Commitment to promoting gender equality
and empowering women, officially the third Millennium Development Goal [MDG],
is a pragmatic international agreement addressing the rights of women and
girls. It strengthens the UN resolve to stand up for women’s rights. One
hundred and seventy world leaders have agreed to improve the status of women in
their countries and as a result, they have changed laws and policies to create
greater safety and opportunity for women. This paper is an attempt to question
the impact, if any, of MDGs in advancing Human Rights’ Legislation in favour of
women in Pakistan, while maintaining a critical eye on the contention of the country
public policy implementation.
Passed by the UN Secretary General in
2000 Millennium Summit, the MDGs express UNs role in the twenty-first century.
Adopted by one hundred eighty nine UN state members and over one thousand
non-governmental and civil society organizations from at least one hundred
countries[i],
one of the Millennium Development objectives is the promotion of gender
equality and empowerment of women. By eliminating gender disparity in primary
and secondary education, increasing the share of women in wage employment in
non-agricultural sector and increasing the proportion of seats held by women in
national parliaments around the world[ii], this
measurable action plan hopes monitor the progress of women’s rights. This paper
argues that the enactment of the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs has made
a slow but positive difference for women in Pakistan, especially in reducing
sexual violence, domestic violence, providing increased access to education,
employment, healthcare and land rights.
The issue of gender equality is
relegated a limited role in the Millennium Development Goals. The growing
strength of the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank has caused increased poverty
among women[iii]. The MDGs ignores the affect of macroeconomic
policies on women. The WTO serves to strength the neo-liberal free trade agenda
at the expense of human rights development framework. In the context of WTO and IMF and the World
Bank has restructured the economies of Southern states and reshaped further
their legislations while imposing massive debt and thereby containing the need
for credit and meagre aid. This has overridden national sovereignty and the
nations’ ability to set policies consistent with respect for human rights[iv].
Nations cannot ensure equal power and wealth distribution among men and women
as global partnership with WTO and IMF causes privatization of national
resources and public services, the opening of southern markets to imports and
the end of subsidies for agriculture[v].
This has a devastating impact on women’s lifestyles. Already marginalized, now
women have less access to food, water, healthcare and agricultural wages.
Alejandro Bendana assumes that the state
and the society serves the interest of the markets[vi].
In his view public and governmental structures are disempowered to help women.
Good governance administers economic policies for the benefit for transnational
capital not local citizenry. Thus, hunger and poverty are seen as technical
concerns not political issues. He suggests that in order to eliminate
inequality against women, economic policy making must be democratized and
placed equally in the hands of local women[vii]
not WTO or IMF.
Moreover, MDGs target the traditional
way of life of many people in the South[viii].
They are forced to take up take up fundamentalism, “us versus them” mentality
to preserve their culture[ix].
Many times the bodies of women are the demarcation point of this battle. The
MDGs have caused a rise in war, foreign intervention and threat to national
security which all effects women[x].
Women’s personal and economic rights cannot be solved unless these issues are
solved first. Therefore, MDGs must work on multiple arenas at multiple levels
without abandoning one arena to another. Institutions need to improve women’s
reproductive health, sexual rights and legal protections and be held
accountable for these responsibilities.
The governments cannot reach the goal of
empowering women without eliminating the proportion of extreme poverty among
women. The absolute number of those living on less than a dollar a day rose
from 1.2 billion to 1.9 billion in 2014[xi].
This statistic does not take into account the number of women working for less
than a dollar plus the number of unemployed women. This produces a further
cut-back in the planned promotion of women’s empowerment. Without fully
understanding the extent of extreme poverty among women, it is difficult to
interpret the type of resources necessary to meet this goal. Moreover as the
worldwide population is expected to grow by 36.7% by 2015[xii],
it is expected that the number of people living in extreme poverty will also
increase. Seven hundred ninety-nine million humans are undernourished, from
which thirty-four thousand children, under age five die daily because of hunger[xiii].
Other poverty-related deaths surmount to fifty-thousand daily[xiv].
Thus MDGs are hardly a cause for celebration in the arena of women’s
legislation. The MDGs do not even explicitly quantify the number of women in
need of help and the type of help necessary to alleviate their suffering.
