Voices From The Dark: What They Won’t Tell You. Life For A Woman In Pakistan

The life of a woman in Pakistan varies depending on the type of family she is born into. In a country of over 88 million women, no matter how a woman is born she faces these common things that many of us as women face around the world. Overall, improvements in women’s rights are spreading through Pakistan and an increasing number of Pakistani women are educated and literate, however they are still faced with issues. Violence, sexual abuse, oppression are just some of the things that she faces along with many other women globally. As women, we are a long way from equality and even further from basic human rights. No matter how she’s raised we as women want the basic human rights to education, career empowerment, success and we all want our voices to be heard, we want to pursue a career and make a difference in our communities, to name a few.

As A Woman, She Doesn’t Have The Support Of Her Mother, Because She Resents Her For Being Born A Female.

Before a woman is even born, her mother deals with the stress and pressure from her husband and family members to have a male child. There is an underlying tension created for a girl child before she is even born into a world that doesn’t welcome female children. When a female child is born in Pakistan, in many cases it’s considered bad luck to the mother of that child.  She grows up feeling that her life is a burden to her family and that her only worth is to be a wife or subservient to males in her family.  Her creativity slowly dies early as a young girl because she knows that she’s treated differently than her brothers. She can’t live in a world where she is able to dream and have goals for herself, so she slowly dies inside.  This is something that she faces every day as she watches her male cousins and brothers get ahead of her, knowing that she is just as talented and smart as them. 

Why is it fair that her brother gets a better education than her? 

By grade six, 59 percent of girls are out of school, versus 49 percent of boys. Only 13 percent of girls are still in school by ninth grade. Both boys and girls are missing out on education in unacceptable numbers, but girls are worst affected via hrw.org.

She is a girl with dreams but every single dream of hers is dormant, so she feels like a walking corpse who is not allowed to do anything her heart desires. Every day she sees where her brother is getting a better quality education but she is only polishing his shoes and washing his clothes for school. She watches her brother as he grows up and has prestige in society, she watches him become an officer, but inside she is still being treated like a slave. Across all provinces generation after generation of children, especially girls, are locked out of education which leads to a life of poverty. 

Her job in life is to get married and live in a life of silence. 

21% of girls in Pakistan are married before their 18th birthday and 3% are married before the age of 15. She marries into his family and has to live in silence every day, bearing 4-5 kids minimum. As a woman, she has no voice-over her body, her career, her life.  She is uneducated, she has children constantly pulling at her and yet she still has strength. She has no education, no access to money, therefore she can’t afford things such as birth control for her body. She’s constantly getting pregnant and becoming more of a burden on her husband who gets angry at her for having such a large family.  She then lives a life of abuse. Pakistan has 53% of women and the rest of men but only 13% of women are working and they are also constantly getting harassed by the men in their offices or any other workplace. This is an issue that isn’t going to go away and it’s something that holds women back from pursuing careers.  

As a woman living in Pakistan, sometimes the odds are against you before you are even born.   

The men in Pakistan who don’t allow their baby girls to study argue that it is not allowed in Islam or Islam says that women should have to be at a safe place like home not to go out and interact with men’s but not like this, in reality, Islam is a religion of equality and Islam totally says to educate women. Women in Pakistan don’t have access to the same level of education as the males in her country. She is taught from a young age that her main duty in life is to be a housewife.  Studies have shown that when you educate a woman, you educate her whole family. 

Women everywhere don’t have equal freedom to live the lives they want to live due to traditions, they are forced to live in a religion of equality as the historic women of Islam were also businesswomen.  

Here is a list of Powerful Women from Pakistan: 

Jehan Ara is a powerhouse of social justice and empowerment for women, within the IT community.

Nabila Maqsood. Nabila Maqsood is a prominent figure in the beauty industry of Pakistan.

Kalsoom is the Founder/CEO of Invest2Innovate, which aims to support and unleash the potential of young entrepreneurs in growth markets like Pakistan.

Roshaneh Zafar is a development activist in Pakistan, working in the field of women’s economic empowerment. She set up the first specialized microfinance organization in Pakistan, the Kashf Foundation.

If these amazing women could do it, there is hope for other women. It starts by brining light to this issue on a global level. We as women should ask ourselves what are we doing to ensure no woman has to deal with the basic human rights. 

What can we do to change this as women everywhere? Join our new network and let’s get the conversation started. 

It’s time we start talking about these issues and figure out a way to make a difference for women everywhere.