Feminist Dissent
Moving Beyond the Binary: Gender-based
Activism in Pakistan
Ayesha Khan* and Nida Kirmani*
Address
*Correspondence: [ayesha.khan@researchcollective.org;
nida.kirmani@lums.edu.pk]
Abstract
This article challenges the binary framework within which women in
Pakistan have been viewed, by political actors, the state, and more broadly
as well, as either ‘secular/feminist/godless/Westernised’ or ‘authentic/
Islamic/traditional’. It begins by contextualising the genealogy of this
binary in Pakistan’s colonial and political history, which has led to the
state’s side-lining of moderate religious voices and promotion of right-wing
religious parties that suited its political objectives. Even the scholarship
produced by the women’s movement, which arose in response to a
politicised Islamisation process begun under military rule in the 1980s,
Peer review: This article
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inadvertently reproduces this binary as activists sought to assert a rightsbased agenda and were supported by international donor funds. A shift in
recent years in response to West-based international scholarship post
9/11, which focusses on the subjectivity and organisation of Islamist
women, has influenced work on women in Pakistan as well as a donor turn
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to funding faith-based initiatives. The paper then examines current gender
justice movements that emerged independently at a grass-roots level, and
draws attention to their effectiveness despite lack of strong linkages with
either the women’s movement or Islamist women. These include rightsbased mobilisations by peasant women, community health workers, tribal
women in the Taliban/conflict-affected north-west, and transgender
activism. It ends by challenging feminists to engage more deeply with these
forms of activism.
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Keywords: Gender justice, activism, Pakistan, women’s movement,
Islamisation, secularism
Introduction
This paper challenges the binaristic approaches to understanding Muslim
women’s subjectivities as either pious subjects or as Westernised, secular
feminists. In Pakistan, this binary is present in the discourse of various
political parties and is reflected in the media as well. More subtly, it is
often reproduced within scholarship about women, which, by focusing on
either self-professed secular feminists or explicitly Islamist women’s
groups, ends up reinforcing the notion that women must fall into one or
the other camp. This raises serious concerns for us as feminist scholaractivists because it has limited the public debate around women’s issues.
In the context of heightening sensitivities around the question of religion,
it has also led some external development actors to fund faith-based
organisations and support informal cultural institutions, which contributes
to making such bodies appear more relevant and authentic at the expense
of rights-based initiatives.
This binary can be traced to the reification of the category of religion in
the period well before Pakistan’s inception, as colonial discourses
attempted to solidify religious boundaries in terms of their depiction and
strategies of rule vis-à-vis ‘the natives’ (Pandey, 1992; Ludden, 1993;
Kaviraj, 1994; Oberoi, 1994). These framings were reinforced by
indigenous Hindu and Muslim elites as part of religious revivalist
movements that emerged in the decades preceding independence
(Robinson, 1974; Metcalf, 1993; Mayaram, 2004). However, the
secular/religious distinction has evolved and been reinforced in recent
decades following the growth of Islamist movements worldwide and in
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Pakistan in particular since the 1980s and following the global war on
terror post 9/11.
The solidification of this binary must be understood within the wider
political history of Pakistan where the state has played a defining role in
cultivating the notion that a foreign, ‘Western’ hand has had a suspicious
role to play in fostering corrupt, secular, and liberal values amongst some
women, who benefit from donor funds as they run their fundamentally unIslamic (read ‘anti-state’) NGOs (Khan, 2001). This is in contrast to the
state’s historical elevation of religious parties, which are often used to lend
credence to military rule in the name of Islamisation (Nasr, 1994). With the
support of the United States, the Pakistani state supported the use of
jihadi ideology during the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan during the
1980s. It also allowed Arab funds to flow unchecked into a burgeoning
madrassa (religious seminary) sector to support these policies (ICG, 2007;
Dreyfuss, 2005).
Further, the state has consistently sidelined moderate Islamic ulema and
academics, for example, forcing out of the Council of Islamic Ideology, and
country, the internationally acclaimed modernist Islamic scholar Fazlur
Rahman in 1969 (Noorani, 2014) and the liberal scholar Javed Ahmed
Ghamidi in 2010 (Walsh, 2011). Whether within the state apparatus or in
public discourse such as television channels, the space for moderate and
modernist interpretations of Islam is virtually blocked. These processes
have strengthened right-wing ideologies in the country as a whole and
marginalised both leftist and liberal voices, including those of women’s
rights activists.
Most of the academic literature on women’s activism in Pakistan since the
1990s inadvertently reflects this binary, falling into one of two camps:
writings produced about the self-identified women’s movement, focusing
largely on the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), and research on Islamist
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women’s groups. The former body of scholarship highlights the narratives
of those activists who largely identify as ‘secular’ and ‘feminist’. Much of
this work has been written by members of the WAF themselves and
highlights their efforts to resist the Islamisation policies introduced under
the dictator, Zia ul Haq (Mumtaz and Shaheed, 1987; Khan, Saigol, and Zia,
1994; Shaheed et al., 1998; Saigol, 2016). The latter studies emerged more
recently (Iqtidar, 2011; Jamal, 2013; Mushtaq, 2010; Ahmad, 2010) and
examine women in religious political parties such as Jamaat-i-Islami or the
Islamic academy for women, Al-Huda. This research builds upon a wider
body of international scholarship that is concerned with understanding the
subjectivities and agency of Muslim women in various contexts (AbuLughod, 2013; Mahmood, 2005). It is largely produced by scholars either
from, or trained in, universities in Europe and North America, many of
whom are influenced by poststructuralist approaches and operate within
a context of increasing Islamophobia inside and outside of the academy.
