Grace under fire

During the last decade, young educated women of Pakistan have been struggling hard in the quest of proving their abilities, which is a symbol changing social system of Pakistan. In addition, a significant number of women are part of workforce in offices, hospitals, schools and labour sector to participate in uplifting of economic state of their family.
However, the pitfall of female employment in Pakistan is that most of the women workers, especially those in public dealing departments, are performing their duties in hostile environment. A large number of women join the labour force of factories; belonging to economic and socially deprived localities. Young and undergraduates, these workers are more susceptible to physically, mentally and psychologically workplace harassments. Many of them have to tolerate, without protest, staring, whistling, hitting and stroking of factory supervisors and managers.
These supervisors often use expletive vocabulary to discipline the female workers. A factory owner says regretfully that leaving the few, employers take more interest to speeding up production. They often publicly humiliate women employees, ignoring their prestige.
Teaching is a noble profession and the teacher is an architect of a country's destiny. A teacher, therefore, deserves highest level of respect. Students and teachers in many countries celebrate "Teacher's Day". In Argentina, Nepal, Albania, Malaysia, Singapore, etc, it is customary for students to send bouquets, gifts, text messages to their teachers. Sorrowfully, in Pakistan, verbal abuse and inappropriate behaviour of students has sabotaged many women teachers' careers. Huma, one such teacher, walked out of the teaching profession due to the annoying attitude of her students, their parents and the school management.
A new way of hurting teachers is "cyber bullying". Students use emails, Facebook and other web resources to pass on insulting remarks, maligning comments and fake stories about teachers to each other and even to the teachers' families. Mobile phones turn into "potentially offensive weapons" since students send vicious and nasty SMS or text messages to break teachers' self-esteem and add more misery to their grief.
Other ways of teacher harassment include circulation of written irritating comments or jokes, funny graphic descriptions, hate propaganda, show of aggression in the classroom and comments about the teachers' physical appearance. All have a negative impact on the teachers' abilities making him or her feel small and powerless.
A senior secondary school teacher was horrified to find her cruelly damaged car inside the school parking lot. The students had punctured its tyres and broken the side mirrors and all because she did not let them cheat in the examination hall. When the parents were called, they supported and protected their children not the teacher.
It is unfortunate that many schools in our country run like machines. Their administration treats teachers as industrial workers. The low financial status in a very materialistic society inclines people to show less respect to teachers. The school management is always dissatisfied with new teachers' performances and insists on them to do more.
Nursing workforce is always in frontline of duty during troublesome hours of the country. Despite of dedications and hard work, the female nursing community often faces the acts of violence while on their duty. The right of every nurse is to get security from potential violent or abusive attacks. Contrary, every committed, compassionate and caring nurse complains of hostile and unsafe hospital environment, unfair behaviour of hospital authorities and unrestricted movement of patient's attendants.
Nurses are victims of physical violence and verbal abuse from patient's family members in so many cases. Aqsa, a staff nurse in a social security Hospital, says, "Nursing is a tough and challenging job. Assigning a nursing role means get ready for abusive behaviours of patient's family. I still remember that day of my life when I was on night duty and a post-operative patient of bed number 7 was in critical condition. Saving the life of that patient was my first priority so I spend whole night looking after him. I was too engaged in saving his life to get time for visiting other patients. After tiring and tense night duty, I had to face angry and aggressive relatives for not attending their patient."
Unfortunately, very few nurses take the cases to hospital administration due to the uncooperative behaviours of hospital administration and social confinements. Few hospitals respond to nurses' complaints, but most hospitals pressurised the victim to keep silent and discourage her from discussing the events and do nothing to prevent such incidents in future. World health organisation report that many cases of workplace violence gone unreported "perhaps because workers see the abuse as an expression of patients' illnesses or as an acceptable part of the job. Another reason for the underreporting "is work pressures that do not allow time for staff to report."
A sells girl of a trendy shopping center, Rizwana is fed up from those customers who pretend to be interested in product's features soon turn the conversation towards asking for her cell number. She said on my refusal these customers reach to the management complaining unsatisfied customer service."
In general, women workers in our society are reluctant to speak up, and discuss the issue of harassment. Many cases of women harassment at work went unnoticed by authorities. Female victims prefer keeping silent due to social values and the fear of losing job. In reality, silence promotes continuity of such acts.
Women who manage to find employment in offices and executive position has traits of good time management, up to date knowledge, and work commitment. But unfortunately, male colleagues and office management often unwelcome these good traits and hurdles in the way of her success. She has to struggle hard to find her place in male dominated fields. Discrimination against woman occurs in offices in different ways. Despite of abilities, it is a hard task for her to get top-level post. Even her juniors do not bother about her designation.
Many educated women had to leave offices in despair. A writer Naheed Manzoor writes "The number of women workers in Pakistan's work force is on the rise, but this is not reflected within the labour movement because there are very few women in the trade unions. The male-dominated unions are not showing any interest in recruiting female members into the unions. Male-chauvinist union leaders discourage female workers."
Staff Farida, an experienced nurse says, "Prevention is better than cure; to prevent bad happenings it is advisable to keep at bay from the patients with aggressive, harassing and belligerent behaviours. It is important to realise that patient's family is already in desperation and tension. Some nurses ignore the reality and plunge into useless arguments with patient's family and attendants. Arguing with a tense person is nothing but adding fuel on fire."
Many private firms and companies give their female employees facilities of transport. Factory owners should also ensure provision of safe transportation for their female workers. Fazila says, "I work in a satisfying factory environment but on my way back to home I terribly depressed due to illicit remarks, whistling and stroking on the road and in Buses.
There in hospitals, educational institutes, factories and other industries. Those violate these code of conduct should face penalty regardless of their social and economic status. There should be a comprehensive mechanism of registering complaints ensuring confidentiality to protect the victim from retaliation.
Every woman employee has right to work in a safe and secure environment. Anti sexual harassment, legislation recently passed from the Parliament for the protection of women workers. Besides, several civil society organisations and groups are doing efforts to highlight problems of women workers but still there is a long way to go.