Women’s activist speaks on Pakistan

When Sameena Nazir was a high school senior in Pakistan, she began to see the effects of war in… When Sameena Nazir was a high school senior in Pakistan, she began to see the effects of war in neighboring Afghanistan. The nearby conflict would have a tremendous impact on women in her home country.

One year, Nazir said, her school had music and dancing. The next, it was all gone.

In college, Nazir said she could not participate in various social activities because of her sex. She said women were constantly under attack, but many women’s groups met despite the risks.

“It was horrible, but it invigorated action for change,” Nazir said at her lecture titled “A Day in the Life of a Pakistani Woman” Tuesday.

Pitt’s Women’s Studies Program and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs hosted Nazir, who is both the executive director of the Potohar Organization for Development Advocacy and the president of the Pakistan section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Nazir is visiting the United States to speak before the United Nations on behalf of WILPF.

Nazir said that she and her colleagues work to promote peace and equality for women in Pakistan, but she said they often encounter threats and harassment from the Taliban and Pakistan’s domestic intelligence agency.

Through her work, Nazir has lobbied for laws that protect women against abuse.

“In 2010 we passed a law against sexual harassment in the working places,” Nazir said to a room of about 15 people in Posvar Hall. “We also passed laws against acid throwing and child marriage.”

Before Pakistan passed such laws, it was legal for husbands to throw acid in the faces of disobedient wives. It was also legal for young girls to be married off.

Nazir also mentioned that education up to the 12th grade is now a constitutional right for all Pakistani citizens.

She said that education is important because Pakistani women have a 27 percent literacy rate. She noted that Pakistan is mainly a rural country, which contributes to illiteracy.

Even though they have worked to create new laws, Nazir said the human rights organizations face difficulty when they try to inform women of the laws in rural areas. She said abused women often don’t know they can take action.

Nazir gave a brief summary of the history of Pakistan, a country that was deeply affected by war in Afghanistan.

Nazir said Pakistan’s progressive laws changed drastically when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, starting a war that would continue for a decade.

“It was the worst 10 years for Pakistan,” Nazir said. “The only game in town was war.”

She said that discriminatory laws against women were put into place as war took over the country.

Nazir said the new laws declared that a woman’s life was worth half of a man’s life. Another law stated that if a woman was raped, four men had to testify as witnesses to prove that it happened.

“One would say 10 years is not enough to change society, but when you introduce guns into the equation, things change,” Nazir said.

Sophomore Rachel Molzen said she learned a lot about Pakistan from the talk.

“I wasn’t aware of how progressive Pakistan was initially,” the biological sciences major said. “I’m interested to see what will happen in the future.”

Philomena O’Dea, a woman who worked in public health in Third World countries, attended the lecture to learn about Pakistan from someone who had direct experience.

“I wanted to take advantage of the fact that she had directly worked with this and not learn about it from the media,” O’Dea said. “These are global issues.”

Nazir’s talk called attention to what she referred to as the recent “war on women” in the United States, and audience members asked her what could be done to challenge changes to women’s rights on issues regarding birth control and abortion.

Nazir said that it is a dangerous development when rights are infringed upon and efforts are made to take back women’s rights.

“Women need to speak up and not tolerate,” Nazir said. “Controlling women’s bodies is power. Women have to challenge it more.”