Abstract
Women’s NGOs in Pakistan makes an important contribution to the areas of women’s studies and social movements by detailing both the challenges faced by Pakistani feminists and their responses to these obstacles. Afshan Jafar derived her data from participant observation and in-depth interviews with NGO workers. The first chapters outline the historical development and challenges faced by Pakistani feminist activists. The remainder analyze two contemporary NGOs: ActionAid Pakistan and the Aurat Foundation.
Various political and ideological transformations shaped Pakistani women’s activism. Anti-colonial movements were pivotal in several ways. First, they temporarily freed Muslim women from traditional restrictions. They also provided activists with their first taste of political participation. Finally, the proposed Muslim homeland lacked ethnic cohesion. Thus, national unity became rooted in religious rather than ethnic identity. The latter aspect profoundly shaped, and continues to shape, Pakistani women’s NGOs, often in ways counter to feminist sensibilities.
Religious constraints were evident early on. Traditional dictates limited women to activities that extended their roles as mothers and nurturers. Thus, Pakistani statehood marked a shift from advocacy to service provision for refugees from India. This practical needs focus provided a framework for the All Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA) founded in 1949. APWA strove to improve women’s health and educational attainment. APWA also championed women’s strategic needs, somewhat. It lobbied for the 1961 Family Law Ordinance, which outlawed oral divorces, required a man to obtain permission from his spouse before taking additional wives, and allowed women to choose spouses and initiate divorce.
However, Pakistan’s Islamic identity tempered these gains. As women entered the public sphere in large numbers, they became subject to strict morality standards. NGO activity was likewise limited: organizations shied away from far-reaching agendas. Activists feared that further demands would alienate a wary public.
Women’s activism waned until Zia-ul-Haq’s presidency (1977–1988). Assuming power via a military coup, Zia used radical Islam to legitimate his rule. He seized upon women’s heightened public visibility, which concerned both lay and religious groups, to further his political agenda. Zia equated women’s labor force participation with “Westernization,” a threat best neutralized by traditional patriarchal values.
Zia undermined previous gains through various means. For example, he demanded that women conceal themselves beneath chadors and embrace traditional roles. He also imposed the 1979 Zina Ordinance, which decriminalized statutory and marital rape, and increased the legal standards for forcible rape convictions, while leaving victims vulnerable to adultery charges.
Zia’s policies revived the Pakistani women’s movement. They also necessitated organizational strategies rooted in advocacy as opposed to service provision. The Women’s Action Forum (WAF), for example, provided legal assistance for Zina victims and raised awareness about the ordinance itself. WAF faced many challenges: Zia suspended fundamental constitutional rights and banned political parties and demonstrations. WAF, too, was fragmented internally. Nonetheless, it successfully challenged Zia’s proposed “Law of Testimony,” which equated the testimony of two women to that of one man.
Women’s conditions improved little under Zia’s successor, Benazir Bhutto. Her Pakistan People’s Party needed conservative support for survival. Her successor, Nawaz Sharif, implemented further misogynistic laws under the banner of “Islamization.”
Jafar also addresses the challenges of contemporary fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism is hard to confront in Pakistan, given its religious as opposed to ethnic identity. Fundamentalism stands in for “cultural authenticity” among radicals, and feminist activism becomes synonymous with Westernization.
Consequently contemporary activism is precarious given the increasing hostility. If activists adopt a more socially acceptable non-critical stance toward tradition, they betray feminist principles. However, a critical stance inflames fundamentalists. Radicals often use violence or threaten violence against NGO workers. Thus, women’s NGOs compromise between activism and accommodation to radical Islam, spawning locally specific NGO strategies, such as joining fundamentalist organizations, reinterpreting the Quran, and connecting with religious communities. While some feminists disparage such strategies as contrary to feminism, Jafar knows they are necessary for survival in Pakistan.
Jafar next focuses on two contemporary NGOs, the Aurat Foundation (AF) and ActionAid Pakistan (AAPk). The AF was established in 1986 to increase women’s political participation. Though “advocacy-oriented,” AF workers provide health and educational services. They realize that feminist ideals do not resonate with impoverished women struggling for survival. However, there is a trade-off: focusing on women’s material needs often compromises their advocacy agenda.
AAPk is an international NGO working in Pakistan since 1992. AAPk is perhaps the most radical Pakistani NGO for two reasons. First, it addressed sexual harassment in Pakistan. Second, it targets middle- and upper-class women, as opposed to poor and marginalized communities. AAPk gained support for its agenda through discursive strategies, such as frame amplification. AAPk employs the latter to refute the perception of its sexual harassment policy (a.k.a. “the Code”) as Western influenced and to promote it as a matter of rights. AAPk uses frame extension to recruit participants by framing the Code as good for organizations since it creates a professional environment and a progressive public image.
AF and AAPk both employ instrumentalism, essentialism, and “shifting” as strategies. Instrumentalism frames women’s rights as beneficial to society. Essentialism holds that women are naturally less corrupt, less aggressive and more virtuous than men. Therefore activism will bring about peace and more equal resource access. “Shifting” entails moving the focus away from women to society. These strategies clash with feminist principles, since they do not promote equality for equality’s sake and fail to address women’s structural subordination. Yet, Jafar stresses that these approaches help ensure NGO survival.
NGOs and government relationships remain complicated, highlighting a key issue: should feminists engage with the state? This is a two-sided issue. Engagement might jeopardize the feminist agenda, especially if the state co-opts the NGOs. However the state may be an oppressor and an ally, simultaneously. Jafar’s research supports the latter, by noting the presence of “femocrats” in the government. NGOs can achieve goals in a hostile setting by exploiting informal networks cultivated with those in power.
This book is an excellent source of scholarship for those researching feminist activism in conservative contexts. For example, Jafar shows how feminist activists often co-opt conservative weapons to counter opposition and further NGO agendas. For example, activists often reinterpret Quranic verses used to promote women’s subjugation or highlight neglected passages that promote women’s rights. They, too, use Islam strategically in this regard. One activist noted that she promoted family planning by citing the Islamic prescription to breast feed for two years. Important theoretical debates are also addressed, such as the extent to which “truly” feminist organizations pursue practical versus strategic interests (as highlighted by Molyneux 1985). It also re-problematizes the application of “one-size fits all” Western feminist approaches to diverse groups of women living in non-Western societies (as noted by Mohanty 1991).
However, parts of the book remain theoretically underdeveloped. For example, Jafar notes that activists use social movement framing strategies (Snow et al. 1986), but does not elaborate on the mechanisms involved. She also introduces other obstacles to NGO activism, including recent natural catastrophes, charges of elitism and detrimental competition between advocacy and service NGOs, but does not cover these problems in detail. Nonetheless, Women’s NGOs in Pakistan will be of interest to a wide audience of scholars and activists, and demonstrates that feminist organizations can thrive even in hostile contexts.