Deconstruction of #MeToo and the new-age feminist movement

By Sana Naqvi

Hashtag #MeToo
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The feminist movement has been an intrinsic part of progress in Pakistan’s narrative and has evolved over the years. The movement today has more tools at its disposal than the street-based activism of the previous generation of feminists; new platforms have emerged and transformed the way protest and dialogue on gender issues can take place. The #MeToo movement uses social media to amplify women’s voice by carving a space for them to share harrowing encounters of being sexually assaulted or incidents of other forms of sexual harassment. One of the criticisms leveled against the movement is that due process is not followed and has resulted in creating binaries between social media and legal recourse. It is important to look at both separately, but also together, and try to come up with a nuanced way forward.

Social media has transformed the activism landscape globally and has allowed women to speak about their injustices, reach out to others who might feel as immobile, and provide an avenue that has for the most part not been available to many. Facilitating women to find solace in comfortable spaces is perhaps social media’s greatest achievement.

Misunderstanding about the #MeToo movement has led to it being criticized as a ‘witch hunt’, leading to reservations against it. The movement is about a certain kind of accountability, which requires men to take responsibility for their actions and exercise caution about improper conduct. With women no longer remaining silent about their experiences, they are trying to transform the discourse by changing the norms around how men treat women and normalizing conversation on sexual harassment, which is scarce, if at all.

In situations where harassment is involved, it is difficult to conceptualize what ‘justice’ would look like, as a result it becomes increasingly complicated to have a universal set of rules. Critics are wary of using social media, and propagate the use of legal recourse. In a country like Pakistan, where legal systems have failed women multiple times, is this the best course of action?

The Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act, passed in 2010 requires each organization to have an inquiry committee set up to listen to complaints that employees might have, setting out ‘major’ and ‘minor’ penalties. Complaints can also be reported to the federal or provincial ombudsman specially appointed to handle harassment cases. To complicate this relatively well-drafted law which includes an all-encompassing definition of what harassment is, the Sindh ombudsmen is a male; however, few women would be comfortable speaking to a man about their experience. Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa do not even have ombudsmen, so who do women reach out to when the legislative mechanism (the ombudsman) is absent? In this context if women resort to social media, is it still fair to demonize them for it?

In our work in the Action for Empowerment and Accountability Programme, we have studied politics as an arena in which there is widespread harassment. Legislators have their personal character and physical safety vulnerable to attack; female politicians are frequently verbally harassed during rallies, in talk shows and even on the floor of the parliament, which is routinely covered by national media. Examples include Shireen Mazari being called a tractor trolley, Amir Liaqat’s inappropriate comments about Sherry Rehman and a religious cleric assassinating Punjab Minister for Social Welfare Zille Huma in 2007 for not wearing ‘Muslim clothing’. The National Assembly still has no committee specifically for parliamentarians to hear complaints of harassment. As incidents have become public, some women politicians with voice and agency occasionally take issue and raise objections on the floor of the house.

Strong action across the board is required to make the political arena safe for all women because when we achieve this, women in important positions will be able to ensure that protective laws against women are tabled, passed and implemented. Our research has shown that protection for women politicians is largely missing, and this issue is not class specific nor is it party specific - it’s gender-specific.

Women who speak up are labelled as doing it for attention, fame, vengeance and money, but the movement’s real aim is to create support systems for victims and also help move forward from the trauma. One way to achieve this is the concept of ‘restorative justice’ which ‘emphasizes accountability and making amends, seeks to avoid sentencing, instead focusing on bringing victims and offenders together to understand the magnitude of the harm done, the ways in which healing can be achieved’. Constructive paths like this can only be achieved when there is open discussion about how to deal with harassment; dialogue not punishment can help curtail future behaviors.

The #MeToo movement raises important questions, a pertinent one being why frameworks to deal with sexual harassment are so weak. Even though we have a sexual harassment law passed almost a decade ago, it has taken the #MeToo movement in 2018 to push for more widespread sexual harassment committees at workplaces and a review of the Ombudsmen’s effectiveness. It is important for those who are skeptical of the #MeToo movement to recognize that it has alerted the public of the lack of implementation of the existing laws, forcing women to take to social media. This movement is crucial to give agency to women, and the way forward is if legal recourse and social media stop being seen as antithetical to one another.