While their critiques emerge from their particular positionalities within
Western academia, their influence has travelled far beyond its borders,
inadvertently contributing to efforts to delegitimise local rights-based
activists.
One of the detrimental effects of this binaristic approach has been to
perpetuate the notion that feminism is a Western import and that an
‘authentic’, culturally sensitive and hence more effective approach to
gender-based development interventions must operate within a religious
framework. Thus some donor agencies increasingly support initiatives
framed in religious terms, which engage with local ‘religious’ and
‘traditional’ actors, thus sidelining and de-legitimising women’s and other
civil society groups operating within a rights-based framework.
This paper begins with an overview of the literature produced thus far on
women’s activism in Pakistan over the past three decades. This includes a
discussion of the writings and activism of the self-identified women’s
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movement, particularly related to the question of the movement’s
engagement with religion written largely during the 1980s and 1990s. This
is followed by an exploration of the scholarship produced on the activism
and organisations of Islamist women and the women’s piety movement
more recently in the period following 9/11. This literature represents a
shift within the scholarship, from highlighting the work of feminist activists
to reflecting scholars’ increased curiosity about the subjectivity and
organisation of Islamist women. This shift is further reflected in donor
policies which increasingly fund faith-based initiatives.
We then turn our attention to more recent examples of gender activism
that do not conform to the rigid religious/secular binary. This includes the
struggle amongst peasant women in Okara, the movement for the rights
of lady health workers, women’s activism in the conflict- affected northwest, and transgender rights activism. These cases highlight the diverse
and vibrant nature of gender activism, generated spontaneously and
without the direct engagement of either the women’s movement or pious
women’s groups/religious parties, both of whom represent particular
middle to upper class interests and contestations generated within the
context of increasing Islamisation (Khan, 1994). These cases demonstrate
that while the self-identified secular women’s movement may have
declined in recent years in numbers and influence, and Islamist women’s
groups opposed to gender equality may be expanding in size and scope
(Jamal, 2005; 2009; 2013; Iqtidar, 2011; Ahmad, 2010), gender activism
continues in multiple forms across the country that exceeds the confines
of the religious/secular binary. Understanding these diverse forms of
gender activism allows for a more complex and nuanced view of gender
politics within a variety of contexts, challenging the state and other actors
seeking to address women’s issues in Pakistan.
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Discourse on Women’s Rights Activism
The contemporary women’s movement emerged during the 1980s, when
Pakistan witnessed a dramatic political and cultural shift rightward due to
military dictator Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation programme, which focused to a
great extent on the control and regulation of issues related to gender and
sexuality.1 Zia’s government introduced the Hudood Ordinances, which
included punishments such as amputations, public whippings, and stoning
to death as part of the formal criminal justice system. These ordinances
also criminalised consensual sex (zina) between unmarried women and
men and made it necessary for a woman to produce four male witnesses
in order to prove that she had been raped; if she was unable to do so, she
could be charged with committing zina, the maximum punishment for
which is death by stoning (Shaheed, 2010). The government also
introduced the Law of Evidence in 1984, making the financial testimony of
two women or two non-Muslim men equal to that of one Muslim man.
Islamisation included a range of measures to control women’s mobility
and dress, such as mandatory headscarves for those working in
government offices or appearing on television, and a ban on women’s
participation in certain mixed public events such as spectator sports
(Mumtaz and Shaheed, 1987). The aim was to push women back into the
confines of the chador and chardiwari (the veil and the four walls of the
home), thus marking women’s bodies as symbols of the Islamic nation. The
contemporary women’s movement emerged from within this context of
Islamisation. Hence, it is no surprise that much of the writing about the
women’s
movement
at
this
time
deals
with
the
issue
of
Islamisation/secularism.
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(WAF Poster. Artist: Lala Rukh)
WAF, which spearheaded the modern rights-based women’s movement,
was established in 1981 as a platform to organise against Zia’s Islamisation
programme. WAF maintained a publicly ambiguous position vis-à-vis its
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position on religion out of political necessity throughout the 1980s.
However, they largely chose to work within a universalistic rights-based
framework. Hina Jilani (1986), prominent human rights lawyer and WAF
member, explained this choice, arguing that engaging with Islam was
thought to be futile for activists as Islam contains many schools of thought,
and it would inevitably be the school favoured by the government that
would dominate. Similarly, Rubina Saigol said many activists by the late
1980s realised they would never win if they played on the ‘mullah’s wicket’
(Saigol, 2016), that is, by the rules set by conservative religious groups and
leaders.
However, not all members of the women’s movement agreed. Khawar
Mumtaz argued that it was impossible not to engage with Islam at the
time:
We thought the best way of responding was to get progressive
interpretations of Islam given that context, given the nature of the
law, and given at the time it was an Islamic, very conservative
religious government and military government that had imposed
the law. The parameters were in a sense defined. (Interview, 11 May
2011)
For this reason, throughout the 1980s, WAF periodically engaged with
religious scholars and texts in order to prove that laws passed during
Islamisation such as the Hudood Ordinances, the law of Qisas and Diyat,
and the Law of Evidence, were in fact fundamentally un-Islamic (Mumtaz
and Shaheed, 1987). However, differences of opinion over the strategic
use of religion remained throughout the 1980s, and were one of the
reasons for WAF’s brief split within its Lahore chapter. WAF officially
declared it stood for a separation of religion and state during its 1991
convention (Shaheed et al., 1998).
