PAKISTAN: Involvement in Security Work Boosts Women’s Image

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nadeem Iqbal

ISLAMABAD, Jan 27 2003 (IPS) - Two moves by the Pakistani government to improve women’s involvement in police and sensitive security work are helping make some inroads into this patriarchial society and raising hopes of renewed efforts to bridge gender gaps.

The strength of women police officers in the capital Islamabad has now increased to 70, after the government last month induced 25 commandos into the police force. These commandos are assigned duties to protect sensitive government offices from terrorist attacks.

Similarly, in December, 67 female air guards finished a six-month unarmed combat course on how to handle and overpower hijackers.

The women’s induction as air marshals started soon after the Sep. 11 attacks in the United States, when nine women broke the gender barrier by being involved and trained amid heightened security concerns in Pakistan, which sided with the United States after those attacks.

These steps are small ones in women’s long-time campaign for rights in this country.

Rights activists say that while many problems remain, the greater and high-profile involvement by women in law enforcement may go a long way in reinforcing their perceptions as strong human beings, in contrast to the image of women as weak and frail vulnerable to victimisation

Farzana Bari, director of the Centre for Women Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University, says that this ”in the context of power is a big move”, but that merely inducting women into the police will not change a culture that discriminates against women.

”Lady police officials might not be harassed in society, but she must be intimidated at the work place,” she adds. ”But," she continues, "one positive thing is that a woman police officer could be sensitive on gender issues. This augurs well for women’s empowerment in the society”.

For the police force itself, the December inductions are in stark contrast to the shallow involvement of women in security work previously.

For instance, in 1994 the government started inducing women into the police force with the aim of seeing more of them in the predominantly male police force, and seeing them in each of around 100 districts in the country.

But the plan was not fully carried out. The women who did join ended up just accompanying their male colleagues in raiding homes or controlling public protests by women in this mainly Islamic country.

Women make up nearly 48 percent of Pakistan’s 142 million people, but the gender gap with men can be seen from indicators such as literacy rates. While 33 percent of the female population is literate, 57 percent of men are.

The women employment ratio is quite negligible at only 5.52 percent and most of this is concentrated in what is considered acceptable or women – the teaching and medical professions. Similarly, the percentage of women lawyers does not exceed 1.2 percent.

Yet Pakistan has undertaken the legal commitments required of it on women’s rights. Pakistan ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1996.

Two years later, it prepared a national plan of action to enhance women’s role in power and decision-making, from family and community, to politics, public life and sharing work and parental responsibilities.

The percentage of women councillors/lawmakers in around 100 districts is 33 percent, while in the national and four provincial assemblies it is between 20 to 22 percent.

”Enhancing women role in power politics is a good concept but it is still not backed by any proper groundwork,” said Helena Saeed, a police superintendent who heads the traffic police department of Islamabad.

She says that women in public service, for instance the police force, have to juggle work and home like millions of other women, and deserve some kind of social support for empowerment to be genuine and meaningful.

”Employed women have to do double jobs of raising the family and also going to office. I know many female bureaucrats, who have decided to remain unmarried,” she said.

Some, Saeed say, do longer hours of duty because of the greater need for women officers to deal with cases of rape and abuse – and do so at the cost of time that would otherwise have been devoted to their families.

Zahida Parveen, a police inspector who has been in the service for 25 years, says that most of the calls they receive are from homemakers who ask for lady inspectors to be sent – but there are not enough women officers around.

”No doubt, there is a need to raise a special women’s force to investigate cases of rape and incest, for instance. Although now women officials have also started investigating these cases, their number is not enough,” she pointed out.

Zahida says that meantime, her workload means she has to live with her parents in order to raise her three children. There are few day care centres and they are often concentrated in the elite segments of Pakistan’s three major cities only.