The chickens and eggs dilemma: can poultry transfers reduce poverty?

By Kabeer Dawani and Ayesha Mysorewala

Photo credit: Pixabay.com

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recent announcement to give chickens to women in rural areas, as part of a poverty alleviation strategy, has received a lot of flak.

Khan identified two benefits of this asset transfer programme: nutritious food for eating and more chickens and eggs to sell.

Although the prime minister claimed the programme has been tested, we are not aware of publicly available results from any evaluation of such a pilot in Pakistan. Moreover, scale-ups of successful pilots often disappoint in their results.

There has been one major study in Pakistan on a graduation strategy for the ultra-poor to transition to a higher standard of living. Its results highlight two factors that are important to consider.

First, when given the choice of a productive asset, only 10 per cent of the sample opted for chickens, with the majority choosing goats. This implies that poultry is seen as a relatively low priority asset by the population.

Second, the intervention tested in this study had a gamut of additional components, including technical skills training, health and financial support and monitoring. All of these are absent from Khan's proposal and so any conclusions about the success of this study cannot be drawn for our context.

Writing for Dawn.com, Myrah Nerine Butt nicely pointed out the potential drawbacks for women from such a programme. In a similar spirit of thoughtful engagement and building on her article, we will argue using theory and evidence that the economic, gender and nutritional impacts of such a programme are limited at best and negative at worst.

The economics does not add up

It appears that the government has already initiated the programme, with rural women in Rawalpindi being the first to receive the chickens.

Each woman is being given one unit, which is made up of five chickens, with a total of 2.5 million units to be handed out across the Rawalpindi division at a cost of Rs 1,200 per unit. This has two implications.

First, if a similar proportion is applied to the rest of Pakistan, this has a budgetary implication of approximately Rs 78 billion for the nearly 65 million rural women across Pakistan.

This is no trivial amount, especially given the budget deficit. In fact, it is almost exactly the annual revenue collection from taxes on mobile prepaid cards alone that the Federal Board of Revenue stands to lose due to the previous government's tax reforms.

The second issue that is apparent from the distribution in Rawalpindi is that, all of a sudden, there will be a lot of households within close vicinity of each other in possession of the chickens.

This means that supply of chickens and eggs will increase significantly, making any commercial sales of surplus chickens and eggs difficult; basic economic theory suggests that prices will be driven down because of the drastically increased supply, making any profits minimal.

Rural areas are usually not well connected to markets in the first place and this lack of outlet will be a problem once localised markets become saturated. There may also be a negative spillover of this — existing suppliers of poultry could also see their profits slashed.

In addition, there are significant costs for households associated with handing them chickens. These include higher use of cooking fuel to cook desi chickens because they take longer to cook; land is needed for rearing poultry, which poor households do not necessarily possess; and finally, the opportunity cost of time for women, which is an issue we return to below.

These will of course remain hypotheses until tested, but nevertheless are based on observations from field work in rural areas.

All these issues identified above make it unlikely for an asset transfer programme comprising chickens to have any impact on income poverty.

Nutrition and health

At first glance, giving households greater access to protein-rich foods may appear to be good, especially with undernutrition being a major issue in Pakistan; the latest Demographic Health Survey shows that 41pc of rural children are stunted.

More chickens and eggs to consume, then, may be good, but it is important to point out a number of caveats to this.

Globally, there is a lack of consensus and consistent evidence on whether livestock and poultry transfers can decrease stunting. It is agreed, however, that the success of the interventions is conditional on certain factors such as where households keep the animals and how well connected they are to markets.

In some cases, there has in fact been a negative impact of livestock and poultry ownership on nutrition due to diarrhea and other diseases related to proximity to livestock.

Poultry fecal waste also leads to increased risks of environmental enteropathy, a serious condition which limits the absorption of nutrients among children.

On this, a recent World Bank report on Pakistan has argued that we need to focus on improving sanitation, especially in rural areas, to make progress on stunting.