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The issue of whether to engage proactively with religious discourses,
despite WAF’s secular position, was never quite settled within the
women’s movement. There is a consistent concern amongst some activists
that a secular approach - one that openly advocates for a separation of
religion from the state - has been alienating to the vast majority of women
in Pakistan (Shaheed, 2002). Thus, for practical and strategic reasons, a
handful have continued to engage with religious texts and scholars
periodically in order to defend against religious-based justifications for the
denial of women’s rights (Kirmani, 2013; Bradley and Kirmani, 2015). This
has also been a strategy for dealing with the frequent charge lobbied
against them by political parties and the media of being ‘Westernised’ and
therefore inauthentic (Charania, 2014). For example, some activists from
the feminist NGO Shirkat Gah provided legislators with religious-based
arguments against the Hudood Ordinances during the Musharraf regime
(1999-2008) to support legislative debates leading to the passage of the
Women’s Protection Act (2006)2 (interview, Khawar Mumtaz). However,
the use of such arguments has been very limited in practice and even that
has drawn criticism from some feminists within and outside of the
movement who argued it was exclusionary with regards to women from
religious minorities, and played into the hands of right-wing forces
(Gardezi, 1990; Sumar, 2002; Zia, 2009).
The women’s movement has been prolific in generating research, and
through its NGO work providing the majority of the discourse and analysis
that forms the basis of knowledge production about gender in Pakistan.
While activists have written on the detrimental effects of Islamic laws on
women (Jahangir and Jilani, 1990), they have also addressed the long-term
repercussions of Islamisation more broadly. This includes its effects on the
education curriculum as a whole (Saigol, 1995), the rights of women in the
context of the judiciary and Shariah courts (Shirkat Gah, 2000), the
increase in violence against women in the name of culture/customs (Brohi,
2017; Shah, 2017), and the rise of religious extremism and the Taliban
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movement in the north-west, which greatly restricted the rights of women
and girls in the region (Brohi, 2006; Bari, 2010.).
Activists have not limited themselves to contending with the discourse and
impact of Islamisation alone. They created and led the campaign for the
restoration of a quota for women in elected assemblies,3 generating the
knowledge base to support arguments in favour of this and other
legislative reforms.4 Following a series of weak, civilian governments in the
post-Zia era (1988-1999), activists produced research that focused on
increasing women’s political voice and strengthening inclusive democratic
governance (Shaheed et al., 2009; Zia, 2005; Bari, 2015). They have also
produced some of the first research and awareness-raising material on
sexual and reproductive rights (Saeed, 1994),5 environmental issues
(Sadeque, 2012; Hanif, 2011), and citizen-based initiatives for peace
between India and Pakistan (Sarwar, 2007). While the movement is
criticised for its urban middle and upper-class bias, activists have built
periodic cross-class linkages and supported women in workers’
associations, trade unions and rural groups such as the Sindhiani Tehreek
(Khan and Saigol, 2004) and the Anjuman Muzareen Punjab (see below),
which they also document.6
Their research has fed into activism and political lobbying, and contributed
to the movement’s influence despite its limited size. For example, since
the early 2000s, several pieces of legislation were passed in favour of
women’s rights. In 2002, the number of reserved seats for women in the
national and local assemblies was increased, precipitated by Musharraf’s
strategy of promoting ‘enlightened moderation’. It facilitated the passage
of a series of women-friendly pieces of legislation in subsequent years,
including laws related to honour killings, acid attacks, and harmful
customary practices (Mirza, 2011). Although the women’s movement may
have waned, dispersed and to a large extent become NGO-ised during the
1990s - a fate that has befallen women’s movements across the world Khan and Kirmani. Feminist Dissent 2018 (3), pp. 151-191
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women’s rights activists have maintained an impressive influence on
policy-making and legislative reform (Saigol, 2016).
Despite these gains, moves to protect and promote women’s rights
continue to be met with consistent opposition from conservative religious
groups, with support from some parts of the state, such as the Islamic
Federal Shariat Court (FSC) and the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII).7 For
example, the FSC ruled in 2010 that some parts of the Women’s Protection
Act 2006, which amended the Hudood Ordinances, were unconstitutional
(Butt, The Express Tribune, 23 December 2010). The CII has subsequently
taken positions in favour of child marriage, against the use of DNA testing
in rape cases, and against women’s right to object to her husband’s second
marriage (Ali, Dawn, 11 March 2014; Nangiana, The Express Tribune, 30
May 2013). Women representatives from influential religious parties,
although they tacitly supported the women’s movement in its activism to
oppose the zina laws (Hussein, 2006), joined with their male colleagues in
the National Assembly to resist the amendments, agreeing it would be
tantamount to promoting a ‘free-sex zone’ in Pakistan (Pakistan News
Service, 15 November 2006). This ideologically fraught environment is a
major reason, despite WAF declaring its secularity in 1991, that women’s
rights activists rarely if ever openly ‘come out’ as secular in public debates.
Islamist Women’s Subjectivities and the Post-secular Turn
Since the 2000s, there has been a shift within the academic literature on
women’s activism in Pakistan from a concern with the women’s
movement to a growing interest amongst scholars in the organisation and
self-identification of Islamist women’s organisations. This is part of a wider
trend amongst scholars of gender internationally, particularly those
focusing on Muslim-majority contexts. These scholars are working within
the context of an increased deconstruction of the origins of secularism,
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liberalism, and rights-based discourse - three sets of ideas often viewed as
interrelated products of the Western Enlightenment.