There
are many international conventions like the MDGs such as World Food Summit in
Rome in which 186 participating governments declared their commitment to
achieve food security and eradicate hunger in all countries by 2015[xv].
This and similar declarations hardly meet their requirement or make any
considerable difference. What is necessary are workable policies that can be
implemented for immediate distribution of resources.
The MDGs does not recognize that
governments must implement social policies and basic services to uplift the
status of women. Women require social protection programmes to protect declines
in their income due to contingencies, access to information and knowledge, good
quality infrastructure, domestic technology and care services, wealth
redistribution through land reform, gender and child responsive budgeting
adequate corporate taxation[xvi].
Governments must create macroeconomic policies[xvii]
– sufficient, productive and decent employment to absorb women into labour
force, provide jobs for the unemployed and reduce vulnerable forms of
employment.
Finally crime, disease and environmental
problems are also found to be exacerbated by inequality[xviii].
This leads to political instability and violence and conflict perpetuated
against women and children. The governments cannot hope to lower the levels of
economic and social disparities between men and women without reducing the
severity of violence in nation-states[xix].
It is importance to address
discriminatory and exclusionary practices that disadvantage women. For example,
it is impossible to reduce domestic violence
without owing to the realization that any law that does not enjoy public
support will be ineffective. Comprehending Pakistan’s historically patriarchal
practices, it is important to sensitize the public and the judiciary on gender
crimes.
Growing inequalities negatively impact
the economic, social and the political situation osf the state. Governments
must realize targeted measures to maximize resources available to fulfill
economic social rights. Highly unequal societies tend to grow more slowly than
those with low income inequalities, less successful in sustaining growth over
long periods of time and recover more slowly from economic downturns. It can jeopardize the well-being of large
segments of the population through low earnings and have subsequent effects on
health, nutrition and child development.
Fewer than one in six parliamentarians
are women. While women’s representation in Rawanda in 49%, ten countries have
no women in parliament. the fact that there are no firm targets and a scarcity
of data in these areas suggests that these aspects of women’s empowerment are
not seen as political priorities.
Advancing the rights of women and girls
is a moral necessity. Carl Barton states that the most effective route to
achieving women’s rights is to use the MDG as a yardstick by which the
international community is asked to be judged on its progress towards economic
and social development[xx].
However, there is a slow progress and a delay in the achievement of these goals
as it does not address the areas of extreme disadvantage among women:
education, healthcare and other basic services that are critical to reaching
the goals. In comparison, the Beijing platform for action, UN summit on women
in 1995, provides a stronger basis for an expanded vision of the MDGs[xxi].
It covers 12 areas of critical concern. Everything is interlinked in a way –
universal education to access to health, maternal mortality, access to safe
sexual and reproductive health services, removing barriers to economic growth.
Although the constitution of Pakistan
holds the dignity of every individual inviolable and guarantees equality of all
citizens before law (IPS Task Force, 2010, 127), a Thomas Reuter’s Foundation
poll for gender specialists reported that Pakistan is the third most dangerous
country in the world to be a woman. According to this poll, 90 per cent of
women in Pakistan have been victims of domestic violence at some point in their
lives (Khan, 2012). The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reports every two
hours a woman is raped in Pakistan. Many of these rape assaults are gang
perpetrated. Besides domestic violence
and rape, these women routinely face other gender crimes not limited to acid
attacks, child marriages and forced abortions, which results in serious health
complications, permanent physical and psychological injuries and sometimes
death.
The status and role of women in Pakistan
is oppressed by the 1979 Hudood Ordinances, introduced as part of Sharia Law
under the Zia-ul-Haqq military dictatorship (Lancet, 2006). The law allows male
clergy in religious courts to punish female victims of rape, with sexual
misconduct by sentencing them to jail, if they fail to produce four witnesses.
This ensures that women remain under the apex of male prowess. Among other
forms of discrimination include the inability of women to inherit and maintain
landownership. The seclusion of women from landownership, employment and access
to money and education is prevalent. Women are constrained by customary law to
traditional roles of marriage and motherhood.
Over the last decade, under pressure
from the International community (Millennium Development Goals), the government
of Pakistan eventually enshrined landmark bills and procured judicial
amendments to certain laws related to women and family.