There may be a strong argument for giving chickens and other small livestock to women, given that women’s control of assets and resources in the household is associated with better nutrition. Research from the LANSA project shows that care of small livestock and poultry is usually the domain of the woman. We also found that income from the sale of products and animals themselves is rarely controlled by the woman.

Given this, if transfers of more animals do not improve women’s access to resources and say over how their products are used, it may well increase their time burdens. This reduces time spent on rest and care of children, which is detrimental to their own health and that of their children.

Evidence from a previous study on a livestock and poultry intervention did, in fact, show no significant improvements in women’s say in household decisions in Pakistan.

In sum, there is no guarantee that giving chickens to households will improve health and nutritional outcomes.

In fact, there exists a possibility that without checks on sanitation and women’s time poverty, providing chickens may make things worse.

What about poverty alleviation?

Any poverty alleviation strategy must aspire to sustainable and broad based development.

Redistribution programmes, which transfer cash (such as the Benazir Income Support Programme) and assets (such as chickens), can serve the important purpose of protecting the poor from shocks and mitigating their risks.

These are valuable goals in and of themselves; however, what they do not do is provide a basis for structural reform to alleviate poverty significantly.

If the prime minister is serious about alleviating poverty, he must focus on halting and even reversing Pakistan’s premature de-industrialisation.

It is the manufacturing sector which has the capability of providing high-productivity and high-wage jobs, and which has globally led to poverty alleviation and inter-generational social mobility.

In the midst of a narrowing manufacturing base, however, hopes for broad-based development remain bleak.
*This blog was originally published in Dawn.com's blogs section.

Women’s Mobility and Labor Force Participation in Karachi: Some Preliminary Observations

By Natasha Ansari

Women working in a garment factory in Korangi's industrial area
Photo credit: Waseem Gazdar

Pakistan has the lowest female labor-force participation rates in South Asia[1] and urban areas perform especially poorly[2]. Distinct patriarchal norms interlinked with migrant status can affect women’s autonomy and thus labor-force participation in different ways. Recently the Collective for Social Science Research conducted fieldwork for the IGC supported project ‘Women's Mobility, Agency and Labour-Force Participation in the Mega-city of Karachi’ at three ethnically purposive sites. Many female respondents mentioned instances, relative to patriarchal norms and structures of their communities, which informed their ability to work in the city. In this blog, we attempt to present a current snapshot of some of the diversity of women’s experiences with regards to labor force participation in relation to their community norms and migrant status in Karachi.

Lyari

Lyari is considered one of the oldest neighborhoods in Karachi, and pre-dominantly consists of Baloch and Katchi populations that have long assimilated here. Most young Baloch and Katchi women we interviewed preferred to work and complete their education.[3] Two-thirds of younger women have at least completed Intermediate exams and nearly all aspired to hold undergraduate degrees if they didn’t already. In terms of mobility, our female Balochi respondents within Lyari did not report restrictions on mobility from patriarchal figures in the household or street harassment by strangers to the same degree as in other sites where this study was conducted. One respondent who works as a teacher noted that her community respected her a lot for her job, and that when she is walking to work, men actively move out of her way. The extent of mobility and the relative lack of restrictions described by some of the Balochi women around issues of respectability and safety, strictly in a comparative sense with other localities in Karachi, have been surprising for us to learn and are indicative of norms improving overtime, in conjunction with length of the migration period.

In terms of hindrance to employment, an issue most women noted was labor-market discrimination pertaining to ethnicity rather than gender. Nearly all of our respondents complained about rampant racism in the rest of the city against Lyari residents and its adverse effects on their employability. Being Baloch in addition to being a Lyari resident compounded the problem more so.

Baldia

Baldia was selected as a site because it consists of predominantly Pashtun migrants. For women, earning was considered disgraceful and dishonorable because it implied that the household was running on the woman’s income instead of the man’s and the sense of emasculation is a major cause of disrepute for the men in the community. Despite income issues, prospects of poverty still do not seem to mobilize women or let men from their household to relent and let them work or earn. The only instances women resorted to working were in the face of extreme destitution as a result of the absence of a male patriarchal figure and bread-winner in the household, at the expense of disrepute in the community. Older women also hardly held jobs – not even cleaning jobs in households, unlike the other two sites we investigated. Similarly, in terms of education households frequently stopped their daughter’s education after primary school or once they reached puberty, and cited ‘azaad mahol’ (permissive environment), which points towards future potential constraints to labor-force participation.