Within this broader field is a subset of works highly critical of the ways
Muslim women in particular have been depicted, both within Orientalist
and Islamophobic discourse produced after 9/11 and within the discourse
of feminist scholars in the West and Muslim-majority countries
themselves. Scholars Saba Mahmood (2005) and Lila Abu-Lughod (2013)
have argued against the determinism that feminism, and liberal feminism
in particular, has imposed on Muslim women (whether Western or
‘indigenous’), which they argue essentialises the complexity of Muslim
women’s lives and is unable to understand forms of agency that do not
conform to the Western, liberal model of an autonomous subject
(Mahmood, 2005). These scholars call for approaches that highlight
Muslim women’s agency and are sensitive to the specificity of their lived
experiences. This trend within the academy has inspired a burgeoning of
research on Islamist women’s groups in Pakistan over the past two
decades.
There are several detailed studies conducted by scholars based in Pakistan
and in the diaspora that shed light on women’s participation in Islamist
political parties and movements. Through her research on the Jamaat-eIslami (JeI), the largest and oldest religious-based political party in
Pakistan, Amina Jamal (2005; 2009) has argued that secular feminists in
Pakistan have failed to grasp the manner in which Islamist women
negotiate with modernity actively through their political struggles. Her
work demonstrates how women in the JeI use the language of rights to
assert their religious identities in the public sphere. In her research on
Islamist groups, Humeira Iqtidar (2011) also argues that women in the JeI
and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa8 are asserting their agency through their active
participation in these groups and they should not be viewed as victims of
false consciousness, which is often how they are understood by feminist
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researchers. She takes the argument even further by arguing that the
political activism of Islamist parties in general may be critical of secularism
as a project but is actually facilitating secularisation through the
rationalisation of religion - by bringing religion into the competitive public
sphere.
Since the 1990s, there has been a growth in women’s piety movements
across the country, with Al Huda being the largest and most well-known.
Al Huda is a women’s piety movement founded by Dr Farhat Hashmi in
1994, which promotes Islamic education for women and follows the
Wahhabi9 school of thought. Sadaf Ahmad (2010) explores Al Huda’s
appeals to rationality as a means of garnering support amongst middleand upper-class women through a detailed study of their pedagogical
methods. Faiza Mushtaq’s (2010) work focuses on the organisational
strategies of the Al Huda movement and the manner in which its founder,
Farhat Hashmi, is able to establish her authority, at least amongst a certain
section of middle to upper class urbanised women in the country. Neelam
Hussain (2014) too has written about dars10 organisations such as Al Huda
and Al Noor. She argues that, while participation in dars may be a form of
agency, this agency will not lead to systemic or long-term change and
rather reinforces unequal power relations for women. While the foci and
arguments of each of these authors differs, all of these works are part of a
wider effort amongst scholars of gender in Pakistan to take the activism of
Islamist women seriously - something that was felt to be missing within
the writing of feminist scholars during the 1980s and 1990s.
While the growth in detailed analyses of Islamist women’s activism
presented in the aforementioned studies deepens our understanding of
these increasingly influential groups, the fact that this type of literature
occupies growing space within the discourse on Pakistani women, and that
research on Pakistani women in general has in many ways moved on from
the study of feminist women’s organising, raises some concerns. With the
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focus on Islamist women, there is a danger of falling into the essentialist
trap that many of these authors are actually aiming to critique - one that
romanticises the notion of the pious subject and that does not account for
the ‘messiness’ of identities as they are practiced in everyday life
(Bangstad, 2011; Zia, 2009). By labelling only particular women ‘pious’ or
religiously-motivated, namely those who hold conservative views with
regards to Islam, these studies risk reaffirming the notion that only those
who hold conservative positions are truly ‘Islamic’ and hence have a right
to define the realm of religion.
The result of this is the inadvertent recreation of a binary between rightwing religious women and liberal or left-wing secular women - a divide that
scholars like Mahmood (2005), who builds on the work of Asad (2003),
actually aim to undo through their critical work on secularism; hence their
work remains trapped within the system of binaries that they are actually
aiming to deconstruct. This is also a distinction that Pakistani women’s
rights activists (Khan, 1994; Shaheed, 2009) have been actively critiquing
and resisting even before these studies were published.11 This approach
can prove problematic for locally-based feminists because of the everincreasing political challenges they face directly from Islamist movements,
which include the female members of these movements (Zia, 2009).
Further, as the following section demonstrates, the binaristic approach
has called into question the social or cultural authenticity of women’s
rights activists, contributing to a change in donor funding approaches.
Faith-based Interventions and the Reification of Culture
In the belief that instrumentalising faith and tradition implies greater
cultural authenticity, and thereby greater acceptance in an increasingly
anti-Western milieu, foreign donor agencies have begun to fund faithbased organisations to defuse potential government hostility and increase
their acceptance within communities. For example, USAID funded an
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expensive project to ‘sensitise’ religious leaders to win their support for
contraceptive use and got a family planning manual approved by the
controversial CII (Brohi and Zaman, 2016). The WHO and UNICEF invited
Maulana Sami ul-Haq, widely known for his leadership of a religious
seminary that trained many Taliban on both sides of the border, to be a
spokesperson for the polio vaccination campaign in 2015 and 2016.12
External actors such as the UK’s Department for International
Development and United Nations Development Programme, also support
alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms in the conflict-affected
province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).13 The purpose is to help the
government reduce the enormous backlog of cases in the formal court
system, which was viewed as one reason for initial support amongst some
communities for the Taliban and their form of swift justice. Donor interest
extends to financial support for government training of jirgas (tribal
councils) in human rights (Bureau Report, Dawn, 7 December 2013)
despite the fact they exclude women’s representation and voice. Research
shows jirgas represent the interests of the male elite and perpetuate
traditional practices such as honour killings and exchange of girls to settle
disputes (Shah, 2017). For this reason, they are becoming increasingly
unpopular (Brohi 2017, pp. 47-8). Some women politicians have called for
women’s representation on ADR panels and question the enthusiasm
amongst donors for these mechanisms (Raza, 2017). Further, the women’s
advocacy coalition Takra Qabailee Khwendo, working in conflict-affected
tribal areas, rejects these efforts to formalise the all-male jirga councils
(Shah, 2013).
