March 10 was Women's Day. From Nawabshah came news that the people running the Shaheed Benazirabad Women Centre would have to close down because the staff salaries had not been paid for three months; the landlord issued notice to vacate the building; the landline was likely to be disconnected for non-payment of last month's phone bill.
Naseem Hasan Mastoi, manager of the centre, blamed delay in release of quarterly budget by the Ministry of Women Development Islamabad for the dire straits of the centre. In Karachi the women singing, dancing, lighting lamps and making boastful speeches about what women have achieved and what they can achieve - given the same opportunities as the men, marked Women's Day celebrations. Nobody was aware of the plight of the Nawabshah women's centre.
The problem in Nawabshah represents the reality of the so-called efforts of the present government to empower women and remove the hurdles on their path to progress. Because for the ruling PPP it is not Larkana but Nawabshah which is currently the spiritual city of the party, which also wanted to change the name of the city to Banazirabad to assert this special status.
What lies behind the failure of well meaning projects of the government for women's empowerment, especially in Sindh? The answer simple: shortage of funds. This does not mean that sufficient funds are not allocated. It primarily means that even if the funds are available, the government officials drag their feet and fail to release the funds in time. Mastoi said the Nawabshah centre never received funds on time.
The centre was established in 2006 for crisis management of violence against women and became functional in 2007. Karo Kari and domestic violence in the area have not reduced significantly, which makes the importance of the centre double fold. It is a vital centre in the heartland of the worst crimes against women. If this centre has not been given due attention then what can one hope for any other project for the alleviation of suffering of women?
At a Women's Day meeting in Karachi, organised by the Pakistan Women's Foundation for Peace (PWFP) former Federal Minister for Information Sherry Rehman described the excellent performance of women legislators. According to the recent parliamentary report, she said, women legislators had tabled and supported more bills than the male parliamentarians.
It is laudable that women legislators are so active, and we also have a woman as Speaker in the National Assembly. But a point to note is that by and large the men call the shots, and if women succeed in achieving anything in parliament it is, as the males see it, through the patronage of men.
Another point to note is that women are more severely criticised for any fault or failure than men parliamentarians. The former Information Minister ought to know that from her summary dismissal. Women head the Women's Development Ministries in the capital and in Sindh. But the purse strings are held by male officials who are niggardly in funding projects.
Why is this so? Because women are easily cowed and fail to assert themselves. Did the Federal Minister for Women's Development, Dr Azra Fazal and MNA Faryal Talpur even know about the problems of the Nawabshah Women's centre? Was the Sindh Minister for Women's Development, Tauqeer Fatima Bhutto, aware of the plight of Nawabshah centre? Not likely, or the centre would not have failed.
Our women parliamentarians would like to blame others for the slow progress in development projects for women. They simply do not realise that adequate funds and ready supply of the same is the key to progress. Nobody works for free. Hence the achievements of women legislators is all in areas were no money is involved, that is, passage of the bills.
We are proud of women who have achieved success in field which are male-dominated, but on the whole women's participation is just a token representation. There is no policy for inducting maximum number of women in banking, say, or the Air Force and Police Force. The presence of women in these fields is not a national policy to bring women at par with male counterparts in any sector of empowerment.
Nargis Rehman of the NWFP made a pertinent observation at the organization's Karachi meeting. "The reality is that woman still remains an underclass." The most often mentioned reasons for why women are not at par with male workers are: medieval culture, religious conservatism, poverty and lack of education. Nobody mentions the lack of actual work on government policy to give equal rights to women. Without such an effort the hurdles will remain.
I can hear protests, and someone may wave under my nose documents of the huge funds and grand projects launched by the present government. Take another look at these projects. All of them are on paper. All of them begin with the legend that our women are way behind men folk in progress. It is the typical attitude of men in a male-dominated society. The men think mere creation of these projects is proof of achievement. But Nawabshah Women's Centre is not only one to be in doldrums. There is no project that has made a dent at grassroots level.
Personally (and I have a right get personal as this is about women) I find Women's Day an insult. Such International Days are largely designed to highlight the plight of endangered species of the flora and fauna. So are women at par with the mangroves and the hedgehogs? The UN-initiated International Days of this or that has not achieved anything. It is a waste of money.
The only people who benefit are the ones who release the propaganda, which they think creates awareness. The advertisers, the press and electronic media, and of course, officialdom in the UN and member countries. The 1990s was the Women's decade. At number four in the list of millennium development goals was Women Empowerment. Two decades on, the problems have not changed for the better. We are still struggling.