Challenges of Women Empowerment in Pakistan: A Critique of the Aurat March Movement
While there are many genuine issues faced by women in Pakistan, including the right to job opportunities, self-expression, self-determination, and choosing their life partner with free will, the issue of what to wear often comes at the bottom of the list. March has arrived, which means it’s the month of women’s empowerment. The 8th of March is around the corner, and women’s empowerment groups are busy organizing seminars and protests for women’s rights that have a legal and moral basis. Some may reject this idea as it comes from a man, but the idea of the ‘Aurat march’ has long since died.
This death was not natural but an organized suffocation perpetrated by brown feminism and elitism. Women from elite clubs, universities, and most importantly, from elite households, have completely buried the idea of women’s empowerment with the shallow, hollow, and completely different idea of ‘mera jism meri marzi,’ an idea that is foreign to the entire cause of women’s empowerment.
Last time Pakistanis were preparing for a meaningful dialogue about women and why we, as a nation, have excluded 50% of the population from the economic spectrum, the elitist ideologues further shrunk the space for women struggling to address the real issues of jobs and self-determination. At that time, I told one of my best friends, a staunch supporter of the ‘Aurat March,’ that this annual ‘ritual’ has nothing to do with the real struggle of women in rural areas, interior Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, where the struggle is real. These NGOs have done many things for women, but the problem is that this either exists only on paper or is limited to their immediate household.
Secondly, the ‘Aurat March,’ which was once hailed for its revolutionary ideas, is now nothing more than an antagonizing act that has some very deranged ideas that are not compatible with the very nature of society. Take, for example, the idea of homosexuality, LGBTQ+ society that has nothing to do with women’s rights and absolutely nothing to do with the current plights of women in Pakistan. It does not address the real-world issues of women, such as eve-teasing and rapidly increasing rape cases. Rather than addressing these issues, these events, which could have been used to attract more meaningful debate around gender discrimination, the glass ceiling, women’s job sectors, women’s security, public spaces, and practical solutions to current economic woes, have completely drifted from the real point. Now, it has been reduced to an event where women with strange and non-compatible ideas gather together and raise slogans, hold play cards that are rattling and offensive at best but not at all relevant to women’s rights.
As a brother of two sisters, I understand to some extent that this idea of women’s empowerment under brown feminism is more harmful than giving any viable policy plan. If you do not believe this, look at the work the Aurat March has done in the last three years, the policy documents (tailored for local audiences and not too broad) they have produced, and the meaningful dialogue they have conducted focused on the middle class, rural women, and working-class women.
While this may continue, and every year, some women with no knowledge of lower-class struggle and women’s problems continue to raise slogans, it is the women in actual positions and the middle class that will eventually have to take the torch and lead the way for their rights.