Pakistan’s
political system has traditionally being highly patriarchal. So the
implementation of a new pro-women’s public policy is plagued with opposition,
particularly from feudalists and
religious groups, members of the rural community, illiterate and poor groups
who have no real insensitive to adopt the reform policies. These groups resort
to marginalizing women to maintain their pseudo hierarchical positions.
In order for the newly articulated legal reforms to be
incorporated, first civil societies must organize into democratic institutions.
Second, women’s rights movements must be strengthened to enhance the political,
economic and societal rights of women. I propose that the very ideology which
oppresses women should be rooted out before policy implementation and women’s
movement can fuse effectively.
According
to the IPS Task Force[xxii],
feudalism perpetuates discrimination against women. It provides a vehicle for
delegitimizing the human rights of women. In turn, the instability which eludes
feudalist culture is high levels of illiteracy and poverty among women. The
feudalist structure of Pakistan has taken a form of an existential threat to
women’s wellbeing. The country demonstrates a need for social rectitude – a
complete reconstruction of ideology that defines the roles and responsibility
of women in light of national civic liberty and democratic habits.
Khan,
author of Pakistan Journal of Women
Studies, agrees that “there is a need to evolve mindsets so the society
accepts that prohibited practices are intolerable.” The public may find ways to
evade legal penalties if their misogynist beliefs are not waived. Also, the
implementation of Anti-Women Practices Act requires sensitivity training of law enforcement personnel and even then it
is challenging to monitor, especially when discrimination occurs between two
consenting parties.
Proponents
insist that Women’s Protection Bill is a step forward for Pakistan. It “s rape cases to be
tried under the civil penal code (where judicial decisions are based on
forensic and circumstantial evidence) rather than under Sharia law.” The law
achieves gender equality by sending a clear message that violent crimes against
women will result in charges and conviction with maximum sentence.
Similarly, the 18th amendment to the country’s
constitution, which devolves control of healthcare to provincial governments,
promises more efficient and accessibly health care facilities for women. Additionally, distribution of 21,000 hectares
of cultivatable state to women, part of a land reform scheme under President
Zardari offers more opportunities for female empowerment (Ebrahim, 2010). In
this paper, I use these reforms to determine their relative importance in
improving the political, economic, and social welfare and growth of women. This
is done by studying the progress made in terms of achieving a decline in
domestic violence, gender crimes, illiteracy, poor healthcare and poverty among
women. I conclude that the government reforms, especially amendment to the constitution
is encouraging at best; however it remains lacklustre without complete
implementation. Pakistan has succeeded in designing relevant reform schemes
that lag lack implementation.
Bibliography
Piece, Thematic Think, “UN System Task Team On The Post-2015
UN Development Agenda – Addressing Inequalities: The heart of the post 2015
agenda and the future we want for all.” (2012)
Turquet, Laura, Patrick Watt, and Tom Sharman. "Hit or
Miss? Women's rights and the Millennium Development Goals." ActionAid
UK (2007): www.actionaid.org.uk.
Morgan, Richard. “Thematic Papers on MDG3 Promote Gender
Equality and Empower Women.” UNDG Task
Force (2007).
“National Report:
Pakistan. A Civil Society Review of Progress towards the Millennium Development
Goals in Commonwealth countries.” Commonwealth
Foundation (2013).
[i] Morgan,
Richard. “Thematic Papers on MDG3 Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women.” 5
[ii] Ibid 8
[iii] Ibid 11
[iv] Ibid 23
[v] Ibid 22
[vi] Turquet, Laura, Patrick Watt, and Tom Sharman.
"Hit or Miss? Women's rights and the Millennium Development Goals."
19
[vii] Ibid 21
[viii] Ibid 22
[ix] Ibid 25
[x] Ibid 30
[xi] Ibid 29
[xii] Ibid 40
[xiii]
Piece, Thematic Think, “UN System Task Team On The Post-2015
UN Development Agenda – Addressing Inequalities: The heart of the post 2015
agenda and the future we want for all.” (2012). 15
[xv] Ibid 19
[xvi] Ibid 32
[xvii]
Ibid 40
[xviii]
Ibid 56
[xix] Ibid
47
[xx] Ibid
42
[xxi] Ibid
42
[xxii]
Ibid 49
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