On reaching Jamrud Bazaar. I
boarded Peshawar bound bus, and as soon I seated a kind of conversation took
place between me and my seat fellow. There was a group of ladies seated right
behind us in the bus and listening to our conversation. First our discussion
went smoothly but later on it entered a twisty curve when I asked my seat mate
for the meaning of gender equality. To this he replied, "I don't know the
bookish definition of gender equality but I have heard from my colleagues and
elders that it means" giving dominant shape to females over males", then I
requested him to name those people or elders who said so but he simply avoided
answering plainly and in a kind of tongue-in-cheek manner replied back" Well,
it’s almost impossible to enumerate those people because everyone in my village
has the same point of view about Gender Equality ". The journey was long so I
unleashed my thoughts and viewpoints about gender equality to him. I made it
clear to him that many people try to vainly max gender and sex with each other
and they can't differentiate in these two terms. Sex is basically a biological
difference and God gifted physical shape and appearance. We divide sex in two
categories, one is feminine (female) and the second one is masculine (male). A
masculine can't give birth to a baby because it is the quality which only exists
in the feminine, only feminine has the quality to feed (milk) to her baby,
although a masculine can make his chest prominent like a female’s breast through
various exercises and surgeries but it will be called chest instead of breast,
still he can't feed a baby as naturally as a feminine does. Having a different
sex something natural and the thing which we don't choose for ourselves, it
chooses for us the third party which is supreme and our creature "God". If these
are God gifted characteristics then we have to accept this and we have to
perform our due role in the existing sex category. Gender means the “norms,
values or specific roles which give individuals, groups, communities or
societies to a female and male is called gender. As usually we say females are
only for cooking, washing dishes, ironing or house holding and males are for
jobs, decision making or governance etc. We have divided Gender in groups
instead of bringing gender equality. Gender equality means to provide equal
opportunities to both stakeholders, male and female. A female can do all the
duties effectively which a man does and male can also perform all the duties
effectively which a female does. Gender discrimination and roles are varying
from area to area, community to community and culture to culture. In Myanmar
females go out for work and men perform the house duties and act as watch dogs
for the houses. In rural areas of Pakistan, because of having less or no
opportunities, females are not grooming or allowing to express themselves openly
but in urban areas females have all the opportunities which a man has, that's
why in urban areas females are performing their roles shoulder by shoulder with
men. They equally participate in decision making process; they go out together
for Picnic's and shopping etc. It is also true that each sex has specialty in
some segments or field of life like a female can't bowl fast as compare to
Shoaib Akhter or Bret Lee and a male can't make a weeping baby silent as a
female does. Definitely both sexes can do this but specific sex performs these
duties naturally, effectively and meaningfully.
In recent past in Pakistan, we have some examples of females having success,
like Samina Baig was the first Pakistani woman to climb up Mount Everest,
Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to become the 11th Prime Minister of
Pakistan. It was Arfa Karim Randhawa who became the world youngest Microsoft
Certified Professional at the age of nine but unfortunately we lost her due to
heart attack. It doesn't mean that these ladies were from other planets like PK,
these ladies were also from this soil and I am sure that we have thousands of
ladies like these but we have fasten them by the gender tags string. Now it is
time to unfasten these gender tags. So after understanding about sex and gender
we should treat both parties equally in every field of life and encourage them
to go ahead and achieve desired goals.