Farida Shaheed argues the instrumentalisation of religious discourse by
some NGOs should not be misconstrued, ‘Just because somebody calls
themselves faith-based does not make them the holders of the truth’.14
Afiya Zia warns against growing donor support for the ‘theocratization of
development’, in which rights are framed as negotiable and subject to
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religious interpretation rather than as clear demands that one can claim
from the state. If the moral imperative of a universal human rights
approach is abandoned in favour of faith-based social development, she
argues, ‘then anything is possible on this slippery slope’ (Zia 2013, pp. 2015).
Moving Beyond the Binary: Gender Activism in Multiple Forms
Although the self-identified women’s movement has gradually reduced in
visibility over the past decades and fragmented as a result of NGO-isation,
this does not mean that gender-based activism has ceased. In various parts
of the country, women are pushing back against oppressive forces and
engaging in collective action in multiple forms - without relying on Islam to
legitimise or frame their demands. They are doing so in a context where
public mobilisation and criticism of the state carries great risks.
The last decade has witnessed an increasingly repressive culture of
silencing all forms of dissent. Vigilante killings, generated by spurious
charges of blasphemy against targeted individuals, has frightened nonMuslim religious minorities and silenced dissident intellectuals. Cases of
enforced disappearances or ‘missing persons’ and extrajudicial killings
have increased, particularly in FATA15, KP and Balochistan, under the cover
of national security (HRCP, 2016).16 Among the affectees are not only
suspected terrorists and criminals, but also those critical of the state. And
women are not exempt. Karachi lost two prominent women activists in
recent years, Perween Rahman and Sabeen Mahmud, both outspoken in
their criticism of powerful interest groups and both murdered in their cars
under mysterious circumstances.
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(Aurat March, Karachi, 8 March 2018. Photo: Hum Aurtein)
Despite all of this, gender-based resistance continues in multiple forms
throughout the country. The following section documents some recent
instances of activism amongst women and transgender communities that
persist despite varying degrees of state/military repression.
Punjab Peasants’ Resistance
Women have had a growing role to play in the peasant struggle which
began in 2000 for proprietary rights over land owned by the government
and military in the state of Punjab. Peasants formed a non-violent
resistance organisation called Anjuman Muzareen Punjab (AMP)17 to resist
changes from sharecropping to a new contract system for tenant farmers,
which left them vulnerable to eviction and limited their earnings. They
rejected the new tenancy terms and demanded ownership rights over the
land instead. Women wielding thaapas, or sticks, formed groups to protect
their villages from police action and resist government efforts to force
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compliance. A female leadership emerged from the peasants’ Christian
and Muslim communities, both working together to recruit support, block
highways, stage hunger strikes, attend court hearings and speak at public
engagements to rally support. As the AMP grew into a movement, women
were inducted at all levels (Mumtaz and Mumtaz, 2010).
Women’s spontaneous and self-generated involvement in this collective
action has led to their improved mobility, greater say in domestic decisionmaking, reduced domestic violence and an increased desire to educate
girls (Mumtaz and Mumtaz, 2010). In 2008 they formed a Peasant
Women’s Society and began to demand land rights for landless women
peasants, as well as women’s recognition in all property deeds drawn up
during a government land reforms process (Yusuf, 2016). WAF and
numerous other civil society organisations support their cause, which also
receives occasional sympathetic media coverage. Political parties have
promised to address the peasants’ grievances, yet no elected government
has yet delivered.
Peasants continue to be arrested on charges they are terrorists and land
grabbers, indicating institutions of the state, whether government or
military, are united to ensure the movement’s goals are not met (Our
Correspondent, The Express Tribune, 2018). In April this year, the Supreme
Court rejected a petition by an AMP leader, incarcerated for being a
terrorist and represented initially by women’s and human rights activist
Asma Jahangir, to be shifted out of solitary confinement. The movement
has persisted in the absence of substantial backing from political parties,
external development funding, or recourse to religious/cultural rhetoric,
demonstrating the strength of their resistance and claims to the land.
Lady Health Workers’ Mobilisation
The backbone of Pakistan’s primary health care system is a cadre of
125,000 Lady Health Workers (LHWs) operating in rural and peri-urban
Khan and Kirmani. Feminist Dissent 2018 (3), pp. 151-191
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communities delivering vaccinations, antenatal screenings, nutrition
counselling and contraceptives through home visits. Starting in 1994, the
government programme paid LHWs a nominal sum as contractual workers.
But as their numbers increased it soon became apparent they were making
a significant difference to health outcomes, despite inefficiencies in
management (OPM 2009, pp. 4-8). LHWs were often the main
breadwinners in their families, and their jobs one of the only forms of nonagricultural paid work opportunities for women in their villages (Khan,
2014).
After years of receiving inadequate compensation under insecure work
conditions, LHWs began to organise sporadic protests and sit-ins around
the country to draw attention to their delayed and inadequate salaries,
and demand to become regularised government employees with all
associated benefits. Their national association made its first significant
gain when the Supreme Court ordered in 2010 they be paid the minimum
wage of a skilled full-time worker, a meagre Rs 7,000 (GBP 45) per month
(Khan, 2011b). Two years later it ordered provincial governments to
integrate them fully into the service structure.
