Pakistani society gives women more rights on paper than any of the other South East Asian countries. But giving rights on paper is a lot different than ensuring their implementation. Article 25 of the Pakistani legal system ensures equality before the law and equal protection of the law and states that there shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex alone. Then what are the causes of gender inequality in Pakistan?
Let’s start from the domestic realm. The responsibility of preparing and cooking meals for the family falls on the shoulders of the woman, who in most cases is not given a choice on whether to accept this role. One of the most common question asked by Pakistani families, when looking for a suitable partner for their son is: “Aap ki beti khana paka leti hai?”
It is quite sad to see the girl whose hand is being requested for marriage is told by her own parents to go make ‘chai’ for the guests, while her parents talk with the boy’s family and ask typical questions like: “Kitna kamma leta hai beta aap ka?” All this while the girl’s brothers – not the girl, herself – lounge around and listen in on their conversations.
Not once does it occur to the parents to ask their sons to make the ‘chai’ and let their daughter sit and have a little chat with the person she will most likely spend the rest of her life with. Why? Is it because a man does not belong in the kitchen? Or is it because the parents are afraid of what the other family will say: “Kaise log hain ye?Apne baiton se chai pakwaate hain?”
What they fail to understand is that it is not a sin to ask your son to make ‘chai’ or teach him how to cook a few basic things. The mind set that the kitchen is a place best suited only for women is wrong, but all social classes in our country reinforce this belief by giving house related chores and tasks (involving a stovetop) to their daughters instead of their sons.
Walk into a middle class household before noon and you will see women, not men, but only women, holding a broom in one hand and a dry rag in the other for dusting. They are multitasking flawlessly because that is what they were taught from a young age. Any Pakistani woman can easily recall her mother equating good housekeeping skills with landing a good marriage proposal, but little does the conversation ever expand into how the term “acha rishta” meant that she would be confined to the house and allowed minimum exposure to the outside world and minimum socialisation with school friends.
The reason why women are willingly performing acts of unpaid labour, is not only because that is what they were taught by their parents from the start, it is because they have no other choice. The main factors are keeping these women engaged in this form of unpaid labour consist of religious and physical constraints such as limited mobility and access to public spaces and lack of employment opportunities caused by the failure of the government to provide sufficient, safe spaces.
Pakistan is mainly an agriculture based country and most small-scale farms are run by the family members themselves, for their own consumption. At any rural setting, both women and men work together and do almost equal work in the field; however, women are also expected to do all the household chores they would regularly do in a non-agricultural family including cooking, cleaning, laundry etc.
In either situation, women are not given their due credit for performing domestic, unpaid labour because their tasks are seen as simple and routinely and nothing out of the ordinary. The knock-on effect is in urban spaces especially for domestic workers.
A large majority of domestic workers include the female workforce who carry a burden of dual responsibilities at home(cleaning, cooking, caring for the young and old etc.) while at the same time, doing similar tasks for other households, to ensure a living for their families.
Consequently, domestic workers are paid less than minimum wage, despite the actual skill involved. This undermines their social and economic status within society.
Men, on the other hand in both rural and urban areas, are only expected to do half of what is mentioned above. Males are only expected to go out and make a living for themselves and their families, with half of the workload of females in the same household.
Traditional functionalist roles suggest an expressive role for women and an instrumental role for men. Women are more emotionally expressive and that is a comforting environment for the child. An instrumental role for men means that they provide financial support, therefore they are named the decision makers of the family.
This keeps the women on the sideline, meaning they have little to no say in decision making for the household. They are still however expected to run the household by domestic labour and cooking while also raising their children.
In the ever changing society the line between gender roles is fading, resulting in a higher percentage of working women in developed countries. This has caused an increased amount of househusbands. Our Pakistani society is not familiar with this concept due to cultural anchors.
All in all, the aforementioned points are the roles that society has associated with women. Most of these roles can easily be performed by men such as: cooking, domestic labour etc. Child rearing, however, can pose some difficulty for men due to human nature. Men are by nature emotionally shut off and society frowns upon men who are too expressive of their emotions. Child rearing requires effective expression of emotions.
Until our gender roles are not deconstructed and broken we are looking at generation after generation of children who will be conditioned to uphold these unequal gender roles. With more awareness and exposure to the strength and contribution of women as breadwinners and decision-makers some form of progress can be made. Women need to be valued more and men need to see them as equals.
This is a report produced by Sardar Wali, Abdul Wali and Mirza Hassan Shakil.
