A comprehensive report recapping developments in the Pakistani cyberspace in 2018 was launched at a hotel in Karachi on Friday, with the findings of the report pointing to a number of downward trends in the local digital sphere including challenges to internet access, greater state...
LAHORE: Speakers at a seminar said social media trolls are busy discrediting and putting women down, and acknowledged vulnerability of all others owing to lack of online protection. “Truth filters should be placed on social media,” suggested columnist and author Aisha Sarwari while...
Hours before her wedding ceremony, Aisha Sarwari, then a recent graduate of an American university, was called into a room full of men: her brother, her uncle, a marriage registrar and her fiancé. The registrar asked three times if she consented to marry the groom. She said yes....
Most of this month, Pakistan, its legislators, media pundits, policymakers and intellectuals are in feisty debates surrounding cookies, helicopter per km rates and the banning of cheese imports to Pakistan. I would like to insist that this is a great strategy that works in favor of...
I was invited to speak at an event in a 5-star hotel on the inclusivity of women in public space. My co-panelist was a disability rights activist, a young woman in an electric wheelchair. When she arrived to speak she had to be lifted by four able-bodied men onto a ramp-less stage in...
I thought I had seen it all in my decade-long work on gender equity in Pakistan. Then I was asked to be the lead communications consultant in the USAID Pathways to Success program for the KP province. It is only now, that I really feel like I have seen it all. I have a cache of young...
Last month Pakistan held its largest women’s march – a collective feminist movement to bring women’s status closer to a human being and less close to a pet. Since then, there have been even more strides in the civil society – our films contain more feminist themes and our girls come out...
Ramadan of 2018 came to a close two weeks ago and this holy month reminded me of a tragedy—a wholly preventable one—that took place during Ramadan of 2015. Three years ago about 1,000 Pakistanis died during Ramadan. They died because piety was thrust upon these impoverished day-wage...
Schools are not places to develop learning outcomes in Pakistan. Rather, they are political tools. There is graft during teacher induction, neglect during knowledge transfer; pedagogical understanding is non-existent and a whole lot of misspending happens by the provincial governments....
When the sun rises on the 2018 International Women’s Day, Pakistan would do well to bow her head in shame. Politicians, populists, policymakers, development consultants and the financial sectors have all collectively and individually erased women in the country – diminished them to the...
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