Korangi

Korangi was chosen due to the ethnically heterogeneous nature of the community and the prevalence of Urdu-speaking and Sindhi populations in the area.

In terms of employment, similar to Lyari, the long assimilated Urdu-speaking and Sindhi women did low-paying private school teaching jobs. If they had income issues they took up better paying, but far more demanding, company or factory jobs. Working in the nearby garment factories was commonly reported by some of the respondents. Older uneducated women usually took up work as cleaners in other households but this was not considered respectful work by them. In contrast, newer Sindhi migrant women were not allowed to work at all, especially if they were young, due to anxieties pertaining to the strangeness of the new and unfamiliar city.

Conclusion

There is indication that patriarchal arrangements relative to migrant status and cultural notions of respectability, determine the extent of women’s participation in the labor market. The relegation of women’s labor force participation only to certain acceptable occupations or by keeping women at home entirely, unquestioningly indicate that gender norms play a role in shaping women’s labor force participation in Pakistan. In an urban context, mobility is complicated by distinct norms pertaining to patriarchy within their communities, geographic and spatial anxieties due to migrant status, and histories of conflict within the city. Our preliminary findings suggest a differentiated employment strategy concerning women’s labor-force participation, underpinned by social-policy that is context-specific to communities within Karachi is needed.


[1] 57 percent in Bangladesh (ILO 2014), 29 percent in India (ILO 2014), and 22 percent in Pakistan (PLFPS 2015)

[2] 10 percent for urban areas in Pakistan in 2015 (PLFPS 2015) , as compared to 15.5 percent for urban areas in India in 2011 (ILO 2014) and 14.7 percent for Bangladesh in 2016 (QLFS 2017)

[3] The jobs many women hold are low-paying teaching jobs at local private schools because they are a walking distance from their homes, which indicates that many young women do struggle with family restrictions on their mobility

References

Chaudhary, R., & Verick, S. (2014). Female labor force participation in India and beyond ILO Asia-Pacific Working Paper Series: International Labour Organization.

Labor Force Survey 2014-15. (2015): Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

Quarterly Labor Force Survey 2015-16. (2017): Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

*This blog was originally published in "Pakistan's Growth Story" 

Making the most out of democracy

By Ali Ahmad

Photo credit: flickr.com

2018 has been a significant year for Pakistan’s democratic transition. In July, general elections took place, and the country made a historic decision by electing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by Imran Khan for the first time. The PTI’s election campaign revolved around slogans of ‘accountability for all’ and removal of corruption with many arguing that we must celebrate the success of democracy and the rise of a new government.

What are the underlying factors that help voters choose public representatives and form perceptions about politicians? What role does the media play in ensuring the functioning of democracy? How can we, as voters, become more critical evaluators of our representatives?

Women agricultural workers and their rights

By Saba Aslam

Consultative discussion on Rights and Well-being of Women Agricultural Workers in Pakistan

Photo credit: Waseem Gazdar

The National Commission on the Status of Women and Collective for Social Science Research hosted a consultation on the rights and wellbeing of women agricultural workers and their children in Pakistan. It was held on 29^th August 2018 at the Beach Luxury Hotel in Karachi. The consultation acted as a platform to bring together activists, lawyers, researchers, parliamentarians, women agricultural workers, members from the National and Provincial Commissions on the Status of Women, and policy makers who discussed the issues faced by women agricultural workers in Pakistan, and debated potential ways of moving forward in recognizing and protecting rights of women agricultural workers at local, provincial and national levels.