Along with polio workers, LHWs risk their lives at the hands of militant
groups. As the Taliban insurgency gained momentum in the aftermath of
9/11, militants began to abduct and kill LHWs for their involvement in the
polio campaign, which they maligned as part of a US plot to sterilise
Muslims. Between 2012-17 at least 22 LHWs were killed (Our
Correspondent, The Express Tribune, 2017a). Attacks continue in the
conflict-affected north-west and cities, where militants have a strong
presence and the government struggles to contain a resurgence of polio.
LHWs are also subject to multiple forms of gender-based discrimination
and must contend with routine sexual harassment and lack of control over
their earnings at home. Civil society organisations are now stepping in to
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highlight their struggles and support their efforts to make sure their voices
are heard and demands met (Baloch, 2017). LHWs’ mobilisation is possibly
the most sustained, widespread, and successful example of women-led
collective action in Pakistan’s recent history, yet somehow their
endeavour has operated quite independently from the women’s rights
movement and the NGO sector.
Tribal Women’s Association
After the military cleared much of the country’s tribal areas on the border
with Afghanistan from Taliban control, the government initiated a FATA
reforms process to end the colonial-era rule through Frontiers Crime
Regulations
and
mainstreaming
the
region’s
governance
and
administrative structures. With support from another prominent women’s
NGO in KP, in 2012 the first tribal women’s association was formed, called
Takra Qabaili Khwendo (TQK). It is a network, bringing together women
from diverse backgrounds and education levels in FATA. Members employ
a mix of strategies - workshops, awareness-raising sessions, press
statements, and political meetings - to ensure women’s voices are heard
in a context marked by the exclusion and silencing of women in ‘an area
where political citizenship is barely in its infant steps’, dominated by
militancy and ‘myriad forms of violent intervention’ (Fleschenberg 2015,
p. 68). TQK began by presenting their demands to elected politicians; they
included a government-allocated quota for FATA women within
parliament (similar to reserved seats for women from other provinces),
women’s presence in election offices (to offset cultural and political
controls against women voting), and inclusion in tribal jirgas (Shah, 2013).
The TQK have since shifted their position on jirgas, now rejecting these
councils altogether because of their patriarchal implications (Shah, 2013).
They have done so by opposing the government’s proposed Riwaj Act,
which is intended to be a first step in the FATA reforms process and
legalises the informal jirga system while at the same time extending
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jurisdiction of the higher courts to the area (Committee on FATA Reforms,
2016).18 They demanded to be part of the FATA reforms process, arguing
the jirga system should be replaced by the formal criminal justice system,
which recognises women’s civil and political rights (Our Correspondent,
The Express Tribune, 2016).
Recently tribal women’s groups have been surprised and encouraged by a
spontaneous youth uprising from FATA with demands similar to their own.
Known as the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), it is pressing for
meaningful reforms in FATA, including full integration into the state
administration and judicial system, recognition of their fundamental
rights, and an end to excesses by the military forces in their communities.
Contrary to established patriarchal tradition, PTM leaders have reached
out to tribal feminist groups and other KP women activists. Many now
openly support them by attending their rallies and making statements in
favour of PTM’s goals.19 In response to PTM mobilisation and criticism of
the military, the government has restricted the group’s right to assembly;
in a recent crackdown one woman activist from KP was also detained.
Transgender Rights Activism
The last ten years witnessed a dramatic growth in activism around the
rights of sexual minorities and transgender communities in particular.
While the presence of the third gender, or ‘Khwaja Siras’20 as they have
been come to be legally known in Pakistan, has deep historical roots, the
rights of Khwaja Siras has only recently emerged as an issue in public
debates. One of the reasons for this might be the increase in funding for
HIV/AIDS-related projects, which has benefitted from organising amongst
sexual minorities across the developing world (Fried & Kowalski-Morton,
2008). This has led to the emergence of several NGOs working for the
rights of the transgender community across the country.
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A series of Supreme Court rulings between 2009 and 2012 gave legal status
to members of the Khwaja Sira community. The first major victory for
Khwaja Siras was the addition of a third gender category in the national
identity cards in 2011 (Khan, 2011a). This landmark decision, i.e. formal
recognition of more than two genders, paved the way for recognition of
other rights such as the right to education, healthcare and a reservation
for members of the third gender in government jobs. Next, activists came
together to draft a new law to protect transgender people from any form
of discrimination or violence based on their gender identity. The Senate
passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2017 in March
2018, which many transgender activists had previously rejected because
of its problematic definition of ‘transgender’ and its inclusion of medical
tests as a determinant of transgender identity. However, after lobbying
with legislators, the Senate passed a bill which does not require medical
examination to claim transgender status, allows transgender people to
register for drivers’ licenses and passports, prevents harassment and
discrimination at multiple levels, includes provisions for transgender
persons to be provided with loans and employment opportunities, along
with several other progressive provisions (Guramani, Dawn, 7 March
2018).
The Khwaja Sira Society in Lahore, GIA in Karachi, Wajood in Islamabad,
and TransAction in Peshawar are some NGOs slowly gaining prominence
at the national level. They raise awareness about the rights of members of
the Khwaja Sira community and work on issues related to health and
economic justice. In Karachi, activists such as Bindya Rana, have been
highlighting the neglect of the community by the state for years in terms
of access to employment and education. In KP, where several incidents of
violence against the community have surfaced in the news and on social
media, TransAction lobbies for greater protection from the police (Our
Correspondent, The Express Tribune, 6 December 2017b).
