Being a woman in Pakistan

Geek

Chief Minister (5k+ posts)
It is not easy being a woman anywhere in the world but it is a tad more difficult being a woman in Pakistan. Last week, we saw two gang rape victims in headlines again for all the wrong reasons.

Mukhtaran Mai was reportedly threatened by a sitting MNA from treasury benches, Mr Jamshed Dasti, to settle the dispute outside the court and let go of the criminals who have been sentenced earlier.For starters, it was not a mere dispute. It was a heinous crime, perpetrated against a helpless woman. The criminals were awarded punishment after a long probe yet the parliamentarian justifies defending them by saying that the court awarding the punishment were pressurised by anti-Islamic lobbies. Forget taking any serious action, the sad reality is that although the MNA is in contempt of court, neither the government, nor the opposition parties issued condemnation against his threats to a victim who has been battling it out for eight long years against all odds.

Kainat Soomro, a minor who was gang raped three years ago, is still fighting her case in the court of law. Her older brother, who was fighting the legal battle with her and was abducted three month ago, was found dead a few days back. The murder clearly was a message from the culprits to Kainat Soomro and her family that they too will face a similar fate if they do not take back the case.

Crimes against women are not exclusive to Pakistan, what makes them more painful and inhumane is lack of judicial recourse for the victims. There are no systems and procedures in place where women can access justice without spending a lifetime and fortune in courts, facing a multitude of threats and social ostracisation.

Aqsa Parvez was a high school student in Toronto who was murdered by her father and brother for not wearing a headscarf in 2007. Similar crimes go unpunished in Pakistan but not in a country where rule of law exists for all its citizens, including underage girls. The prosecution was taken up by the state and Aqsas father Muhammad Parvez and her brother Waqas Parvez, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, were sentenced to life imprisonment, with no eligibility for parole until 2028.

Those who have seen Harry Potter films would be familiar with the character of Padma Patil, a witch at Hogwarts. The character was played by an actress of Pakistani origin Afshan Azad. A few weeks back, Afshan was beaten and throttled by her father and brother because she was heard talking on the phone with her Hindu boyfriend. Although they used violence against her, Afshan still loves her family and is pleading for violence charges to be dropped against her father and brother because she does not want them to go to jail. However the prosecution services in England takes these matters very seriously and intend to proceed with the case even if the victim retracts the statement.

Our penal code is inherited from the days of the Raj, if they can modernise the legal system and ensure that no pressure on the victims can retract criminal charges, so can we. If our laws had been friendlier to the victims, Kainats brother may still be alive. If we had sent better people to the assemblies and not people who openly flout the law and threaten rape victims, we may have been able to come up with better legislation. If we had better legislation, we may have made an example out of some criminals like Canadian courts did with Aqsa Parvezs father and brother. If only.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/26052/being-a-woman-in-pakistan/
 

rahat

Senator (1k+ posts)
It is all due to the non existance of a system based on orders of Allah given in Quran. The survival of the whole mankind including women is on the followings and implementing Quran on the earth. Otherwise we will face hardship in this life and life after death
 

desicad

Chief Minister (5k+ posts)
I commend you for posting these articles. Women have been at the receiving end whether in India or Pakistan and they deserve equal place and dignity in the society.
I don't quite agree with the author when she says that 'I don't believe men and women are created equal........' (article 2, para 3).
Both men and women are created equal, but unique. It is not the biological strength, but one's place in society and how one is treated which should be the criteria for equality.

Here is a nice little piece (Anya arrives), I got the link from responses to one of the articles.

ANYA ARRIVES…
By Sami Shah

I can never be a woman.

Not that I plan on, lets just make that clear right now. This isn’t going be a post about my attempting to push my danglies between my legs and dress up in a skirt, so go fill your Trannie fetish somewhere else. Just making a point that has been brought home to me in the last few days. Being a woman requires far more patience, strength and resilience than I am capable of.

