Why are the Taliban assassinating
polio workers in Pakistan? Why are they attacking schoolgirls like Malala and her friends and why are many young women being murdered in "honor killings" in rural Pakistan? What is it that the killers fear from unarmed females seeking education or working to provide basic health care to poor families or choosing their own mates? Why so much gratuitous violence against peaceful women?
Before answering these questions, let's look at the following facts on the ground:
1. As of 2006, about
72 percent of the University of Karachi student body is female. Among medical students, 87 percent are women, and the figure for architecture and planning is as high as 92 percent. In fact, KU vice chancellor was so concerned that he suggested a quota for men.
2. In addition to basic door-to-door health care and vaccinations, Pakistan's
Lady Health Workers also offer family planning and birth control tips to women. The vaccination effort has been made more difficult ever since the discovery of the
US CIA-sponsored bogus vaccination campaign to identify bin Laden's whereabouts. The Ladies Health Workers program is staffed by 100,000 women and it's been described as "one of the best community-based health systems in the world” by
Dr. Donald Thea, a Boston University researcher. Thea is one of the authors of a
recent Lancet study on child pneumonia treatment in Pakistan. He talked
with the
New York Times about the study.
3. In the study of censuses, the most important age group in society is that between 15 and 24. In the 1981 census, 39 percent of women in this age bracket were married, as were 16 percent of the men. Today, the figure for married women in this bracket is less than 20 percent, and for married men 7 percent. For the first time in Karachi's history, there is an overwhelming majority of unmarried adolescents. For this same 15-24 age group in Karachi, 67 percent of the men were literate in 1981, as were 63 percent of the women. Today, we have 84 percent literacy among men and 85 percent literacy among women.
4. Much of the progress has come because women stay in school longer.
More than 42 percent of Pakistan’s 2.6 million high school students last
year were girls, up from 30 percent 18 years ago. Women made up about
22 percent of the 68,000 students in Pakistani universities in 1993;
today, 47 percent of Pakistan’s 1.1 million university students are
women, according to the Higher Education Commission. Half of all MBA
graduates hired by Habib Bank, Pakistan’s largest lender, are now women.
“Parents are realizing how much better a lifestyle a family can have if
girls work,” says Sima Kamil, 54, who oversees 1,400 branches as head
of retail banking at Habib. “Every branch I visit has one or two girls
from conservative backgrounds,” she told
Businessweek.
5. About
31 percent of Pakistani females are in the workforce, up from 14 percent a decade ago, government statistics show. Women now hold 78 of the 342 seats in the National Assembly, and in July, Hina Rabbani Khar, 34, became Pakistan’s first woman Foreign Minister. “The cultural norms regarding women in the workplace have changed,” Maheen Rahman, 34, chief executive officer at IGI Funds, which manages some $400 million in assets. Rahman told
Businessweek she plans to keep recruiting more women for her company.
6. There was a recent news story about young
Pakistanis engaging in Internet dating and marriages According to data compiled by Karachi-based sociologist
Arif Hasan, there were 10 to 15 applications for court marriages in Karachi in 1992, mainly applications from couples who were seeking the
protection of the court for wedlock without familial consent. By 2006,
it increased to more than 250 applications for court marriages per day in
Karachi. Significantly, more than half of the couples seeking court
recognition of their marriage came from rural areas of Sindh.
7. As early as 1998 when the last census was
held, researcher Reza Ali found that
Pakistan was almost half urban and half rural,
using a
more useful definitions of ‘urban’, and not the outdated
definition of the Census Organization which excludes the huge informal
settlements in the peri-urban areas of the cities which are very often
not part of the metropolitan areas.
8. A 2012 study of 22 nations conducted by Prof Miles Corak for the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) has found that upward economic mobility to be greater
in Pakistan than the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, China
and 5 other countries. The study's findings were presented by the author
in
testimony to the US Senate Finance Committee on July 6, 2012.
The above facts point to a powerful trend of increasing education and workforce participation of Pakistani women. It's these trends that the Pakistani Taliban see as a threat to the goal of imposing their dark tribal vision on an increasingly urban and middle class Pakistan. In their desperation, Taliban are now attacking soft targets like schoolgirls and polio workers. They are also going after right-wing politicians and media who have been sympathetic to the Taliban but don't entirely agree with them.
In my view, the medieval-minded Taliban are no match for the
powerful revolutionary social changes sweeping Pakistan today. They will be swept away as Pakistan becomes a prosperous and urban middle class nation with full participation of empowered women in all walks of life.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Pakistan's Lady Health Workers Best in the World
American CIA Sponsored Fake Vaccination Campaign
Violence Against Social Change in Pakistan
Silent Social Revolution in Pakistan
The Eclipse of Feudalism in Pakistan
Social and Structural Transformations in Pakistan
Malala Moment: Profiles in Courage-Not!
Urbanization in Pakistan Highest in South Asia
Rising Economic Mobility in Pakistan
Upwardly Mobile Pakistan
