Dawn Editorial 8 March 2021

A celebration of women

WE now know that the pandemic is no ‘great equaliser’. The repercussions of the contagion on livelihoods, mental health, education, etc have been far more pronounced for females across the globe, but especially so in developing countries.
During the past year, far more women lost their jobs when the economy contracted due to shutdowns; female students found themselves being forced to prioritise household duties over online classes; and rates of domestic violence shot up with victim and perpetrator isolated in close quarters with each other for extended periods of time.
Today, March 8 — International Women’s Day — women of the world, and their allies across the gender divide, stand in solidarity with each other and declare loudly and firmly: the status quo cannot endure.
The Aurat March, which is a definitive marker of International Women’s Day celebrations in this country, has evolved into an inclusive platform for marginalised voices resisting the status quo. Transpeople, Baloch women whose loved ones have been forcibly disappeared, internally displaced women, women from urban centres and rural areas, all come together to draw strength from each other and from the inspirational battles that many of them have fought, and create networks for collective action.
Each year, the march manages to ‘provoke’ the gatekeepers of ‘honour’ and ‘culture’— both notions often used to control women’s behaviour and deprive them of agency and autonomy. This time around, appropriately enough, the Aurat March is titled ‘Patriarchy ka Pandemic’, and its charter of demands largely focuses on access to healthcare as a right. One of the demands is for “massive state investment in rehabilitative programmes to manage the long-term effects” of gender-based violence on victims. Another urges the government to make public a plan to address “Covid-19-specific challenges faced by women and gender minorities”. The charter also calls for sexual harassment committees to be set up in all medical facilities to create a safe working environment.
The women’s movement has come a long way from the years of Gen Ziaul Haq, the military dictator whose regressive laws sparked a gender rights struggle as had never been seen before in this country. The pro-women legislation that has come about in recent years is the fruit of all those years of advocacy, of grassroots awareness-raising, of standing ground against character assassination and state-sanctioned violence, and of simply refusing to acquiesce to a patently unjust system.
It is time to reflect on what can be done so that women-friendly laws can better achieve their purpose, and how the environment can be made more conducive to that end. Having legislation is critical but it is one half of the battle. To bring about societal change, the minds of men — and the many women who have internalised misogynistic double standards — must become capable of reimagining a woman’s role.

 

 

Loss-making SOEs

THE government has chosen 84 out of a total of 212 state-owned enterprises for privatisation, liquidation or retention in the public sector to meet a structural benchmark of the IMF as it moves towards revival of the suspended $6bn loan programme. A bill is also being drafted to improve their governance and help the government strengthen their oversight. Under the agreement with the IMF, the PTI administration had pledged to initiate restructuring and privatisation of SOEs, and strengthen their monitoring for increasing transparency through a legal framework. But it has not done much until now. Given the continuing losses of these companies and their financial burden on the budget, it is encouraging to see the government finally coming up with a plan to deal with them after two and half years of being in power.
According to a finance ministry report, the selected enterprises, which together employed 450,000 people and generated revenues of Rs4tr in FY2019 against the book value of Rs19tr of their assets, had collectively suffered hefty net losses of Rs143bn. A year before, their combined losses stood at a whopping Rs287bn. The losses of the top 10 loss-making SOEs like PIA, Pakistan Railways, power companies and the National Highway Authority account for around 90pc of the total losses each year. While there is no doubt that some of these companies need to be liquidated and others sold to the private sector, the decision to retain certain enterprises and restructure them in the public sector should be supported conditionally. Indeed, the majority of public-sector organisations aren’t suffering massive losses from the functions they perform. Incompetence, mismanagement, political interference and lack of investment are the key reasons for the losses and debt stocks they have accumulated over the decades. This implies that some of these companies can still be turned around and made profitable if competent people are inducted. In other words, the government needs to transfer the management of the enterprises it decides to retain to those with experience of running similar companies that have been transformed into profitable entities. Perhaps a good example of profitably managing public-sector businesses is the ‘mixed ownership model’ whereby the government owns the companies but these are run and managed by independently hired professionals without intervention from bureaucrats or politicians. Unless the reform programme has room for transferring the management of firms whose ownership the government plans to retain, successfully restructuring SOEs will not be possible.

 

 

Breast cancer awareness

CONSIDER the implications of the following statistic: no less than 70pc of Pakistani women suffering from breast cancer seek medical attention at an advanced stage of the disease. If detected at an early stage, the chances of the survival exceed 90pc. But too many women play Russian roulette with their lives if they are afflicted with this dreaded disease. There are several reasons for this: lack of awareness about symptoms; limited access to mammogram facilities; fear that the treatment will result in ‘diminished femininity’ that will drive their husbands away; and social stigma surrounding the disease. There is thus a dire need to have a more open discussion about breast cancer, which makes the prospect of a forthcoming web series on this very subject welcome news indeed. Scheduled to start in April, the series has been written by Haseena Moin, a breast cancer survivor herself, and aims to address the stigma associated with the disease. It depicts how a woman’s family, particularly her husband, can be a source of strength and support for her in her battle against breast cancer.
The statistics are frightening. Every year, some 90,000 cases of breast cancer are detected in Pakistan, the highest rate in all of Asia. Sadly, about 40,000 of these patients will die. One in nine women either has breast cancer or is at risk of developing it. In the rural areas, there is even more stigma surrounding the issue, and female gynaecologists are not always easily available. Moreover, while the average age worldwide of breast cancer patients is 55 years, the median age in Pakistan is 35 years, which is a truly alarming gap. It makes sense for us to strip away the misconceptions and stigma surrounding the disease and make an honest appraisal of how our attitudes are putting so many lives at risk. Tackling the subject through a web series is a sound approach; and with Ms Moin’s proven gift for storytelling, the venture is likely to be a memorable one.

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