My wife went through close to 10 hours of labor on Friday and gave birth to a a devastatingly beautiful little girl. Then, just seconds after the doctor placed my daughter on her chest, my wife turned to me and said, “I’ve already forgotten about the pain I just went through.”

My daughter, Anya Shah, entered our atmosphere at 5:27 pm, on Friday the 8th of May. She is healthy, beautiful and making me more and more aware of how weak I am. Every time I look at her I go through the same cliched feelings of joy and surrender that I knew I would. That she is the gravitational center of my universe is of no surprise to anyone. That my wife can give birth and then do a 100 push ups while arm wrestling a Rhino is of no surprise to me.

What frightens me is how pathetic I seem in comparison.

Women like to joke about how if Men had to give birth the world’s resources would have been devoted to making it a painless and effortless procedure. It’s true though. Because if I had to go through what my wife just did I’d give up all of Pakistan’s secrets and throw in the Enigma code as well. Before the first contraction ended, even.

And now I look at my daughter, and I look at the world around me and hope she has her mother’s strength. Because mine would fail her in this wretched country. Pakistan as it is, has been and probably will remain, is a horrible place to be a woman. It’s misogynistic, oppressive and sadistic to women. And the whole ****ing country uses the bullshit excuse of “God made me do it!” to justify itself. We are like a Psychopath who just refashioned his family into a new set of lampshades and then blames his actions on God speaking to him.

In Pakistan, a woman is stared at, harassed, belittled, abused, neglected, tortured and throughout it all blamed for everything that is happening to her. If I had to go through any of that, ever, I would suffer a series of psychotic breakdowns and either end up being arrested for driving my car over anyone with a penis who came in my way, or give up and sit in a corner curled up in a fetal position.

Yet my wife continues. She laughs and tells jokes and sings songs and makes things and brings Life into this world. And now my Anya will face the same challenges and same stupid stupid bigotry. And all I can pray for is that she has her mother’s strength. Because her father was too weak to even make this world a better place for her to come into.

Thank you, Anya. You have made me want to be stronger.

http://samishah.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/anya-arrives/
 

rolnrol

MPA (400+ posts)
How about being a woman in india

Abortion of female fetuses a 'national shame,' India's lost daughters: Abortion toll in millions
NEW DELHI — As many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a fetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female fetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives. In China, where a one-child policy is strictly enforced, prenatal sex selection has resulted in an estimated 40 million bachelors.
"We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly," Dr. Prabhat Jha, a public health professor at the University of Toronto, who headed the research team, said in a statement. "If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable."
The preference for sons has distorted the gender ratio throughout India.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/09/world/asia/09iht-india.html


