Published in The Guardian on May 29th 2014 On 27 May 2014, as Farzana Parveen lay dead on the uneven floor of the Lahore high court, it was not easy to ignore the blood-stained brick next to her. A chador she had worn that morning covered her crushed...
Published in Daily Times on June 8th 2014 Acid burned, honour killed and choked, the Pakistani women who make the headlines are literally out of a nightmare. Like Farzana Parveen who recently was murdered by her own family with bricks outside the Lahore High Court, there are...
Women’s status in Muslim societies creates a pulviscular cloud of religious discourse that surrounds it, but always results in shaking off the dusty image of an emancipated woman as a model. It is no surprise that Pakistan is making its women suffer so insidiously for being...
Published in Daily Times on April 14th 2014 Both Christine Lagarde, director of the International Monetary Fund and Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe believe there is one way of saving Japan from the slowing growth rate because of an aging population and shrinking labor force. That...
Fayyaz Ul Hassan Chohan from the party of our hopes, PTI went on television on March 13th 2014 and when asked to comment on polygamy answered by telling a ludicrous joke about a man and his two wives. These women bickered. They were first threatened...
When 2013 was ending, Obama effigies were burned in India, there were demonstrations by Indian Americans outside the New York consulate where Devyani Khobragade was deputy consul general for India and the Indian press was wild with accusation of racism by the Americans. Devyani Khobragade...
Pulished by Global Information Society Watch By Aisha Sarwari, Gul Bukhari and Shahzad Ahmad www.bytesforall.pk PAKISTAN Introduction This report seeks to provide a broad overview of the status of women’s rights in Pakistan, to identify unique areas peculiar to Pakistan, and to contextualise them in terms of the impact and...
Published in The Daily Times on February 16, 2014 By Aisha F. Sarwari The cure to the exploitation and oppression of women is more freedom for them, not less. The Taliban do not agree. In fact, women factor in the equation as the ones to be eliminated, purged,...
Published in The Express Tribune, December 12th, 2013. Underneath the fierce nationalism of some statesmen, a new narrative has emerged. It talks of the cultural repression of Muslim women, the drift towards bigotry and the wondrous architecture of buildings and language — this narrative says that...
Published in the Daily Times on October 29th 2013. Any exposition on the murder of Salmaan Taseer points to the fact that the Pakistani media was squarely responsible. Not just that, the pundits made a hero out of the killer. It’s déjà vu. In a ratings...