Over the last two decades, Pakistan has seen major legislative changes in the areas of gender-based violence and harassment. The legislative changes are remarkable in the context of deep patriarchy and parochialism that permeates Pakistan’s society and culture.

The legal developments are the product of a combination of factors, not least of which is a strong women’s rights movement that has consistently demanded that the state act to protect and promote the rights of women.

A frequent refrain in political and social commentary in Pakistan is that these laws, while transformative on paper, have not translated to actual change in the lives of women and girls because of poor implementation. Widespread incidents of violence against women at the home, workplace and public places persist. Women and girls who approach state institutions, such as police and courts, in the hope of some accountability for violence, confront patriarchal attitudes and corruption and inefficiency of state actors, leading to deep frustration and retraumatisation. Online spaces, where misogynist targeting of women and girls is rampant, amplify their insecurities.

Historically, feminism in Pakistan has relied heavily on the power of the law to promote gender justice. For much of Pakistan’s history, feminists formed alliances with state actors and institutions to achieve their goals. This was, in part, due to the state’s receptivity to demands for progressive laws and policies to promote the status of women.

Gen Ziaul Haq’s decade of rule over Pakistan from 1977-88 was an aberration, with long-standing impact. Zia initiated sweeping changes to laws as part of his ‘Islamisation’ campaign, which led to the detention of women on accusations of adultery and fornication, promoted impunity for sexual violence and threatened to demote them to second-class citizens. A women’s rights movement grew in response to Zia’s policies and devoted many years fighting against his regressive changes.

From resisting Gen Ziaul Haq’s regressive Hudood laws to having progressive anti-harassment and domestic violence legislation enacted, the women’s rights movement in Pakistan has achieved much. But for countless women, the gulf between the laws on paper and the realities on the ground remains wide. Does the strategy for gender justice need a rethink? Eos presents, with permission, an excerpt from the book Progressive Laws in Patriarchal Societies: Lessons from Pakistan, published by Bloomsbury…

The passage of gender progressive laws in recent years marks a dramatic shift in the state’s attitude to women’s rights, compared to Zia’s rule. Years after the passage of some of the gender progressive laws, however, their effective implementation remains a distant goal. Legislatures and some mainstream political parties may have affirmed their faith in gender equality, but pushing state machinery to meaningfully activate legislation is proving to be an immensely difficult task.

Given the disjuncture between gender progressive laws on the one hand and the lived experiences of women and girls in Pakistan on the other, the following question should be investigated closely: what are the barriers to enforcement of gender-progressive laws and what can be done to eliminate or, at least, reduce the barriers?

This is a crucial question for the women’s rights movement in Pakistan, which has adopted reform of legal frameworks as one of its central aims. While the women’s right movement that grew from the activism against Zia’s rule has premised its work on the assumption that a liberal democratic state will help advance the goal of gender equality, the current scenario casts doubt on the effectiveness of state power, even with gender-progressive laws in place, to meet feminist goals.

Assessing the obstacles to implementation is important for women rights activists to understand not only how law reform can be made more meaningful, but also to determine the extent to which they should prioritise law reform advocacy in their work.

MAIN ACTORS DRIVING LAW REFORM

A key force behind the passage of laws was a women’s rights movement that gained strength over the decades, particularly during the 1980s and beyond. Women legislators in elected parliaments gained strength in numbers after reserved seats were reinstated in 2002 and supported the demands of women’s rights activists. Pronouncements by the judiciary on the state’s responsibility to prevent and punish gender-based violence gave impetus to advocacy for legislative change. These factors led to fertile ground for the enactment of gender-progressive legislation.

ACTIVISTS AND NGOS

Until the 1980s, women’s rights activism in Pakistan met with a degree of benign accommodation by the state. Following the imposition of discriminatory laws by Zia, women’s rights activists adopted a confrontational stance towards the state and challenged its promotion of patriarchy and its ‘Islamisation’ agenda.

Zia notoriously imposed ‘Islamisation’ on laws and policies, and a crucial pillar of his project was to undermine women’s freedom and autonomy. He openly stated that women’s role should be confined in the home or ‘chadar chaar divari’ [veil and four walls]. He made extensive changes to criminal laws through the Hudood Ordinances.

One piece of legislation, the Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance 1979, took rape provisions outside the Penal Code and placed them in purportedly Shariah-based laws that conflated rape with adultery, with the result that many women, including those who had in fact been raped, faced adultery trials that could lead to the death penalty. His government’s reforms to the Evidence Act 1872, to supposedly bring it in compliance with Shariah [Islamic law], stipulated that, in financial matters, a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s.

This change was perceived as state-sponsored discrimination against women and the imposition of second-class status. It was met with........

© Dawn (Magazines)