“Women’s Day!” my very nice, very Pakistani male friend snorts. “Why in the world do you need a Women’s Day? Every day is women’s day in this country.”

Oh really? I already know what’s going to follow but he’s on a roll and there’s no stopping him; might as well just sit back and listen.

“Women here never have to stand in queue; men will always let them move to the front. They don’t have to work unless they want to; they know their husband will support them. And if they do work they get special allowances for being women….they have the best of both worlds.”

Really? Well, perhaps we do. On paper it sure looks good, doesn’t it? Urban Pakistani women have degrees, careers, opportunities and independence. They have more choices than they ever had before and what’s more, they got so far without ever having to stand in a queue. So why is it that the only thing I can think of is a scene from an Indian movie I watched recently?

The hero, a doctor working in England, has come home to find the perfect Indian bride. His brother tells him, “Amma nay larkiyon ki line laga di hai; boni Kaanpur say hogi.” (Mom has lined up a number of girls, we’ll start from Kaanpur). The key word here is ‘boni’ — literally the first item to be purchased (or in this case, examined and rejected) when on a shopping expedition.

The scenario is a familiar one for any woman who has been part of the rishta line-up; you know, those horse and cattle shows enacted in almost every drawing room in the country at some point or another where the cattle – sorry, girl – is shown off in the hope that she’ll make the cut. Sometimes she does; sometimes (rather seldom, though) she rejects the boy. But more often than not, the point of approval doesn’t even arise, because, guess what? This was just a preliminary outing undertaken with a view to shortlist the candidates. Mom and sis are out ‘window-shopping’ so to speak, so they can take their darling boy to see just the selected candidates when he arrives. We may not let our women stand in queue to pay their utility bills, but obviously we don’t mind lining them up for inspection.

Oh yes. As my friend says, in Pakistan, every day is women’s day! The day she’s born and people announce in a hushed voice ‘phir beti hui hai’ – it is women’s day. The day she steps out of the house and a million eyes follow her down the road – it is women’s day. The day she brings out the tea trolley and sits in front of a group of strangers who judge her by her looks, her complexion and the amount of dowry she might bring …you guessed it, it is women’s day.

“But, men reject women in the West as well,” says my friend, who believes every action can be justified as long as it can be compared favourably to ‘the West.’ It’s the same mentality that prompted a sports coach to say “by the grace of Allah, Pakistan came in at 11^th position” (he was talking about a 12-team tournament and the only grace involved was that India was placed 12^th). But that’s the way we are; as long as we bare ahead of India we’ve as good as won; as long as we can compare ourselves favourably with the West, we’re morally vindicated. But I digress.

“At least here people come to see girls in the privacy of their homes; out there (the big, bad West, of course) they ogle women on the street. Women get respect here,” my friend adds sanctimoniously.

Aah, yes, respect. In the Land of the Pure it is perfectly respectful to ogle a woman because any woman who is ogled has only herself to blame — for not covering her head, for not covering her face, for simply being born a woman. Because in this country, men are taught to respect mothers and sisters – any woman who is neither their mother nor their sister (which means about 99.9 per cent of the female population), is fair game. Especially, if she’s rolling in the tea trolley.

It brings to mind a friend of mine who recently moved back here from the States because her parents want her to ‘settle down.’ A highly-educated woman, she has all the right letters in front of her name except the most essential, MRS – a fact which reduces her to the status of just another trolley-rolling maiden standing in the line-up. Talking about her experience she said just one thing: “When I moved back to Pakistan I knew I would be giving up a lot of things; I didn’t realise the biggest would be my dignity.”

Happy International Women’s Day, everyone.

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