Task for women parliamentarians

Women parliamentarians have more responsibilities than their counterparts in the national and four provincial assemblies. The common agenda for all the women in parliament should be empowerment and restoration of women's rights to enjoy liberty to choose the way of life most suited to their environment. Other issues can be left to men to deal with.
Pakistani women are socially classified into groups and labelled as literate, urban, rural, housewives, employed and professionally qualified. According to official statistics only 26 percent women are literate. The criterion to be literate is the ability to put signature on a piece of a paper and to recognise alphabets of their mother tongues; ability to read the Holy Quran is another criterion. This much ability does not guarantee employment, social security and protection against the male uncalled far domination. The sufferings of women from the urban as well as rural background are the same.
To mitigate the sufferings of women falling in this category is not easy. It calls for basic changes in the social fabrics of the illiterate people wherever they live. Their notions of self-pride, honour and dignity among their own people is same. They use their women as the most effective tool for the settlement of disputes, for establishing family bonds and to guarantee harmonious relations between hitherto unfamiliar families.
This kind of use of women goes unnoticed unless there is a dispute or a crime has taken place and reported in the press. The veil of secrecy on crime against women is thick and to peep through this veil is difficult. The guesswork says that every one woman from among three carries at least one tail of socially loathsome hardship.
Those women who are illiterate and are in employment face all kinds of problems including sexual harassment to survive in their jobs. They suffer in silence and wait to change circumstances in their favour. It seldom happens. The situation becomes complex with the passage of each day and one is left with only two options; continue to work or leave and suffer financial crisis. Both the options are difficult and exercise of one is bound to bring another set of hardship. More difficult to live with and share with relatives and friends.
Those women who are self-employed are not immune to manmade problems. They interact with male members of the society in the discharge of their profession functions. If in business, it is business meetings, sales and marketing efforts and office management are some of the areas that become unsafe for them. The other areas of unsafe and dark lanes lead to uncertainties in the business. The self-employed women have to compromise with the restrictions on her movement and leave many options leading to better prospects - unexplored.
Women entrepreneurs in Pakistan are not at par with women entrepreneurs in some of the developed countries. In one circumstance there is liberty and in the other restrictions, and that makes all the difference.
A large number of women, from the export promotion statistics, are in the export business but the size of their consignments is always smaller than the consignments exported by men. Problems which women face in preparing consignments are different than those faced by the men exporters. Most of their problems are male-specific.
Those women who are professionals and either employed by others or in self-employment can be counted on fingers' tips. They are role models for many other girls pursuing higher education. To be a professional woman is not easy. It needs higher technical education at the cost of advancement in age, putting marriage non-priority-item list, co-education, and admission to an expensive college.
All the above discussed categories of women look towards the new women parliamentarians and wait to see whether they would come out of their party manifesto, which is vague on women issues and take up specific issues and work for it.
The women parliamentarians should now think of concrete action to promote female literacy, personality development and right to choose profession. Once the process is on the right path to success, areas where women need empowerment should be taken up. For this purpose some legislation will be needed. Women parliamentarians are well placed to achieve this target. This is a dry exercise and will go unrecognised in the beginning but, if successful, the outcome will be rewarding.