Why is a woman with a BA degree eking out a living by sewing seams and stitching buttons? Why does a woman earning Rs 2,500 per month pay Rs 10,000 to purchase a baby? Why does a woman give the recipe for cooking okra in terms of the price of ingredients rather than the quantity of each item? Why does a woman working in a Karachi factory hide the fact from her family in Larkana?
The answers to these questions provide a much more accurate picture of poverty of women of the urban working class, than the cold statistics and ambiguous terminology used by officialdom which has served, rather to cover up Pakistan's failure to improve the socio-economic status of women to facilitate their empowerment. In view of the rapid increase in the size of impoverishment world-wide during the 1990s, UN member countries agreed in September 2000 on eight time-bound objectives known as Millennium Development Goals (MGDs).
Women's empowerment was targeted as 3rd MGD to be achieved by 2010. Pakistan's ranking in UNDP Human Development reports on gender empowerment measures remains stagnant at 135th position. In short, nothing concrete has been achieved despite the passage of eight years since the MGDs were framed. In the Pakistan Economic Survey 2007, the previous government created the impression that there was modest success in achieving women's empowerment.
This was done by combining the women of the three income groups, upper, middle and working classes, into one group to show that improvement in women's political, social and economic standing was slowly but surely reaching equality with that of the male population of the country. This did not give an accurate picture of the true state of affairs.
It is estimated that less than one percent of the labour force belongs to the upper-class, approximately 29 percent to the middle-class and 70 percent to the working class. The working-class is also the poor class. That such a large segment of the population is poor indicates the poverty alleviation measures of government agencies and other organisations are unsatisfactory.
The working-class as a whole is poor, but the poorest of the poor, both in the m rural and urban sectors, are the women. The problems of rural women is well known, and has resulted in several projects and programmes for their socio-economic improvement undertaken by the government as well as civil society organisations.
These projects and programmes may be superficial or realistic, but the significant point is that the plight of rural women has been noted. The destitution of urban women of the working-class has not received the same level of concerned attention and remains an area of ignorance, so that virtually no project or programme has been chalked especially for tackling their socio-economic problems. This is obviously due to the nonavailability of information.
A survey, apparently the first of its kind, provides information exclusively about the socio-economic issues of women of the working-class. It was undertaken early this year by an NGO, Inter Press Communications (IPC) titled "Media support to women's employment in Industries, Fisheries and Agriculture".
Alleviation of poverty is the first step towards women's empowerment. Poor women in the urban sector are mostly employed as domestic servants or as factory employees, particularly in the ever-expanding garment industry in Karachi, manufacturing clothing in denim and leather for the local and international markets.
A servant may remain poor, despite being employed, but why is the industrial worker poor? The study indicates that the system of hiring women industrial labour through a contractor allows factory management as well as the contractor to cheat women workers of their legitimate rights regarding wages and other benefits such as insurance, pension and health care.
There are regulations and laws to protect women hired on contract, but these are flouted. Women are paid wages much below the Rs 5,500 per month stipulated as minimum wages of unskilled labour (male or female) by the government. Labour laws and regulations specifically designed for women industrial workers are excellent, but they exist only on the printed pages of ILO and government documents.
The reason for open flouting of regulations and laws is that the majority of women hired on oral contract, therefore they do not know who to accuse for the denial of the rights: should it be the factory management, which says the workers are employees of the contractor, or the contractor who says his job is simply to recruit workers?
Urban poverty has not been measured in real terms. It is expressed in various poverty bands such as extremely poor, ultra poor, poor, but never in rupees. The purpose seems to be to cover up the shocking state of destitution of urban women who are employees and yet do not earn enough, barely managing to survive, while the employers reap the profits.
The IPC study claims the employers can do this because in the urban sector too many women chase too few jobs. Any demand for increase in pay or for other benefits usually results in loss of job since the employer has no problem finding replacements. Hence, in order to drive home the true characteristics of urban poverty, the study gives the women a chance to speak for themselves.
Some 30 women working in Karachi's garment industry were interviewed. Their responses yielded a starkly realistic picture of poverty. The interviews also highlighted misperceptions accepted by everyone to be poverty alleviators. Education, for instance, does not guarantee better jobs, simply because there are not enough jobs compared to the number of high school and college graduates.
So if you belong to the working -class you need to earn a living and will take up menial job of sewing seams and buttons, just like your illiterate comrades. There will never by any success of Family Planning for population control as long as there is abject poverty.
In the poor-class of the rural and urban sector children are an asset and infertility is thought to be a curse. The sale and purchase of babies is therefore a common practice. Parents with too many children willingly sell babies to childless couples. The reason for this practice is poverty. Adoption agencies do not give children to poverty-stricken childless couples.
Except for the atta for making rotis, all other foodstuff is purchased on a day-to-day basis. This includes spices, vegetables and oil. Hence working-class women usually give a recipe in terms of the price of ingredients such as: "Ten rupees-worth okra." (Okra: bhindi).
Even then, it is not everyday that good vegetables are eaten. Meat is not a regular part of their diet. The usual daily meal is either roti with an onion or roti with a thin, watery curry made of one or two potatoes. Conservative families which previously would not have allowed their women to work in a factory have been pushed by poverty to break strict social norms.
This is the case of families that come from villages and towns to work in Karachi. The cost of living in the city is high, since it includes the cost of subsistence as well as transport, rent, payment for utilities and. healthcare.
A family with one income (the man's) cannot survive, Women have to work to make ends meet. But this fact has to be hidden from the family in their villages and towns or else the woman could be killed for breaking the purdah and thus dishonouring her people.
Assessing the overall problems and. constrains preventing genuine empowerment of women of the working-class, it is to be noted that gender parity is treated as an unimportant factor even by policy makers in the government and the activists in the civil society organisations.
It is taken for granted that women are lesser mortals and it cannot be changed because of the patriarchal characteristics of our social order. But no real progress is possible without gender parity. All calculations for development and progress are upset by the error of thinking women are less important than men.
(Concluded)