Dr. Yasmin Zaidi, Director of Center of Gender and Policy studies (CGaPs) presented key findings of UN Women’s recent report on status of rural women in Pakistan. Citing secondary data, Dr. Zaidi provided insights on women’s extensive contribution in the agriculture sector. She said that 53 percent of women involved in agriculture do unpaid work out of which 60 percent belong to the rural areas. Their work is often considered informal, and hence they are not counted as workers. This makes them virtually absent across public policy design and discourse. They are denied basic rights such as public health services, and social security. She suggested that policies and programmes must focus on improving women’s economic empowerment, their participation in politics and their right to access justice against violence.

Mr. Haris Gazdar, Director of Collective for Social Science Research presented findings from a LANSA study on “Women’s Work and Nutrition” stressing the link between women’s work, their health and the health of their children. He discussed associations between women’s work and other exogenous factors such as household food insecurity, mother’s education and household wealth status that could be potential drivers of women’s work in agriculture. His presentation revealed that the nutritional status of women agricultural workers and health of their children was negatively linked to their status of work. For example, women who undertook strenuous work during pregnancy and after giving birth had poor nutritional outcomes.  

Which is worse: corruption or misogyny?

By Ayesha Khan

Imran Khan Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman in Abbotabad
Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons

The ‘Naya Pakistan’ we find ourselves in will be filled with unknowns and new opportunities. One of them will be the chance for women voters to decide which is more inimical to their interests: corruption or misogyny?

Pakistan will have a Prime Minister with a strong view on the question. He is personally not corrupt, in the sense that no accusations have ever been wielded against him for illegally making or giving payments or ill-gotten gains. He has made incorruptibility the backbone of his credibility as a politician, and the masthead of his party.  (However, his selection of ‘electables’ in the allocation of tickets, including many old-guard figures whose reputations are more questionable, led to protests from PTI workers before the elections.)

Misogyny, on the other hand, is a badge he wears with pride. As a recovered playboy, he is at great pains to distance himself not only from his past but any whiff that may remain from his considerable time spent in the west. Comfortable, at last, with a pious and curiously shrouded wife, he said in an interview before the elections, “I totally disagree with the western concept and the role of the feminist movement, which has completely degraded the role of mother.” He then waxed on about having been brought up by his mother, etc.

“Slaves” and “Bondsmen” after Abolition: Grey Areas and Missed Opportunities

by Mishal Khan

Agricultural worker in India
Photo credit: The British Library, page 485 of 'The History of China & India, pictorial & descriptive

The conviction that slavery is an institution that belongs in the dustbin of history is a view that has moved from consensus to consensus as a matter of international law – the lowest common denominator that nations agree upon. In Pakistan, and indeed in South Asia in general, bonded labour has become synonymous with “modern slavery,” the most blatant violation of this now sacred international principal. Bonded labour entered the spotlight during the 1990 Darshan Masih case, often hailed as a watershed moment leading to the passage of the Bonded Labour Systems (Abolition) Act of 1992. In light of the persistence of the practice today, the solution is usually to be found in enhanced enforcement of legislation, in greater legal penetration of the court system, and increased alignment with international law.

Of Market Queens and Women’s Empowerment

by Ayesha Mysorewala

Street market in Accra, Ghana
Photo credit: Wikimedia commons

I recently visited Ghana for the Agriculture, Nutrition and Health conference 2018 (ANH 2018) to present the findings of our LANSA research paper on the potential of agricultural asset transfers to improve nutrition in Pakistan.

What really struck me about Ghana was the overwhelming presence of women on the streets. In Makola, the largest open-air market in Accra, women and ‘market queens’ dominated the selling space – loudly marketing everything from clothes and jewellery to freshly obtained snails and vegetables.

In the midst of a crisis

by Asad Sayeed

Photo credit:Wikipedia 

Pakistan appears to be in the midst of an economic crisis as the rupee seems to be in free fall with foreign exchange reserves depleting in the backdrop of a high and unsustainable current account deficit.

