LAHORE : The 10th session of the series of City Dialogue, organised by the Urban Unit with collaboration of the Quaid-e-Azam Library, was held at the library on Saturday.
The session featured guest speaker Ms Simi Kamal, senior group head, grants, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF). She spoke about the woman empowerment as a vital tool to combat poverty and violence in urban centres of the Third World countries like Pakistan.
Her presentation focused the statistics related to various aspects of women empowerment across Punjab in particular and Pakistan in general. “Pakistan ranked on the 143rd number in Global Gender Gap Index Ranks of 144 countries, 2017. Women tend to have lesser access to financial institutions and saving mechanisms and are paid less than male counterparts here just like the rest of the world. They have especially very weak representation in decision making committees and task forces in our set-up”, she said.
She stressed on ensuring representation of women in all local governments, city governments, law enforcement agencies and other government departments for their say in important matters that effected the urban life and the issues faced by them. She said, "Islam as our religion has given a complete code of conduct for respecting women but, remorsefully, we as a nation are not following that. We interpret only what suits us the best."
Earlier, Dr Nasir Javed, CEO, Urban Unit, said that 50 percent of female population needed its rights well respected – not for its sake only but for the progress and development of Pakistani nation and society both. The participants included Anjum Raza, Mumtaz Mughal from Aurat Foundation, Dr Zeeshan Khan, Muhammad Zubair, Mushtaq Ahmed, OFAM and Dr Samal Khan. Foreigner participants were Danielle Johnson, Bach Vu and Jama Muhammad.
Ms Kamal is Pakistan’s eminent geographer and a Cambridge graduate. She is a strong activist, advocating especially gender equality. She is also the chief of party of the USAID-sponsored Gender Equity Programme.
The City Dialogue is a weekly session on civic issues while engaging the commoners in problem solving process with their feedback and suggestions. The Urban Unit intends to bring about a positive change in condition of cities by making citizens conscious of their role in settling the civic issues and asserting their position as change makers besides being critics of the system. The next dialogue will be conducted by psychiatrist Prof Dr Muhammad Riaz Bhatti on the subject of urban life and depression at 11am on Appril 7.
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