How about being a woman in america

AMERICAN RAPE STATISTICS


Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
In 1995, 354,670 women were the victims of a rape or sexual assault. (NationalCrime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1996.)
Over the last two years, more than 787,000 women were the victim of a rape or sexual assault. (National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S.Department of Justice, 1996.)
The FBI estimates that 72 of every 100,000 females in the United States wereraped last year. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Statistics, 1996.)
SILENT VICTIMS :
One of the most startling aspects of sex crimes is how many go unreported. The most common reasons given by women for not reporting these crimes are the belief that it is a private or personal matter and the fear of reprisal from the assailant.
Approximately 28% of victims are raped by husbands or boyfriends, 35% by acquaintances, and 5% by other relatives. (Violence against Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994)
The FBI estimates that only 37% of all rapes are reported to the police. U.S. Justice Department statistics are even lower, with only 26% of all rapes or attempted rapes being reported to law enforcement officials.
In 1994-1995, only 251,560 rapes and sexual assaults were reported to law enforcement officials -- less than one in every three. (National Crime Victimization Survey, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1996.)
An overwhelming majority of rape service agencies believe that public education about rape, and expanded counseling and advocacy services for rape victims, would be effective in increasing the willingness of victims to report rapes to the police. (Rape in America, 1992, National Victim Center with Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center.)
LIVING IN FEAR :
According to the U.S. Department of Justice: (All statistics are taken from: Violenceagainst Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994.)
One of every four rapes take place in a public area or in a parking garage.
31% of female victims reported that the offender was a stranger.
68% of rapes occur between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
At least 45% of rapists were under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
In 29% of rapes, the offender used a weapon.
In 47% of rapes, the victim sustained injuries other than rape injuries.
75% of female rape victims require medical care after the attack.
NOT JUST A FAMILY MATTER :
Family violence and abuse are among the most prevalent forms of interpersonal violence against women and young children -- both boys and girls. The sexual abuse of a child should never be "just a family matter," but many children are afraid to report an incident to the police because the abusers are too often a family friend or relative.
Approximately one-third of all juvenile victims of sexual abuse cases are children younger than 6 years of age. (Violence and the Family, Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, 1996.)
According to the Justice Department, one in two rape victims are under age 18; one in six are under age 12. (Child Rape Victims, 1992. U.S. Department of Justice.)
FACE OF AMERICA :
About 81% of rape victims are white; 18% are black; 1% are of other races. (Violence against Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994.)
About half of all rape victims are in the lowest third of income distribution; half are in the upper two-thirds. (Violence against Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994.)
There were 71 forcible rapes per 100,000 females reported to United States law enforcement agencies in 1996. 2
Data from the National Women's Study, a longitudinal telephone survey of a national household probability sample of women at least 18 years of age, show 683,000 women forcibly raped each year and that 84% of rape victims did not report the offense to the police.3
Using Uniform Crime Report data for 1994 and 1995, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that of rape victims who reported the offense to law enforcement, about 40% were under the age of 18, and 15% were younger than 12.4
In a national survey 27.7% of college women reported a sexual experience since the age of fourteen that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape, and 7.7% of college men reported perpetrating aggressive behavior which met the legal definition of rape.5
The National Crime Victimization Survey indicates that for 1992-1993, 92% of rapes were committed by known assailants.1 About half of all rapes and sexual assaults against women are committed by friends and acquaintances, and 26% are by intimate partners.1
Risk factors for perpetrating sexual violence include: early sexual experience (both forced and voluntary),6 adherence by men to sex role stereotyping,7,8 negative attitudes of men towards women,6,9,,10,11,12, alcohol consumption,8,13 acceptance of rape myths by men.8,9,12,14,15
Non-forceful verbal resistance and lack of resistance are associated with rape completion.1,6
The adult pregnancy rate associated with rape is estimated to be 4.7%. This information, in conjunction with estimates based on the U.S. Census, suggest that there may be 32,101 annual rape-related pregnancies among American women over the age of 18.17
Non-genital physical injuries occur in approximately 40% of completed rape cases.18 As many as 3% of all rape cases have non-genital injuries requiring overnight hospitalization.19
Victims of rape often manifest long-term symptoms of chronic headaches,18,20fatigue20, sleep disturbance20, recurrent nausea,20 decreased appetite,21 eating disorders,22 menstrual pain,18 sexual dysfunction,23 and suicide attempts.21 In a longitudinal study, sexual assault was found to increase the odds of substance abuse by a factor of 2.5.24
Estimates of the occurrence of sexually transmitted diseases resulting from rape range from 3.6% to 30%.18,22 HIV transmission risk rate from rape is estimated at 1 in 500,22,25 although a few probable cases have been documented in Sweden and Great Britain. 26,27
Victims of marital or date rape are 11 times more likely to be clinically depressed, and 6 times more likely to experience social phobia than are non-victims. Psychological problems are still evident in cases as long as 15 years after the assault.28
Fatalities occur in about 0.1% of all rape cases.29,30
A study examining the use of health services over a five year period by female members of a health maintenance program found that the number of visits to physicians by rape victims increased 56% in the year following the crime, compared to a 2% utilization increase by non-victims.31 The National Public Services Research Institute estimates the lifetime cost for each rape with physical injuries which occurred in 1987 to be $60,000.32
http://www.paralumun.com/issuesrapestats.htm
 

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