ABSTRACT
Gender issues are of a complex and contested nature in Pakistan. There are a variety of national, international and transnational actors that use feminist issues as bargaining chips or vehicles to promote their divergent political-ideological struggles. These include different types of women activists lobbying through national and transnational networks, military rulers, civilian politicians, as well as religious forces. Moreover, feminism in Pakistan has always had to defend itself against charges of Westernization, or of promoting an alien agenda. And it is linked to class interests in a highly stratified society where women activists mainly derive from the (upper) middle class and elite. The class factor is perceived to impact on the agenda, strategies and goals of the women’s movement in a multiplicity of ways. Class interests determined the focus and demands of the movement in the early years (Rouse 1998: 55f.). A person’s citizenship status is highly contingent on class and rural/urban locality. For instance, in the field of legal rights and access to formal/informal legal institutions, employment options and rights, access to education, impact of law and state-society-citizen relationships, people from different social classes have distinctly different opportunities. For example, middle-and upper-class women reinvigorated the women’s movement in the late 1970s and 1980s because they resented the anti-women legislation, Islamization state practices and the religious discourse of the Zia-ul-Haq regime (1977-88) and saw themselves as the main targets of such policies, according to leading women’s activist Farida Shaheed (see Shaheed 1998; Rouse 1998). But, given the high stratification and fragmentation of Pakistan’s society, with little
cross-class interaction, a spill-over of experiences and gains could not take place. Furthermore:
[c]lass privileges, urban living, and class integration had all cushioned them from other identity-based discriminations, such as ethnicity. By contrast, women who suffer oppression by virtue of class, religion, or ethnic identity, in addition to gender, necessarily have concerns not premised solely on gender.
