Uks’ desk diary 2023 commemorates women’s struggle for Pakistan

Keeping up with its annual tradition, the Uks Research Centre launched its desk diary 2023 at an informal gathering on Saturday, Human Rights Day 2022.

The diary’s title is ‘Women in Pakistan: 75 Years and Beyond!’ The title of their first diary in 1998 was ‘Women of Pakistan: 50 Years and Beyond’.

“After 25 years we’re entering the 75th era of it,” said Uks Founder and Executive Director Tasneem Ahmer. Journalist Zubeida Mustafa had reviewed the first diary, which Tasneem remembered as being an unimpressive book on the face of it but with all the required information.

In their first edition they had tried to portray Pakistani women from all walks of life. “We tried to highlight first women of any profession,” she said.

She added that there was representation of the first female taxi driver, the first dentist, the first scientist, and the first radio producer or announcer. “We had put all the information of first women in any field together.”

In the first diary they gave a glimpse of how Pakistan’s women work in the system. “Everything published in the diary was from the print media’s old press briefing,” she said, adding that they were now celebrating 75 years of Pakistan, and the women who were part of making the country.

She remembered her time at the University of Karachi, where they would mingle with male students, but there was always a resentment against the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami, which would stress on a three-foot gap between male and female students. She said they never paid heed to such resentments.

Clinical psychologist Dr Asha Bedar, who has expertise on gender, and violence against women and children, said she grew up with the diary. She recalled how everything they did while growing up was a rebellion.

She pointed out how she used to be part of different marches with her mother and aunts, but the Aurat March is very much a recent thing.

She shared that she had conservative as well as liberal friends around her while growing up. “That was a confusing time. Often there was a difference between the two worlds.”

Taking the conversation forward, Tasneem stressed how Pakistani society started living in two worlds in the late 1970s and then in the 1980s. She recalled how her university life had ended when the military regime began in the country.

“I had a viva the day martial law was imposed,” she recalled. “It was July 5, 1977.” Her family then left Karachi and moved to Islamabad.

She recalled the move as being a different experience, as the port city had openness. “We didn’t feel that openness in Islamabad,” she said, adding that she started her first job in a newspaper titled ‘Muslim’, which was on a trial run.

She pointed out how different it was coming from a much-protected environment of KU, where she had a lot of male friends, to a news desk, where being a young woman in a newsroom was tough.

She shared that sitting in the newsroom she tolerated all sorts of comments, as she was the only female on the news desk. “The day I didn’t tie my hair, male journalists would recite poetry.”

She said that her coping mechanism was reading books. Later, she moved back to Karachi and started working at ‘The Star’ newspaper, which she said was liberal not only editorially but also in terms of the newsroom environment.

While working for ‘Muslim’, she recalled, there used to be pages that would go blank because of censorship. Seeing blank spaces, readers used to know that things have been censored. Later, those blank spaces would be filled up with crime and showbiz stories, especially in Urdu newspapers.

All insensitive news related to women started becoming part of those blank spaces, she said. “All kinds of rubbish would go on those blank spaces,” she added, pointing out that vulgarity was not censored, but political debate and discourse was absolutely censored.