Identity Search: Women and Social Media Politics

By Sana Naqvi

Digital revolutions are on the rise in Pakistan
Photo credit: Wikimedia commons

Each era brings a novel tool through which thoughts are expressed, networks are formed and ideas disseminated and Pakistan is no exception. The insatiable desire to reach out to more and more people has led to advanced thinking in terms of how collective spaces are defined and how to interact within them. Social media, whether WhatsApp, Facebook or Twitter, has come to the forefront and transformed the digital arena in constructive ways. In Pakistan, the internet penetration rate stands at 22% as of April 2018, with 55 million 3G/4G subscribers and 35 million social media users, with political engagement and awareness campaigns now being run through such mediums. These social platforms are being used in ways that they have never been used before, with citizen journalism becoming a popular phenomenon, where the general public (as opposed to just journalists) speaks out and documents events even as they happen. What they articulate has wide-spread influence and has given a new face to civil society, expanding its powers to affect people, events and legislation.

What Does it Take to Change Your Mind?

By Marium Ibrahim

When evidence conflicts with strongly held beliefs, how easy is it for us to change our minds?

There may be many motivations behind why we hold certain beliefs, but what are these motivations, and in the event that evidence shows otherwise, how easy is it to change our point of view?

Let’s talk about…wheat flour fortification

By Haris Gazdar

Wheat flour chakki in Pakistan
Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons

1. What is food fortification?
Food fortification is the addition, usually at an industrial scale, of essential micronutrients to commonly consumed foods, to overcome nutritional deficiencies in vulnerable populations. It is a response to ‘hidden’ hunger – or the persistence of deficient diets in populations where hunger, as such, may not be obvious. Common examples of deficiencies are minerals (iron, zinc, iodine) and vitamins. Common examples of food fortification are salt iodisation, fortification of milk, condiments, cooking oils and staple foods with various micronutrients.

2. Why is it in the news?
Major stakeholders in the world of nutrition are supporting or taking part in fortification initiatives currently being launched. These are donor-supported programmes in various provinces to fortify wheat flour with iron and folic acid, salt with iodine, and cooking oil with Vitamin A. Mandatory regulation has been put in place in some provinces.

3. Why is food fortification so popular among stakeholders?
It seems like a low-cost response that can reach large numbers of those in need relatively easily through existing government and market systems. It does not require major economic uplift or poverty reduction – in fact it is best suited to addressing micronutrient deficiencies precisely in those populations which no long face extreme hunger and poverty.

4. So, does it really work?
Yes, no, maybe.

Salt iodisation has a good record globally and in Pakistan. Staple food fortification with folic acid has worked in many countries to address a foetal condition known as NTD. But there is little evidence that staple food fortification with iron reduces anaemia.

And in Pakistan the fortification of wheat flour with iron and folic acid has been tried several times without any publicly available evidence of success.

5. What is the hitch with wheat flour fortification?
There may be several, some technical others practical.

Technically, there is no clinching evidence that adding iron to staple food is an effective way of reducing anaemia. There are questions about quantities and absorption.

Practically, for fortification to be even considered, it should be applied to a food that is consumed by much of the target group through the year. In Pakistan there is no precise information on:

• What proportion of wheat flour that is consumed is milled industrially? Estimates range from 30 to 50 per cent. 
• What proportion of the population consumes milled flour all-year round, and what proportion of the population most vulnerable to anaemia consumes it? 
• Why do most rural households and many urban ones prefer chakki flour, and those that do use milled flour often opt for ‘fine’ varieties rather than regulated flour? 

6. Anything else?
Yes.

Around half of Pakistan’s population suffers from inadequate energy intake. One in three households say that they are vulnerable to hunger. So, Pakistan needs to urgently deal with actual hunger and not just hidden hunger.

7. What does that have to do with wheat fortification?
We need a serious reform of food security policies to ensure that no person is vulnerable to hunger. Current policies which aim to address food security are based on government wheat procurement and its subsidised supply to private sector mills who are then supposed to provide subsided flour to the population. This clearly does not work. The system has created adverse incentives and rent-seeking for capturing subsidies. Regulatory weaknesses in the sector arise from these rent-seeking opportunities.

Wheat fortification projects, by focusing on a technical solution around the same inefficient sector, are in danger of doing two things:

• Detracting from the need to address actual hunger, and not just ‘hidden’ hunger 
• Ignoring numerous sector analyses which call for a reform of the wheat system 

8. What needs to be done?
Policy and public debate must focus on ‘hidden’ hunger as part of a broader agenda of food security and combatting hunger – rather than imagining that stand-alone technocratic solutions are possible. And existing fortification programmes might avoid disappointment if they recognised some of the problems highlighted here, revised some of their expectations, and took on board existing critiques of the wheat subsidy system. 

