also has to take occasional punches in
the face when her husband feels angry, which may become more
frequent with the passing years. Since these women are conditioned
by social mores to take this tirade of abuse in their stride, so
they do or else... |
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WOMEN SOLD AS
A COMMODITY |
| Thousands of illiterate women
are kidnapped from their villages and sold to perverse men overseas so that they
can satisfy their inexhaustible sexual appetite. Many women are sold to
different brothels in the country and are forced to take up prostitution. The
selling price depends upon their age, complexion and the dimensions of their
body. Older degenerate men in our society prefer the teenagers who forget that
they have a daughter of the same age or even older at home. Once kidnapped,
these women live a life of constant humiliation and agony. They lose their
innocence by selling their bodies to the devil several times a day. Escaping
prostitution is next to impossible and most of them commit suicide... |
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