Sherry ‘Dragon Lady’ Rehman decries gender-based resistance and disrespect

Even today, when it comes to women parliamentarians, what is often being discussed about them in the galleries of the legislatures is their attire and shoes, not the point they make or the laws they try to get passed.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Sherry Rehman said this while conversing with the moderator, Maheen Usmani, during a session on the final day of the Adab Festival 2020 on Sunday at the Arts Council.

When asked if during her parliamentary career she had seen incidents of women parliamentarians being belittled, Sherry’s reply was: “Actually, I have seen far too many.”

She said that sometimes women faced resistance and disrespect on the basis of their gender from the most unimagined of places. “Those daily diminutions happen fraction by fraction, regularly, and they often meet with no resistance.”

She lamented that perfumes and shoes being used by women parliamentarians were very often discussed more than the issues they tried to bring up in parliament. According to her, the general perception of her being a “dragon lady” saved her from such detractors.

Sharing a recent incident, Sherry said she was in a meeting of a parliamentary group that was held off camera, and the responsibility of taking notes of the meeting was assigned to a woman.

The senator said that one of the empowered ministers started to call her “Bachi” (girl) in sentences like “Bachi yeh kaam kar rahi hai” (the girl is doing this job).

Sherry said that after she heard the belittling title for the second time, she asked the minister to stop referring to the woman as Bachi. After the meeting, the woman came to the senator and thanked her for speaking up for her.

Unlike the other sessions at the festival, which ran for an hour each, the duration of the conversation with the senator lasted only half an hour or so.

Because of this, the moderator found it difficult to cover all the noteworthy aspects of Sherry’s life. The senator has a master’s degree in art history and has had a long career in journalism.

Her activism for human rights eventually took her into the political domain. She not only served as a parliamentarian but was also inducted into the federal cabinet once as the information minister.

Sherry, who did not hesitate to share that she was 59 years old, also served as the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, a post that, being an outspoken person, she was reluctant to accept, as she thought she was not a good candidate for a diplomatic position.

As for her journalistic career, she said journalism allowed her and her peers to see themselves as agents of change. She remembered the draconian laws of the Zia regime to suppress freedom of the press.

But at the same time, she remarked that the current scenario of the media, with journalists not being paid, was also something that had never been witnessed before. “Pakistan is a dangerous place for journalists.”

According to the senator, this impression was altogether wrong that someone had given press freedom to the journalists of Pakistan as a gift. She maintained that Pakistani journalists had fought for and earned whatever freedom they had.

To the surprise of many, the moderator said Sherry had once also been an anchorperson on a television channel, to which she replied that although it was Musharraf’s era, which was known for liberal values, she had to stop doing her TV programme because she was asked to cover her head with a dupatta.

She said that covering one’s head with a dupatta is an individual’s personal choice, and she respected all those who do that.

However, she added, it is not the job of the state to tell individuals what to do in matters of their personal freedom.

On a recent debate in the Senate, in which a senator allegedly tried to link honour killings with culture, Sherry said that killing a woman just because she married of her own free will was something that neither our culture allowed nor the religion sanctioned. She bemoaned the fact that even in this day and age we had such kind of discussions in parliament.

The senator also recounted her memories of the day when PPP leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Sherry said she was in a vehicle behind the one in which Benazir was when the blast had occurred.

The senator recalled it as one of the darkest days of her life.

At the end of the session, Sherry stressed the need for fighting climate change. She said Pakistan was one of the countries that was most affected by climate change, and immediate measures were required to deal with environmental degradation.