Gender Studies Lecture 12

M. Bilal Rasheed
Military Lands and
Cantonments Department
(43rd Common)
 PAPER: GENDER STUDIES (100 MARKS)
I. Introduction to Gender Studies
II. Social Construction of Gender
III. Feminist Theories and Practice
IV. Feminist Movements
V. Gender and Development
VI. Status of Women in Pakistan
VII. Gender and Governance
VIII. Gender Based Violence
IX. Case Studies
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 Topics for Lecture 12
1. Impact of Political Quota in Pakistan
2. Autonomy vs. Integration Debate
3. Women Studies vs. Gender Studies

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 1. Impact of Political Quota in Pakistan

Quotas are mechanisms by which governments

seek to increase the number of women
represented in the governing body.
History:
• Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah and
Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz were the only
female representatives in the first Constituent
Assembly of Pakistan.
• The Constitutions of 1956 and 1962 provided for
6 reserved seats for
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women
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in the NA. 4
• The 1973 Constitution reserved 10 seats for a
period of ten years from the commencing day
of the constitution or the holding of three
general elections to the NA.
• In 1985, these seats were increased to 20. But
then they lapsed and the governments of
Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif could neither
revive these seats nor increase them.
• In 1988, Benazir Bhutto became the first
woman PM.

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• In 1993, representation of women at local level was
only 10%.
• In the general election of 1997, women’s
representation hovered between 4% in the provincial
assemblies to 2% in the Senate and 4% in the NA.
• Report of the Commission of Inquiry for Women
(1997) and Nation Plan for Action (1998, NPA)
recommended:
– 33% reserved seats for women at local and national level
through direct elctions.
– simplification of rules and adoption of measures to ensure
women could exercise their right to vote.

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• In the Devolution of Power Plan (2000), 33%
seats were reserved for women in union, tehsil
and district councils.
• At national level, National Reconstruction
Bureau (NRB) announced that 60 seats in the NA
(17% of total) will be reserved for women.
• On general seats, 13 women won in 2002, 16 in
2008, and 9 in 2013. (declining trend)
• 12th legislature of Pakistan had 74 women
(21.64%), out of whom 14 were directly elected.

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• Achievements of Women Parliamentarians:
• A study conducted by Aurat Foundation found that
women excelled in several areas of legislative
business compared to their male counterparts
during 2002-07.
• PPP government appointed Dr. Fehmida Mirza as
the first female speaker of NA who lead a Caucus of
Women Legislators across party lines.
• From 2008 to 2013, much progress was made.
• Amendment to Women in Distress and Detention
Fund Act (provides for mandatory financial and legal
assistance to women in prisons)
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• Protection Against Harassment of Women at the
Workplace Act
• Banazir Income Support Programme Act
• Advocacy for women IDPs after military operation
in Swat, gender responsive relief efforts, treatment
and rehabilitation of burn victims, meaningful
debate on budgetary allocations in health and
education.
• There are four provincial WPCs, the first initiative of
its kind in South Asia.
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 2. Autonomy vs Integration Debate:

• Arguments for Autonomy

• Separatist and radical.
• Separatist approach of feminists for developing
women’s education separate from other disciplines.
• Don’t support integration of Women Studies into
Gender Studies.
• Freedom from the constraints imposed by the
traditional disciplines and departments.
• Free to focus all of their energies on teaching and
scholarship about women.
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• Arguments against Integration:
• Integration strategies tend to undermine feminist goals.
• Women studies is still not ready for integration into
mainstream departments and is still too focused on white,
young and able women
• Autonomy advocates say that energy should be spent on
buliding their autonomy as a discipline and not on
changing the traditional disciplines.
• Autonomy advocates believe that independent Women
Studies’ Programs offer the best means fro generating
new knowledge through the interaction of like-minded
scholars.
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• Arguments for Integration:
• Florence Howe (1982) said that integration was the
“ultimate” strategy of women studies.
• Women Studies programs are “ghettos” doomed to
failure.
• Integration offers the lure of going beyond studying
and theorizing about change to an actual attempt to
change something.
• Focuses on influential people, who are often non-
feminist, faculty and adminsitration.
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• Reaching this audience requires a different
approach from the usual message of feminism.
• Moderate strategy aimed at bringing about a
slow paced change rather than an abrupt
transformation that Autonomy seeks.
• Integration advocates believe that women
studies’ programs are strengthened by campus
wide projects and involvement, which in turn
will promote broader change.
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• Integration advocates say that developing
women’s education separate from that of men
would lead to additional forms of sexism (the
belief that women can’t handle the regular
academic requirements)
• Separate women study programs cause
traditional departments to lose their
motivation to change as they think that work is
being donein the women’s studies programs.
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• 1983 Consensus:
• Different strategies are appropriate for
different places, and neither is fully capable of
meeting our real goals.

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 3. Women Studies vs Gender studies

• Feminist activism during the 60s and 70s

encouraged the development of Women's
Studies.
• As the scope of the discipline broadened and
more people wanted to include a feminist
analysis of masculinity, many programs
changed their name to Gender Studies.

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• Women's studies is a broad term - it can
include information from several disciplines -
history, sociology, anthropology, psychology -
but specific to women.
• Women’s Studies interrogates the history of
women and their contributions to society (and
how society has treated them).

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• Gender studies can include information from
all the disciplines listed above but it focuses
on gender - male and female.
• Gender Studies interrogates the way societies
conceive gender, how those cultural
categories affect the way individuals are
treated within society, and the ways in which
that cultural understanding of gender
categories interacts with all the other
products of culture (how journalism reports,
how things are marketed, etc).
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• There is a big difference between "women's
studies" and "gender studies." The former
concentrates on work relevant to women's issues;
psychology of women, women's history, literature,
etc. The latter is more generic and would concern
itself with both women and with men.
• So, if what you're interested in dealing with is the
broad issue of how gender affects people, and want
to examine both women's and men's experiences,
you probably want to opt for "gender studies." If
your primary focus is to be on girls and women, you
probably want to opt for "women's studies."

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• Some feminists criticize replacing "Women's"
with "Gender" as an attempt to erase the
history of women who have made significant
strides to get into academics in the first place.
• To affect a compromise, some universities call
the program "Women and Gender studies" to
be inclusive without leaving out evidence of
contribution by women in the title.
• In practice, there is little that definitively
differentiates between gender studies and
women’s studies in terms of what is taught.
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