women’s own resilience and
the changes on the ground that have paved the way for
increased participation and impact on politics.
The first part of the case study discusses the issue
of women’s representation and the legitimacy of
a voice as well as the relationship between the women’s
movement and the state. The author, in her examination,
finds that the women’s movement exhibits ambivalence
toward the state as it tries to wrest the maximum possible
within an unequal system for women while recognizing
the limits as well as unbridled power of the state for
initiating social change.
The second part of this paper explores
different explanations for the granting of quotas to
women by the military. These range include the ‘look-good’
foreign policy explanation, the creation of a new support
base for the military regime, and the support for local
government that the military regimes have historically
provided.
This paper concludes that the military
exhibits a restricted worldview of women’s place
and political empowerment and it tries to keep women,
who have been empowered by the political space that
reservations and quotas have provided them, restricted
to this worldview.
Issues raised:
| • |
There is a relationship
of mutual convenience between the state and the
women’s movement in Pakistan.
|
| • |
The women’s movement
in Pakistan is the sole source of women’s
aspirations and demands in Pakistan. |
| • |
The women’s movement
in Pakistan is born out of a common women’s
identity and experience of discrimination. |
| • |
The women’s movement
has been unable to muster up mass mobilization
and has been dependent on the state for the derivation
of its identity especially by defining itself
as contrary to the state and its policies, which
the movement believes, exhibits patriarchal tendencies. |
| • |
The movement works within
the social parameters so that it has social legitimacy
while at the same time questioning the state and
its structures which are relatively at a greater
distance than the family. |
| • |
Women’s agency rather
than any inclination in the military towards societal
and political reform is the reason that women
have received quotas in representative bodies. |
| • |
While the military has provided
reservation of seats for women, it has also seen
to it that women adhere to pre-determined gender
roles and that their voice reflects the regime
in power. |
|
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