Poll Results: Pakistan’s image and women’s rights

Posted on July 15, 2006
Filed Under >Adil Najam, ATP Poll, Law & Justice, Society, Women
20 Comments
Total Views: 34299

It seems that ATP readers believe that the most important things that can be done to improve Pakistan’s image in terms of women’s rights need to be done in Pakistan.

Most importantly (46%) in terms of repealing the Hudood Ordinance and other laws that restrict women’s rights; and in societal education in terms of changing the behavior of Pakistani men towards women (27%). A significant proportion (17%) felt that the most important thing is to highlight the many rights that Islam gives to women. Another 8% felt that the thing to do is to aggressively publicize positive news about Pakistan women, while 1 reader opted for launching a ‘charm offensive’ on the subject as the most important thing to do. (See original questions, here).

Even more important than these statistics was the spirited discussion on the post. The two strong conclusions that came out were:

  1. The focus of what we do ought to be improving the real lives of real women in Pakistan and the ‘image’ question could become a distraction women, especially from the challenges faced by rural and poorer women (for excellent discussion on this, see this post on the blog Boundless Meanderings).
  2. To the extent something needs to be done about the ‘image’ question, everything on the list of questions ought to be done simultaneously; although the most important things are those that change the situation on the ground.

Overall, I felt that our first experiment in having an ATP Poll went quite well. The quality of the discussion was excellent, and a reasonable number of responses (52) were recieved over the day-and-a-half that the poll was up. Of course, this is not really a scientific sampling; there is an obvious smaple bias in terms of who visits this blog; and there were only the minimal design controls. Therefore, I make no claims to broad representativeness. However, I do feel that the results are indicative of how a significant subset of Pakistanis–in Pakistan and abroad–feel.

As many of you noticed, the poll had to be removed quite early and I fear that it got only about half the votes I had estimated (largely becasue it seems that our weekend traffic is quite different from weekday visitors, and weekend visitors did not get a chance to vote). I apologize for this technical glitch–it turns out that the website that the poll was hosted by restarted teh tabulation suddenly on day 2 for no real reason. Since resolving this was beyond the technical ability of this web neophyte, I just pulled the poll and have tabulated the last results I had recorded. I assume, the results could have been different had more people (espeically our weekend visitors) had a chance to vote; but you still do have a chance to continue the discussion here.

20 responses to “Poll Results: Pakistan’s image and women’s rights”

  1. readinglord says:

    The very issue ‘Womem’s Rights’ show that the women are not human beings and are somewhat a sub-human creature otherwise they would have joined with the men to strive for the human rights which are denied institutionally in the Pakiland.

  2. Iffat says:

    It’s not about image…it’s about being stagnant. Like stagnant body of water. Is it of any use to anyone? No!!
    It’s a nation and she is part of the nation. She is not there to use up the resources, but give back as all muslims…all people should. Her education, her wealth and her giving back to society will make a better nation…not today and maybe not tomorrow but one day. Let’s not be like these the west and look for instant grad. It’s our number one down fall and the rest just follows.

  3. Muhammad TAYYAB says:

    I think this was done just to increase the religious disparity. We are really confused people. We know that we are Muslims somehow but don’t wish to have a Muslim society. because it can badly damage our image in the world. So shattering is our belief in islam. We don’t have trust that if we have an islamic system, we would have better moral values.
    I have a great fear that this would retalliate the so called muslim extremists to start the real struggle for an islamic Pakistan. i have an understanding that if we have a Muslim society we would be comfortable in implementing it in our personal life. But if we most of us just want to be Muslim by name thinking islam is a personal matter (Namaz personal deed, Parda aankhon maen), so we might need to rethink our ideology as well. I don’t think we can have that much miberty in islam.

  4. M.Ihtisham says:

    that really very important u done a great job.

  5. Gerry Lennon says:

    Like the blog, come and have a look at mine if you like (www.netvirgin.org/wordpess) – concentrates on whether it’s time to just ban tobacco outright, or is Government and The Corporate World simply making too much money from it? Basically, I want it to become a debate on the interference in our daily lives by the disconnected “Lords and Masters” in power, and what can the average tom, dick or harry do about it.

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