Khan and Kirmani. Feminist Dissent 2018 (3), pp. 151-191
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The efforts of transgender rights activists are shaking established gender
hierarchies at their very foundations. While the presence of Khwaja Siras
may have a long history in South Asian society, the fact that the majority
of transgender rights activists are challenging the biological basis of
sex/gender as it is defined by law opens up space for a reconceptualisation
of gender itself. At the same time, it must be noted that most activism on
this issue has taken place by those identified as Khwaja Sira, who either
identify as a third gender or as trans-women. There is very little advocacy
by or on behalf of transgender men apart from a select few cases (Khan,
2009). For the most part, the concept of trans-manhood or gender
nonconformity still has little or no recognition in the Pakistani context, but
this has also started changing.21
Conclusion
This paper provides a brief overview of the academic discourse produced
over the past four decades with regards to Pakistani women’s activism.
Much of the scholarship about women’s rights activism has come from
within the women’s movement itself and focused on the negative impact
of Islamisation on women’s lives, along with a wide range of social,
economic, and political issues. The movement’s extensive project of
knowledge production represents their developing and deepening
understanding of women’s issues since the movement began its resistance
to Zia’s Islamisation. On the other hand, scholarship produced since the
early 2000s on women in religious parties and piety movements provides
insight into the current trend towards religious engagement that is
arguably sweeping across swathes of middle- and upper-class women.
Both bodies of work, which sometimes also overlap, have provided key
insights into the important women’s mobilisations across the politicoideological spectrum in Pakistan.
Khan and Kirmani. Feminist Dissent 2018 (3), pp. 151-191
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However, we contend here this discourse has also inadvertently
reproduced a restrictive binary distinction between ‘secular’ women’s
rights activists and ‘religious’ piety movements and women’s wings of
Islamist political parties, which overlooks the vast array of gender-based
social and political activism in recent years. In order to highlight the
shortcomings of this binary, we draw attention to new sites of activism
that have emerged which cannot be understood through the narrow prism
of a binary lens and rely on neither set of discourses. These newer forms
of mobilisation embed gender justice demands within movements for
workers’ rights, peasants’ rights, ethnic and gender identity struggles and
citizenship rights. Hence, they challenge the confines of the
secular/religious binary as an adequate framework within which to
comprehend gender justice issues in Pakistan.
Neither the ‘religious’ nor the ‘secular’ activists can lay claim to forging
deep linkages with more recent forms of gender-based mobilisation such
as the collective action amongst lady health workers, Punjabi peasants,
tribal groups, and transgender activists. Islamist women have not
expressed support or otherwise engaged with these forms of activism as
their underlying ideology does not challenge existing class, caste, and state
structures. On the other hand, the engagement of the women’s
movement with these newer forms of activism has mainly been by way of
support through NGO networks, legal aid and research, but this has been
limited and fragmented. However, because the women’s movement
articulates its demands in the language of citizenship rights, there is more
scope for a deep engagement with these new sites of activism. The fact
that this has not yet occurred in any significant or sustained manner
suggests that the class composition and urban bias of the rights-based
women’s movement has contributed to a failure to develop deeper
alliances. This is also a result of the general decline of the public profile of
the movement since the 1990s. Feminists find themselves in a challenging
moment; to remain relevant they must build bridges with these newer
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forms of claims-making in demanding accountability from the state for
marginalised citizens.
The newer sites of gender-based activism also pose a challenge to donordriven faith-based development initiatives, demonstrating that Islam and
idealised notions of cultural authenticity are neither necessary nor
relevant to driving these emerging mobilisations; in some cases these
mobilisations pose a significant challenge to these donor-driven initiatives.
In particular, in Pakistan’s conflict-affected north-west, the grassroots
campaign for ethnic Pashtun rights is a demand for citizenship status from
the state and a rejection of the tribal jirga as means to deliver justice to
both men and women. Thus, these newer forms of activism demand the
state be held accountable to ensure citizenship rights and entitlements, in
effect a rejection of the attempts of some donor agencies to earn
legitimacy by reifying informal structures and Islam. Since the donors in
question represent supposedly secular states that are meant to adhere to
human rights within their own borders, it is all the more unacceptable they
suspend the same standards in some of their activities in Pakistan.
While these new forms of mobilisation and resistance provide reason for
hope, the risks of demanding rights for marginalised citizens are growing
as the state closes spaces for social and political action by incarcerating
and disappearing activists, holding trials outside the public purview, and
imposing controls on NGOs in the name of security. This has limited the
successes of the newer movements and further restricted the space of
older movements. It has also affected the working of civil society
organisations, many led by feminist activists, subjecting them to increased
scrutiny and vetting to ensure they are not functioning to serve ‘Western’
interests, or opposed to ‘the [Islamic] ideology of the state’. Thus, the state
continues to rely on support from Islamists, whose NGOs and seminaries
operate with relatively little oversight, to selectively circumscribe dissent.
Khan and Kirmani. Feminist Dissent 2018 (3), pp. 151-191
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The growth and spread of Islamist ideologies, spread via state and nonstate actors, has limited the space for all forms of dissent, including around
issues related to gender and sexuality.
We have argued that the restrictive secular/religious binary operative in
Pakistan must be understood within the context of the state’s historic
instrumentalisation of Islam for its political purposes. Thus an explicitly
secular, rights-based women’s movement arose in reaction to the state’s
cultivation of Islamist social and political activism, including amongst some
groups of women, in order to further its interests. While the binary
framework has historical relevance for understanding the contestations
over women’s rights since the 1980s, its instrumental purpose may finally
be coming to an end. This is made clear by the recent gender-based
mobilisations that we highlight, each of which demand accountability and
recognition from the state. The efforts of these groups cannot be
understood within a simplistic binary framework, and hence cannot be
dismissed as either a ‘Western’ import nor justified as ‘faith-based’. These
emerging mobilisations demonstrate that while older spaces of feminist
activism may be shrinking, newer spaces are being forged. Hence, this is a
moment that is filled with transformative potential and may mark a
turning point in the history of gender justice activism in Pakistan. As
feminist scholars and activists, we would be foolish not to take note.
