LAHORE: The panelists in a session of the Lahore Literary Festival titled ‘An Abundance of Wild Roses’ emphasised the need for societal change to ensure women could move freely and safely, advocating for a collective effort to challenge the status quo and empower women everywhere.

Activist and writer Feryal Ali Gauhar, Rhonda Gossen, author of The Twelfth of February, Lucie Azema, journalist and author of Women Are Also On The Journey, and Sofka Zinovieff, writer and host of podcast Athens Unpacked, were panelists, while Mahwish Ahmed moderated the session.

Ms Ahmed said the society led by males told the women that they had allowed them to go to school, market and any other place and questioned why a woman needed permission from anyone to move anywhere.? She said society did not treat women equal anywhere in the world. She said that a sense of fear always grips a woman if she is walking alone on a track and hears footsteps behind her. Women have to look back and this fear did not go away whether you are in Pakistan or anywhere in the world, she added.

Narrating an incident, she said that she and her four other friends were going somewhere on a train when a man approached their compartment and started staring at her. When she told this to her female friend, she questioned the male, who started looking elsewhere and later left the train on the next stop.

She said that whenever someone starts staring at them, women should question him. She said she used to lack the confidence to question if a man would stare. It becomes a routine for women that men stare at them, but it is a form of harassment and should be questioned, she added.

Ms Gauhar said she was part of the protest held against Zia regime for bringing constitutional amendments against women, during which women and late poet Hibib Jalib were tortured by policemen. Some women were also arrested, but no one was sent to jail as they were presented before a military court under police remand and later put in jail.She said she was married in a Pukhtoon Syed family and protested against bride money, while the other women in her in-laws were agitated by her protest. “Now the women in my in-laws accept that bride money is inhuman.”

Sofka Zinovieff said she had written a book on women’s issues in the context of the Me-Too campaign and she got calls and messages from many women who said it’s their story. She said many of them lodged harassment complaints after reading her book.

She said that even a male teacher had written to her that he read her book and lodged a complaint against his teacher for abusing him during his teenage.

Lucie Azema also discussed safety of women and said statistics show that every country is the same when it comes to women’s security. “The most dangerous place for women is the home where she was beaten, tortured and even killed,” she regretted.

Rhonda Gossen praised the female activism in Pakistan where a woman became the prime minister of the country and women parliamentarians were opposing the legislation against them and also support pro-women legislation.

She said Pakistani women were enjoying liberty in the 90s, but after the Taliban started attacking Pakistan, the women faced restrictions, lamenting that anti-women sentiments were on the rise in Pakistan and pushing the country backwards.

She said the security situation in the country had a big impact on development and women’s rights. She said in the areas bordering Afghanistan and Balochistan, incidence of gender-based violence is high.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2025