This blog is a part of a new “Let’s talk about…” series that distils key research findings aiming to start a public conversation on emerging issues.

The Dairy Reform That Wasn’t

By Rashid Mehmood and Natasha Ansari

Modern, packaged milk still struggles to compete with the traditional alternative of loose, raw milk.
Photo credit: Fawad A. Najam, Flickr.com

There is a public debate about the quality and safety of milk sold to consumers. Most recently the Supreme Court took regulatory action with respect to some brands of packaged milk and also issued notices to companies regarding clearer labeling of whiteners as not being milk. Public attention on the dairy sector is welcome, but as government and courts gear up for action, it is important to understand the roots of current regulatory lapses, and to set out a broader agenda of reform that goes beyond consumer protection.

The Mystery of Political Will

by Kabeer Dawani

Political will is thought to be the solution to all development problems. But what is it?
Photo credit: Flickr.com

Along with corruption, the “lack of political will” is perhaps the most common lament among Pakistanis for public policy failures. For instance, a recent article in the Economic and Political Weekly argued, “many of the issues surrounding the recent census [in Pakistan] would have been solved had there been a political will.”

Teach a man how to fish? Social transfers in a “hungry” nation

by Hussain Bux Mallah

You can teach a man to fish, but does that ensure his household’s nutrition?
Photo credit: Pixabay.com

In the last two decades, there has been a lot of debate around social transfers, particularly cash transfer programmes. Do cash transfers give people dignity of choice, help them mitigate shocks and empower them, or do they “patronize” and provide an incentive for doing less work? Opponents almost always evoke the “teach a man to fish” proverb. However, there is an old joke built off this same proverb that says that even if one is taught how to fish it is likely that ‘he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day anyway.’ There is a grain of truth to this: with or without conditions, one can’t control what people choose to do with their time and resources. Still, many countries do try to ascertain the possibility that recipients spend cash transfers responsibly. In the United States, ten states require passing tests for drug use before one is eligible for welfare cash assistance or benefits.

Rest in power, Asma Jahangir

by Ayesha Khan

Asma Jahangir's funeral, 13th February 2018, Lahore, Pakistan
Picture credits: Rabia Mehmood

The untimely death of human rights defender Asma Jahangir has dealt a body blow to the Pakistani women’s movement and the peoples’ struggle for political empowerment. Most of those who attended her funeral yesterday in Lahore were less familiar with her international human rights profile and record as a Special Rapporteur for the United Nations in conflict-affected areas of the world. Those who came mourned her passing because she had fought for each one of their causes.

Extending agricultural policies to women

By Hussain Bux Mallah

Women picking cotton in Sanghar
Photo credit: Collective team

Pakistan’s employment trends show a steady feminization of the agricultural sector. Almost three-fourths of the female labour force is employed in agriculture, and the proportion of women working in agriculture has increased more than 10 percent from 2001-02 to 2012-13. However, the agriculture sector is not very friendly to women, especially to pregnant and/or lactating mothers. The health status of mothers working as agricultural labour and their children is alarming. Women who work in agriculture are far more likely to be underweight and to have children who are wasted and stunted than women who do not work in agriculture.  According to DHS 2012-13, out of all mothers who are working in the agriculture sector, 29 percent are underweight, 13 percent of their children are wasted and 52 percent are stunted.

Empathy for everyone?

By Marium Ibrahim

Is empathic connection only possible with those similar to us?
Photo credit: Pixabay.com

One of the common threads throughout my fieldwork experiences while working at the Collective is related to the dynamics between groups of different social standings. A Muhajir woman in Karachi, while talking about the sanitation system in her area, said that usually everyone keeps the area clean, except for the Bengalis who have their children throw trash on the streets in front of other people’s houses. In a village in Sanghar, people from a mainstream Soomro community talked about how people from a neighboring socially marginalized Nohri community were uncooperative and difficult to deal with.