Paying the Price
After their success with disrupting women’s participation at public sports events, the religious right in Pakistan is at it again, via the BBC:
Last week the six-party religious alliance that constitutes one-fifth of the country’s parliament, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) introduced a bill in parliament seeking a complete ban on women in advertising.
The article goes on to say that the MMA has not been too successful politically and so is shifting their attention to women, or rather wiping them out from public life. As Mahasweta Devi says, “For everything a woman must pay the price.” When one looks at the rate of selective abortions and female infanticide in India, or the targeting of women with sexual violence in Gujrat in 2002, its hard to conclude that it is otherwise.
The easy answers one gets is that the oppression of women has to do with religion (usually Islam), or poverty. But then how does one explain the odd facts of the gender gap in education in South Asia? Largely Muslim Bangladesh is poorer than India or Pakistan, yet they have better gender parity when it comes to education, not only that, their net primary enrollment is higher than India or Pakistan. Unicef has more of these statistics if you like looking at numbers.
April 20th, 2005 at 2:35 am
Do you honestly think that Bangladesh has better gender parity than India? It is frankly laughable! Firstly, we need to find out just how the BBC arrived at such a conclusion ie how the data was collected, from what sources, how authentic they are etc. In India, independant information sources are much more readily available than in a country like Bangladesh. So the accuracy about India’s position is acceptable but in my opinion not of Bangladesh. And in case you want to absolve Islam of all wrong doing against women, you might like to remember that India has a sizable Muslim population who might just be contributing to the lack of female education.
April 20th, 2005 at 9:01 am
The stats are from UNICEF. Since you know so much about statistics maybe you can look at their report and do an analysis. There must be a reason for those stats, beyond the tired old reasons of religion and economics, or at least a more complex one. Give the Bangladeshis a break, maybe they do things better than Pakistan or India, is that so bad?