Munir Akram, the Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations, is being criticized on social media for his discussion regarding women in Pashtun society in the international organization.
Munir Akram was addressing a meeting on human rights in neighboring Afghanistan at the United Nations Office for Human Rights, in which he said that restrictions on women in Afghanistan have less to do with the Taliban and religion and more to do with Pashtun traditions. Is
Explaining the reason for this, he further said that according to Pashtun traditions, women in Pashtun society are encouraged to stay within the four walls of their homes.
Munir Akram said: ‘These are Pashtun traditions that have been going on for thousands of years, and it will take a long time to change the situation of women. We have seen in the last several years that diplomatic efforts have not been effective in this regard.
Miner Akram faced severe criticism on social media for expressing such views about Pashtun society, for which he apologized through a tweet yesterday, explaining that he meant to hurt Pashtun women. It wasn’t at all.
In the context of this statement, we talked to some cultural experts and tried to know whether confining women to homes is really a part of Pakhtun traditions.
Dr. Qaisar Khan is a professor in the Department of English and Linguistics at Malakand University, and has written several research papers on the role of women in Pashtun society.
Speaking to Independent Urdu, he said that two different things are usually confused.
‘One is gender segregation and the other is restrictions on women, which is actually associated with power.’
He explained that in the Pashtun society, due to physical strength, men worked outside and women in the home. ‘But there are many places, especially farms, where men and women work together.
In their view, this shows that gender segregation and restrictions are two separate things. ‘That is, the common perception in our society is that men’s and women’s workspaces are separate.’
According to Dr. Qaiser, it would be wrong to look at the society here with a western lens. ‘Because our society is different from western societies, we consider two women to be equal, but their working methods are different and this is called gender segregation.’
He added that after the rise of the culture of feminism during the last few decades, many experts began to see the Pashtun society through the lens of the West, adding to the problems.
He said: ‘Western culture and values are different, while our very different and Western values will be difficult to apply here, because our lifestyle, dress, food and many other things are completely different from the West.
Dr. Qaiser Pakhtun pointed to the changes in the society and said that now women are working in different fields, but the effort is to provide a separate workspace for them.
He emphasized: ‘So there is no prohibition in it.’
He said that by making the culture and values of a society the standard, another culture is not considered good or bad, but the permanence of culture and resistance to change make it bad.
“Pashtun culture is not like that at all, but it has always been changing with time.”
He said: ‘The tradition of killing in the name of honor exists in many other nations of Pakistan apart from Pashtuns, but its popularity is decreasing. ‘And now most cases of honor killings are taken to court, and people seek justice from the court instead of revenge.’
Dr. Muhammad Sohail, professor of education at Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, expressed regret at the Pakistani ambassador’s justification of restrictions on women’s education in Afghanistan before the United Nations.
Dr. Sohail questioned whether women in Afghanistan were not getting an education before the Taliban regime, and were not working in music, education and other fields.
He said: ‘Pashtun women never sit at home, but there is a history of Pashtun women writers in the 10th and 13th centuries, who both taught and wrote.’
Dr. Sohail said women have a long list of jobs to do alongside men, including working in the fields, fetching water from wells and many others.
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He pointed out that lakhs of girls are getting education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the literacy rate of Pachis here has reached 42%. ‘Isn’t this Pashtun culture here?’
The doctor said that the distinction between boys and girls has disappeared in the Pakhtun society and thousands of Pakhtun girls have gone to study in different countries including Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
The stance of women’s rights activists
Aurat Foundation is a non-governmental organization working on women’s rights in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including Pakistan, for the past four decades.
Saima Munir, program manager of Aurat Foundation, while talking to Independent Urdu, said: ‘I have a question for the delegate of Pakistan, who is he representing in the United Nations, Pakistan or the Taliban?’
He said that why the ambassador is expressing his limited experience, knowledge and specific mindset by using the name of Taliban which is very inappropriate.
Saima Munir said: ‘Pakistan’s ambassadors want to show their progressive face to the United Nations due to economic constraints, but we all know that under the mask of this progressive face, there is a patriarchal mindset, which still affects women today. And she takes pride in keeping the girls at home and taking care of them and in whose eyes woman and girl are one sex.’
Dr. Qaiser’s paper published in the National University of Modern Languages journal ‘Critical Inquiry’ examines the role of women in Pashto folklore.
In this research paper, in the discussion on gender segregation and restrictions on women, it is mentioned how women are tried to be seen as different from men by giving them a special role.
Forty-five stories have been taken for the analysis of the research paper, and in these stories, according to the paper, 63% of the characters are male while only 30% are female.
In the same stories, men are depicted as more powerful and outside the home, while women are relatively weak and confined to the home.
However, according to Dr. Qaiser, this phenomenon is not limited to the Pashtun society, but this trend is also found in other societies of Pakistan.
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2024-05-30 14:02:59