The Voices That Remain Unheard: Decades Long Journey of Women Rights In Pakistan

Pakistan, a country often finding itself splattered all across the globe when discussions revolve around its unabashed association with terrorism, yet again finds itself in the spotlight, all for the wrong reasons. The World Economic Forum Global Gender Report 2025 ranks Pakistan as the world’s worst nation for women.

Illustration by The Geostrata

A country where a woman once held the helm of affairs, today, is struggling to ensure women’s rights to walk safely outside their homes. Where gender parity ranks the lowest around the globe, stemming as low as 56.7%, and brutalities such as gunning down a 17 year old teenager for refusing a proposal, reporting of a staggering 32,617 cases of gender based violence in the year 2024 alone, is a searing reflection of the countless lived realities of women and the brutalities they are exposed to every passing day in a system that quietly hushes all their wailing cries. 

TURNING THE PAGE BACK

A nation predominantly rooted in patriarchy and feudalism ever since the partition, established a culture of male supremacy with women relegated to the limited roles of housewives, bound by the four walls, slowly embracing them as a part of their identity. Women are seen as ‘chattels’ or as those dutiful to their husbands, generally excluded from the means of financial independence. 

1977-1988, the regime under Zia ul Haq marked a dark time for women's rights in Pakistan. Zia’s ambitious Islamisation policies reinforced patriarchy and wielded abhorrent laws that further pushed women into a battle for their basic rights.

The state’s unabashed promotion of religious conservatism and further stifling of women’s voices found its blueprint with the Hudood Ordinance, a series of legislations passed under the Zia Regime as part of his ambitious vision of islamising Pakistan, in 1979, modifying the existing criminal laws, and further shaping them to conform to the rules of Islam, with enforcement of one key legislation, blurring the lines between recognition of rape and adultery.

To add further to the misery of women's rights, the ordinance declared that a rape would only be recognised as such unless the victim could produce four Muslim male witnesses to the crime, who could assert the act of penetration by the accused. Failing to produce the same, a rape would be recognised as adultery, leading to the prosecution and imprisonment of the victim herself.

Over 1500 women are reported to have been imprisoned for failing to produce witnesses. In 1983, Safia Bibi, a blind teenager brutally raped by two men, who then became pregnant, was one of the most astonishing cases of the system’s brutalities against women, as Safia was charged with adultery and was sentenced to imprisonment, 15 lashes and a fine, a searing reminder of the brutalities a woman was an unfortunately exposed to, under the dictatorial Zia regime.

The passing of Qanun-E Shahadat in 1985, replacing the Indian Evidence Act of 1872, further reduced women’s legal status, equating a testimony of two women equal to that of one man, reinforcing the set. 

The Ansari Commission in 1983, in its report, further concluded that women could only participate in politics after gaining approval from their husbands. General Zia’s misogynistic beliefs relegated countless women to leading abysmal lives, finding themselves voiceless in a country that constantly thumps itself for being the voice of the minority. 

WAVE OF RESISTANCE

Benazir Bhutto’s era marked a new wave of change, a beacon of hope for countless women who were the unfortunate victims of such state-sponsored high-handedness. Undoing the damage caused under Zia’s regime, Bhutto called for the establishment of the first Women's Bank, bolstering women in gaining financial independence. She further reserved a 5 per cent quota for women in public sector jobs, and changed the land reforms in Sindh to give land ownership to landless women farmers in the region. 

Completely transforming the patriarchal setup and shackles of misogyny, Benazir Bhutto emerged as a beacon of hope for countless women of Pakistan. The archaic Hudood Declaration, however, was still not repealed until 2006, when it underwent significant changes and was not completely retracted. The Hudood ordinance in 2006 underwent an overhaul with the passing of the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment Act).

In 2010, the Protection Against Harassment of Women in Workplaces Act 2010 further bolstered women's empowerment, requiring all public and private organisations to have an internal code of conduct. The act underwent significant amendments in 2022, further expanding its scope to include domestic workers in its purview, the section most exposed to gender based violence and harassment.

The system took a landmark step with the passing of the anti-rape Act in 2020, ensuring an expedited grievance redressal mechanism and shifting the onus from the victim to the accused to prove their innocence.

Further, the establishment of specialised gender-based violence courts at the district level is a step in the right direction, lacking in on-ground implementation and curbing the growing unease amongst the women over their security and rights. The deeply entrenched patriarchy and a dissenting institutional framework led to a new wave of feminism that shaped the trajectory of women's rights in Pakistan.

AURAT MARCH

The Aurat March, emerging in 2018, is held annually on International Women’s Day, is considered to be a historic step in re-igniting the struggle for women's rights in Pakistan. The movement marked by hashtags and social media transformed the traditional movements and transitioned the nation into the wave of digital feminism.

The first march in 2018 was limited to urban setups, including Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar; however has now expanded further into smaller cities, including Quetta and Hyderabad. The Aurat March movement is often termed as the fourth wave of feminism in Pakistan, which had its own distinctive features and challenged the lack of gender equality in spheres of life.

Even today in Pakistan, an average woman earns 25 per cent less per hour than a man and receives only 18 per cent of the country’s labour revenue. The Aurat march movement, tapping into this gender disparity, opened a new realm for women to voice their demands across the board, including property rights, access to public spaces, maternal health, and equal pay. 

The rise of digital feminism is also symbolic of breaking off the barriers of censorship and controlled understanding, particularly for women, alienated from the outside world, confined to the four walls.

Digitalisation of movements has emerged as opening the forum and bridging the urban-rural divide, decentralising movements, and actively encouraging the common woman to finally raise their voice, which was once constantly stifled by the state machinery.

PAKISTAN AND WOMEN'S RIGHT TODAY

However, the unfortunate reality of the constant trampling of women’s rights by the state machinery, reflects the perpetual cycle of patriarchy and subjugation of women and limiting them to the private sphere, marks Pakistan’s hypocrisy as a state that jumps at the opportunity to voice their concerns about minority rights in India, when the country fails to recognise the rights of the very gender that builds 49.3% of the country’s population.

A country that sanctioned the gruesome mass rape of 4,00,000 women citizens by its own army in 1971, under Operation Searchlight, with a female literacy rate dwindling at 49%, according to the 2022 World Bank report and women representatives in the Pakistan parliament approximating at 17% in 2024, the daunting reality dawns on us that a bipartisan state with gender parity still remains a distant dream. 

CONCLUSION

As Pakistan today tries to portray itself as a growing power, the modernity and the traditional belief system that builds the very framework of the state put the nation at a crossroads. The Zia’s authoritative regime and the haunting policies continue to haunt women and their role in society in Pakistan.

The Aurat March was not just a protest, but a movement, an awakening of women, reiterating their right to lead a dignified life. While change and gender parity feel like one’s wishful thinking under the constant trampling of rights by the state, the chants of reform, while they do ignite the call for liberty and equality, the voices remain unheard, and countless women continue, in a sorrowful acceptance of the lives they are destined to lead. 

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BY ANANYA SHARMA

TEAM GEOSTRATA

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