ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that the women's movement in Pakistan needs a feminist transformation agenda providing unity of purpose that not only propels people into action but fires the imagination and association with a common projected vision. The contemporary women's movement in Pakistan emerging in 1981 has gone through three distinct phases. The first intense efforts sought to prevent the state's erosion of rights in the name of Islam, placed women permanently on the national agenda, blocked some proposals. The movement in the 1980s successfully put women on the national agenda of the state and diverse political actors including its opponents in politico-religious parties, such as the Jamaat-i-Islami. Starting in 1988, a second phase concentrated on proactively setting a gender-equality agenda in conjunction with transnational women's movements. The restoration of democracy in 1988 heralded a new era for the women's movement. The third phase, in the new millennium, focused on having the agenda implemented but led to more technical interventions.