A few days back I was watching TV late in night, juggling with different channels I came across Nadia khan’s show on Geo which was being broadcasted for the second time in late hours of night. I am not a big fan of such shows but that night the show kept me glued to my sofa. The topic was racial discrimination and ill-treatment that our women face all over our country. I was not shocked to know that even in big cities women face brutal attitudes of their husbands. One of the victim reported that she was beaten on the street by her husband so bad that she was rushed to the hospital and was admitted in the ICU for weeks, and there were countless such examples. It means that still there is no education that could change the mind set of such men who think women are a mere mean for satisfying their ‘needs’, and to dispose them off or get rid of them when the urges are fulfilled.
This is only the out look of our “civilized†people who live in cities, but one will tremble with horror if take a look at the ugly situations that our rural women face in their society.
The condition of women in rural areas is even worse. This fact has been highlighted on numerous occasions by the ill treatment of women in rural areas.
The slavery of women is worse today that in any other time in history. Up to 80% of women are subjected to different forms of domestic violence in their lives. Violence against women includes not only physical violence, sexual, psychological and emotional abuse. Physical violence includes murder, sometimes in the guise of honor killings, notoriously known as “KaroKari”, female infanticide, stove burning and acid throwing. Sexual violence includes rape, marital rape, custodial rape, gang rape, incest, public stripping, and harassment through language, gesture and trafficking and forced prostitution. We can safely assume that these incidents are merely the tip of the iceberg as far as such violations, and injustices are concerned. One shudders to think of all the tyrannies these poor, simple peasant women have to endure, simply because they were born of the wrong sex in a male-dominated culture. Such unfortunate victims don’t have a voice. They usually suffer judgments passed on their fates with nothing more than pious silence.
According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) 80% of the 600,000 people trafficked across international borders each year are women and girls. These include more than 25,000 women from Pakistan. This trade has an annual profit of 12 billion dollars.
And not only in villages in many of the cities as well discrimination against women often starts before birth and lasts throughout their lives. The birth of a girl is regarded as a misfortune. Every year some 500,000 women die from complications arising from pregnancy and perhaps a further 200,000 die from unprofessional and clandestine abortions.
The media is trying to do justice by showing some portions of this massive problem but still there are the taboos we hold sacred to this day, sixty years on after independence, about sex, the use of contraceptives, showing a woman as a victim of assault, the ability to talk about child labor, or child abuse, media is somewhat being prevented from producing well made serials based on real life human rights violations. I feel that we as a nation try to conceal our problems, by pushing them under the rug, to solve another day. Such a philosophy of procrastination can only lead to a compounding of problems.
If we make documentaries on such issues the viewers will have better perspective on some social or moral dilemma our rural women face. It should serve as an eye opener and thought provoker for those who watch. The trouble is that most of the dramas made today cater to the middle classes, with an inherent boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy marries girl scenario, very bland and severely banal age old theme, or the trend these days is to follow the guide line of starplus dramas which revolve around mere house hold politics. This is infinitely more acceptable, it seems, to the broadcast authorities than to tackle real issues, including, though not limited to, the plight of women.
I request all the readers please take a few minutes out of your busy lives and think what should be done about it…
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