The pattern of women’s engagement in civil soci-
ety, politics, and governance has changed over the
years. During the first half of the twentieth century
South Asian women, mainly aristocratic and
upper-middle-class, became involved in social wel-
fare organizations. The nationalist movements
recruited a few of these female leaders to mobilize
support of female voters. The last three decades,
however, have seen a sea change in women’s in-
volvement in social and political organizations.
Beginning in the 1970s, following the United
Nations declaration of the International Women’s
Decade (1976–85), hundreds of women’s organiza-
tions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
have emerged. Some of these organizations provide
services such as education, health, credit, and em-
ployment, while others advocate women’s human
rights. They have mobilized grassroots women into
economic, social, and political activities; the lead-
ership is no longer exclusively upper-middle-class
women.
Women’s organizations now go beyond the tra-
ditional role of simply mobilizing women’s votes
for political parties. Increasingly they are pressing
political parties to explicitly address women’s issues
in their platforms and to ensure a critical mass of
women representatives in national parliaments and
local governments.
Predictably, the growing visibility of women in
the public arena has elicited a backlash from the
religious extremists. In Pakistan, the Islamist forces
succeeded in introducing new Islamic laws curtail-
ing women’s equal rights. In Bangladesh, they
exerted pressure through fatwas that violated the
existing laws of the land. In India, they successfully
reversed the government’s decision to introduce
uniform civil family laws for all religious commu-
nities. However, women’s organizations continue
to resist the religious extremist forces and have
been in the forefront of citizens’ movements for sec-
ularism, human rights, and democracy.
Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932)
was a pioneer in the emergence of Muslim women’s
participation in public space in South Asia. She
established the first Muslim Girls’ school (later
a college) in 1911 in Calcutta and founded the
Anjuman-i-Khawatin-i-Islam Bangla (Bengali Mus-
lim Women’s Association) in 1916. From 1903 she
was a vanguard feminist author with articles on the
oppression of Muslim women. She strongly criti-
cized the role of mullahs and their misuse of reli-
gion. Her best-known book, Sultana’s Dream
(published in English in 1905) describes a feminist
utopia (Hossain 1988). Her writing demonstrates
the long-standing indigenous feminism in South Asia.
south asia 53pakistan
In the 1920s and 1930s several elite Muslim
women entered the public sphere in five major
areas: education, health care, social reform, literary
culture, and political work (Asghar Ali 2000). The
influx of refugee women and children after the par-
tition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947
impelled many middle-class women to become
involved in charity and volunteer organizations.
The All Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA)
established branches all over the country. Though
closely tied to the government, APWA launched a
campaign in 1955 against the prime minister’s
polygamous second marriage. APWA successfully
lobbied to create the Family Laws Commission,
which drafted the Family Laws ordinance in 1961.
It set a minimum age for marriage, made second
marriage and divorce difficult for men, and facili-
tated divorce for women (Hussain 1991).
In the early 1970s in Pakistan the popularly
elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971–7)
supported women’s advancement by appointing
women to high level government positions and by
establishing a National Commission on the Status
of Women. Several women’s organizations, such as
Aurat and Shirkat Gah, emerged during this period.
However, the military regime of General Zia ul-Haq
(1977–88) which overthrew Bhutto in 1977 imposed
a dress code in offices and schools, introduced
Islamic punishments through the Hudood Ordinance
(1979), and established Sharì≠a courts. Women’s
organizations protested against these restrictions.
In 1981, the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) was
formed with branches in all four major cities of
Pakistan. WAF was the first organization to pub-
licly protest against the actions of the military
regime. In the 1980s and 1990s several NGOs and
women’s organizations emerged, some with grass-
roots connections. Women (Asma Jahangir, Hina
Zilani) assumed leadership of mainstream human
rights organizations. They succeeded in making
violence against women, like honor killings, major
issues in the human rights discourse nationally and
internationally.
Women led by the mother and daughter team of
Nusrat and Benazir Bhutto were active in the pro-
democracy movement of the 1980s in Pakistan.
After the return of a democratically elected govern-
ment (1988–99) several women were elected to
parliament, though their numbers remained small.
In the current parliament in Pakistan, elected in
2002, a system of women’s reserved seats (elected
indirectly) has created a 21 percent representation
of women in the lower house and a 17 percent rep-
resentation in the upper house of parliament.