ON the day I sat down to write this piece about a PTI leader’s objection to a woman’s clothing, this paper’s front page carried a photograph of doctors at Ganga Ram hospital protesting the administration’s attempts to bury the alleged rape of a five-year-old girl. A member of the janitorial staff in Lahore has been arrested. According to the hospital’s medical superintendent, the janitor “touched” the girl at 2am and was apprehended after she made a lot of noise. Young doctors, however, tell a different story of the girl’s screams during the assault which alerted patients’ attendants who helped nab the alleged rapist.

I wonder what the five-year-old girl was wearing as she slept with her mother in the hospital before she was attacked. I wonder what the mother was wearing.

A woman’s clothes are responsible for all ills in society — she will be molested or raped or killed whether she is in aam shalwar kameez or covered head to toe or in a shroud in her grave. Her body is up for grabs the moment she steps out of her home, for whatever reason — to study, work, buy groceries etc. A woman’s body is the topic of conversation whether she is being stripped of her right to wear the hijab in one country or forced into wearing one in another.

No man should police a woman’s body.

I bring up clothing because of PTI lawmaker Iqbal Afridi’s recent comments about the “inappropriate” clothing worn by a woman executive at a power division’s committee hearing. After the high-level executive gave her presentation and left the room, Afridi said she should not have attended the meeting in such an outfit and suggested devising a standard operating procedure for women’s clothing.

My first thought was to wonder what she could have possibly worn to this meeting until I stopped myself. It isn’t about what she was or wasn’t wearing. No man should police a woman’s body. When he does so, he dehumanises her and allows others to disrespect her too. Men fault women for their clothing which arms the ‘she was asking for it’ brigade. This is simply wrong.

Yet here we are.

Incidentally, the chair of the committee apologised for the incident but to my knowledge so far, Afridi hasn’t. Neither has anyone from the party, including its women supporters, distanced themselves from his inappropriate remark.

This partisanship is a real hurdle to progress in society. While elected representatives have come together to pass laws against sexual crimes, it is not enough. As this paper noted some months ago, “over 80 per cent of suspected sex offenders in the country are acquitted because of deficient investigation, weak prosecution, out-of-court settlements and pending cases in the lower courts.”

Men just get away with things here.

Data about women in this country make for a depressing read. Pakistan was ranked 145th out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Gender Gap Index, a drop from 142 in the previous year. At least 10,201 cases of violence against women were registered last year, according to a report in this paper in March. This was up by 14.5pc from the previous year.

Lawmakers’ statements matter more against this backdrop. Men have policed women since forever but when they prioritise it over intelligence, skills and competence, it becomes problematic. Men cannot decide what is appropriate for women to wear and women must stand up to such bullies.

Perhaps a great example of challenging the policers came in April when YouTuber Shaila Khan shut down her interviewee who said the problem in the country was that women had strayed from Islamic values and then he placed a dupatta on her. She immediately removed it and asked “why does your version of Islam begin and end with a dupatta” before schooling him further on disrespecting her space, touching her without her permission and rejecting him calling her his sister. The best bit was when another woman spoke up in her support, saying Shaila had the right to dress as she wanted. This was a great example of how even one person’s support gives a woman courage and conviction knowing she is not alone.

Oh to see any collective action in parliament, where many women’s clothing or appearance have also been the subject of censure or ridicule. Imagine if women parliamentarians ignored party positions and came together to say we will not work until this rapist is held accountable, this harasser is arrested for his crime, this man is held accountable for promoting rape culture and so forth. But women leaders seem to enforce patriarchal values in parliament, perhaps because they don’t want to upset leadership and lose their seats. This is most disappointing. The five-year-old girl deserves more than our sympathy. She must know she has advocates beyond young doctors who want to do right by her.

The writer is an instructor of journalism.
X: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2024