A few decades back, the glass
ceiling was considered to be the reason why the arenas of power were dominated
by men. The concept stresses out the impossibility of women to advance on the
scale of professions higher than they already have, claiming that women do not
lack ambition or strong will, but they are kept from doing so by invisible
obstacles. The glass ceiling is described as ‘those artificial barriers based on
attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent qualified individuals from
advancing upward in their organization into management level positions’.
Invisible and impossible to overcome, it is not found only at the top of the
pyramid, but also in middle-management and where minorities are concerned.
It was the feminist movement that drew attention that experts ought to look into
the issue of gender difference in political matters. They set about to build up
a new type of paradigm, where critics pointed out the flaws of the state and
politics, which undermined gender equality in the favor of men. The state, the
political system, and the positions of power were masculine. The glass ceiling
made it hard for women to obtain and secure their places in the same way men
did.
Women gained political participation, after the Second World War and the
Suffragist movement, when women tried to attain their representation in the
power echelons through political participation, but being less in numbers and
low in effectiveness couldn’t change or alter the patterns of development. While
in the Pakistani scenario, Fatima Jinnah headed the central committee of the
Muslim League that was appointed by the Quaid. This led to the mobilization of
the women in the political front. The Quaid-i-Azam stated that “It is a matter
of great happiness that Muslim women are also undergoing a revolutionary change.
This change is of great importance. No nation in the world can progress until
its women walk side by side with the men”.
Women have had to face obstacles with regard to their political participation.
The socio-economic factors as well as existing traditional structures are
considered as barriers to their advancement in all fields of life. In 2008, the
rate of female representation stood at 17.7% globally and this minimal
representation shows that women have had to cover a long distance for the ideal
parity in politics.
There is need of full and equal participation of women in policy making in order
to promote gender fair government. Efforts are being made to increase women’s
participation through legislative measures like gender quotas which are being
implemented at a remarkable rate all over the world. Gender quotas are
increasingly viewed as an important policy measure for boosting women’s access
to decision-making bodies. The basic purpose of a quota system is to recruit
women into a political position in order to limit their isolation in politics.
The political uplift of women lacks economic bases because of their low level of
literacy. It was 45.2 per cent for females in 2009-10 as compared to men which
stood at 69.5%.14.
Women are present at different levels of their representation like that of Union
Council, Provincial assembly and the Parliament. Seemingly it is being realized
that they have little power to achieve change due to the non-supportive
structure of the bureaucracy and the politics. In this regard there are
structural constraints of the political system of Pakistan which domesticated
the women more.
So in this context Pakistan’s politics is no exception and political ideas are
not competitive ones. So the majority of the population mobilized along the
traditional patterns which further relegated the position of women in the
society of Pakistan in-spite of getting their quotas at different level of
representation.
In Pakistan, the Devolution of Power Plan was adopted in March 2000, reserving
33 percent seats for women in legislative councils at the local, tehsil,
municipality and district level. In local councils, with an increase in the
number of councils, about 70,000 women were gaining experience in
self-government. However, members of the tehsil and district councils are
indirectly elected by the elected councilors at the local level. Women in
Pakistan also feel a clear benefit from the quotas. They have faced problems,
including hostile male attitudes, the lack of a constituency due to the process
of indirect elections, and being at the mercy of the male councilors who elect
them and often assign them to committees dealing only with ‘women's issues’.
Nevertheless, they are making their presence felt. According to Farzana Bari
"the fact that a huge number of women had taken active political role itself
triggered social change, creating waves in the country's barnyards where
traditional power structures still dominate the social and political lives of
people".
In Pakistan, the growth of a militant Islamic fundamentalism has included
special forms of discrimination against women which are justified by appeals to
Islamic tradition. This happened In-spite of equalitarian provisions in the
original constitution of the undivided Pakistan. The situation worsened
dramatically with the "Islamist" regime of Zia ul-Haq. Measures dating from
Zia's times include the Law of Evidence, in which a women witness has a status
of half that of a male witness, and the Hudood Ordinances under which the vast
majority of women in prison today have been charged.
Moreover, at the central level, women's participation in governance has seen a
very slow movement forward. Programs of special representation have gone through
several stages. All previous constitutions provided for reserved seats for women
at both the provincial and national assemblies. The allotment of seats ranged
from 5 to 10 per cent and was only through indirect elections by the members of
the assemblies themselves.
A request for a 30 per cent reservation was expressed in 1988 by the National
Campaign for Restoration of Women's Reserved Seats and figured again in a
"national consultation" organized by the ministry of women and development in
2001. Eleven political parties endorsed a 30 per cent quota for women in the
provincial and national assemblies. President Musharraf then presided over an
act passed in 2002 which allocated 17 per cent seats in the national and
provincial assemblies and the senate to women.
The 60 (of 342) seats in the national assembly are three times more than the
previous 20 seats they held. Women improved this quota when elections were held
winning 21.2 per cent of the total seats, the highest percentage of all South
Asian countries. The obstacles to women's equal participation in governance are
deeply embedded in South Asian social and cultural patterns. In the bureaucratic
and political institutions, their participation Traditional factors like the
patriarchal nature of the society and the fact that politics is seen as a
lucrative source of income and power which men attempt to control. This trend,
however is being reversed as more and more educated, talented and motivated
women are entering into the field who aim to make a difference not only in their
loves, but in the lives of the entire nation.