Ayesha Khan is with the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi.
She works on gender and development, social policy, refugee and conflict
issues. She has published in Feminist Economics, International Feminist
Journal of Politics and Reproductive Health Matters. She is author of The
Women’s Movement in Pakistan: Activism, Islam and Democracy (2018).
Currently she is researching women’s collective action to increase their
political voice in Pakistan.
Khan and Kirmani. Feminist Dissent 2018 (3), pp. 151-191
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Nida Kirmani is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Mushtaq Ahmad
Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore
University of Management Sciences. She is also Faculty Director of the
Saida Waheed Gender Initiative. Nida has published widely on issues
related to gender, Islam, women’s movements, development and urban
studies in India and Pakistan. She is author of Questioning ‘the Muslim
Woman’: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality (2013). Her
current research focuses on urban violence, gender and insecurity in the
area of Lyari in Karachi.
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Notes
1
This must be understood within the backdrop of the Cold War, with the Pakistani
government acting as a bulwark against the Soviet Union in the region and strongly
supported by the US, and the evolution of the Pakistani state, in which leaders have
ceded increasing space to conservative forces for political gains.
2
The Women’s Protection Act (2006) took the teeth out of the Hudood Ordinances by
placing rape within the jurisdiction of civil law and making it illegal for a woman to be
convicted of adultery on the basis of her own complaint.
3
A constitutional provision for a few reserved seats for women in parliament lapsed
with the 1988 elections. Activists from WAF and some women’s NGOs campaigned for
their restoration and an increased (33 per cent) quota to include provincial assemblies
and local government bodies. Between 2000-2002 the government introduced a 33 per
cent quota for women in local bodies and 17 per cent in the assemblies and Senate.
4
Legislative Watch newsletters, published by the activist-led NGO Aurat Foundation,
have been a rich source of information and analysis on all laws affecting women since
the 1990s.
5
Activists also took part in the NGO delegation to the UN Conference on Population and
Development in 1994.
6
The NGO Applied Socio-Economic Research (ASR) led by Nighat Said Khan has ongoing
links with women in trade unions and rural women. See:
http://asr.asrresourcecentre.org/history-rationale).
7
The Federal Shariat Court was established in 1980 to adjudicate on matters pertaining
to Islamic law. The Council of Islamic Ideology, established in 1962, is a constitutional
Khan and Kirmani. Feminist Dissent 2018 (3), pp. 151-191
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body comprised of religious scholars to advise legislators on whether given laws are in
conformity with the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah.
8
Formerly Lashkar-e-Taiba, this proscribed group is accused of the 2008 Mumbai
terrorist attack, amongst others.
9
Wahhabism, an austere and ultra-conservative form of Islam originating in Saudi
Arabia, encourages the literal interpretation of the Quran.
10
Dars refers to gatherings in which ideas about Islam are imparted through lectures and
discussion.
11
Nighat Khan (1994) problematises this binary, pointing out that even the so-called
secular states of Europe and North America are intertwined with religion. She argues in
Pakistan there is no clear division between those who argue for an Islamic state versus
those who want a separation of religion and state; rather, there is a spectrum of beliefs
with regards to the relationship between religion and the state. Farida Shaheed (2009)
points to the impossibility of separating religion from other aspects of social and
political life, cautioning against labelling groups as ‘faith’-based which implies those not
labelled as such have no relationship with religion.
12
He temporarily suspended support for immunisation after alleged US use of a polio
vaccinator in its successful hunt for Osama bin Laden, linking it with the cessation of
drone strikes in the area (Crilly, 2012).
13
Bureau Report, Dawn, 25 September 2014; 7 December 2013.
14
Interview with author
15
The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), population 5 million, are under
indirect government rule and lie along the western border of KP. Literacy levels are only
13 per cent for females (Bureau of Statistics 2016, p. iv).
16
In 2015 alone, 1,390 cases of enforced disappearances were pending with the
government’s commission of inquiry; there were at least 15 attacks on journalists and
human rights defenders, and hundreds killed in faith-based attacks against religious
minority communities and sectarian conflict (HRCP 2016, pp. 4-5, 95-97, 108). More
recently, Mashal Khan, due to his Marxist and secular sympathies, was killed by fellow
university students for alleged blasphemy (Khan, 2018).
17
Society of Landless Peasants of Punjab.
18
The high-level committee includes no women. A second, but similar, version of the
Riwaj Act was proposed in 2017 but subsequently withdrawn by government in the face
of severe criticism.
19
Author interview with women members of Qabailee Khor, an offshoot of TQK. Also,
see Naseer (2018).
20
KhwajaSiras identify either as members of a third gender or as trans-women. Not all
trans-women in Pakistan identify as KhwajaSira.
21
In 2017, a transgender man was able to obtain an ID card and passport, which legally
declared that he was male.
To cite this article:
Khan, A. & Kirmani, N. (2018). Moving Beyond the Binary: Gender-based
Activism in Pakistan. Feminist Dissent, (3), 151-191. Retrieved from:
https://journals.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/feministdissent/index
Khan and Kirmani. Feminist Dissent 2018 (3), pp. 151-191
191