KARACHI: “The reality of Pakistan is that millions of women are still victims, and this is despite the fact that in our country women had the right to vote from the very start,” said former federal minister and Senator Javed Jabbar.

He was speaking during a dialogue on #WeSeeEqual organised by P&G Pakistan in collaboration with the UN Women Pakistan at a local hotel here on Wednesday.

The dialogue, aimed to spark conversations and motivate change and build a better world for all, brought together several enlightened minds to discuss challenges that prevent individuals from accelerating the progress of gender equality in the country.

“Patriarchy is a deep-rooted thing in society. To change it, you need a sustainable struggle. Set attitudes that men are superior to women require revolutionary change,” said Mr Jabbar.

He also said that women at 48 per cent were the single biggest minority in Pakistan. “Behind the two per cent imbalance there are irregular practices that need to be changed. Before birth, a pregnancy may not be carried through if the parents find out that it is a girl.

Then if she survives birth, there are other things going against her such as preference of feeding the males in the family first. She may not have access to health facilities. And then when all women here are not even issued with CNICs, there has to be the problem of underrepresented women. The femicide needs to be corrected,” he said.

Mountaineer Samina Baig, meanwhile, said that we should celebrate women every day. “Why just celebrate women on International Women’s Day? She deserves to be celebrated all the time and her achievements highlighted. But quite frankly, changing mindsets is more challenging than summiting mountains,” she said.

Fareeha Ummar, portfolio manager, Women’s Economic Empowerment and Sustainable Livelihood, UN Women Pakistan, said that the task of gender equality cannot be achieved single-handedly. “We need to join hands to bring change. The change, although slow, is coming though and no one will be able to stop it,” she said.

Sami Ahmed, vice president of P&G, said that gender equality was a big issue. “But what we can do is to collectively look into how to fix this issue,” he said while diverting the attention of the audience towards the number of women in the workforce in Pakistan, which amounts to some 25 per cent of the population. “Then the managerial and decision-making positions in the country amount to five per cent. And where 21 per cent of men in the workforce are independent entrepreneurs only one per cent of women are entrepreneurs,” he said.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2020