The Aurat March and the frenzy surrounding it

The imminent Aurat March (Women’s March) planned across the country to mark International Women’s Day this weekend is purportedly the gravest threat to the integrity of Pakistan. Concerned members of public and legal community have invoked the constitutional jurisdiction of high courts in Lahore and Islamabad to highlight the hidden agenda of the Aurat March, which they claim is funded by anti-state parties, seeks to tarnish the dignity of women, destabilize the country, and spread anarchy and hatred against the norms of Islam.

The march must be regulated, they say, to protect public morality. It is said that the women who will march raising slogans against patriarchy, misogyny and sexual/physical and economic exploitation must be regulated for there is nothing more to their demands but vulgarity and indecency.

This fear, and concomitant demonization of the Aurat March, should not be surprising given the vitriol such assembly received in the last two years. Organized by a self-funded cross-section of Pakistani women and gender minorities in different cities across the country, the Aurat March in previous years questioned entrenched conceptions of gender roles, stressed a woman’s right to bodily integrity, and highlighted various instances and forms of violence against women in our society.

From amongst the innumerable slogans chanted by thousands of women (and men) last year, one in particular caught the male attention and invited their ire: mera jism, meri marzi (my body, my choice). Narrowly (and ignorantly) interpreted as advocating an unchecked expression of female sexuality, which remains an uncomfortable topic in our society, this slogan was brought forward time and again by opponents of the Aurat March to stress the vulgarity and immorality of this female collective. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly passed a unanimous resolution condemning the march as shameful and obscene. Several organizers of the Aurat March were harassed on various online forums, and some even received death threats

The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which gauges women's economic opportunity, education, health, and political empowerment, ranks Pakistan as the third worst in the world and worst of all the countries in South Asia

Sahar Zareen Bandial

A year later, the mera jism, meri marzi slogan is still being waved as a trump card in court rooms, and on electronic and social media, to demand a ban on, or at least regulation of, the Aurat March 2020, and to spew hatred against its organizers and supporters. This fixation on one slogan demonstrates the society’s obsession with female sexuality and the need to control it, and importantly, its complete ignorance of the critical demands raised in the Aurat March Manifesto.

The manifesto of the Aurat March 2020 runs with the theme of khud mukhtari, a woman’s right to exercise control over economic resources, her body and access to health and educational services. The manifesto demands an end to gender based violence in online and offline spaces and calls for particular measures to protect children from sexual abuse. It highlights the discrimination and harassment of women in employment, the continued existence of wage gap, and women’s economic exploitation through denial of rights to inheritance and the persistence of practices such as dowry. It calls for affirmative action to provide equal access to public spaces, and health and educational facilities. The manifesto condemns the illegal and unlawful annexation of Kashmir and highlights the particular impact of enforced disappearances in Pakistan on the women left behind. It condemns forced conversions and demands that the safety of places of worship of all religions be ensured across the board.

One must ask, what is anti-state about this manifesto? Are we not aware of the horrifying statistics of violence against women in Pakistan, where cases of rape, honor killing and domestic violence are common; that 21 percent girls in Pakistan are married off before the age of 18; that five million primary school-age children who remain out of school in Pakistan are mostly girls; that female labor participation rate in Pakistan stands at around 20 percent while women’s access to credit and capital is abysmal?

The World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which gauges economic opportunity, education, health, and political empowerment of women, ranks Pakistan as the third worst in the world and worst of all the countries in South Asia.

To call out facts as they are, to demand for justice and protection from the state is not anti-state. Just like other citizens of Pakistan, Pakistani women have a right to speech and assembly, which cannot be denied. In an order issued yesterday, the Honorable Lahore High Court decided the application for “regulation” of the march with the direction that it may be conducted, subject to and in light of the constitution. This morning, the chief justice of the Islamabad High Court dismissed a similar petition as not maintainable, while observing that the slogans raised by the Aurat March are not repugnant to the principles of Islam.

It is hoped that the march is allowed to proceed in line with constitutional freedoms. Senior members of the Pakistan Peoples Party have expressed their support of the march. Leaders of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf have not taken a clear cut stance. However, leader of the Jamiat-e-Ulama-e-Islam Maulana Fazlur Rehman has called for a stop to the Aurat March at all costs. Members of the Jamia Hafsa seminary in Islamabad have admitted to defacing Aurat March murals, and the march flyers in Lahore have also met a similar fate in some localities.

- Sahar Zareen Bandial is an Advocate of the High Courts and a member of the Adjunct Faculty at the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law, LUMs. She has a keen interest in gender issues and has worked extensively in the area of legislative drafting.