By YesPakistan.com Staff Writer

When the issue of women's political empowerment in Pakistan is brought, most of discussion tends to focus on women into positions in the upper echelons of government. However, this is no guarantee of women's empowerment. Nor is it a guarantee that women's and children's needs will be met by a female leader. This is why grassroots organization is a key in women's political empowerment in Pakistan.

According to the report Human Development in South Asia 2000: Gender and Governance, organization at the grassroots level allows individuals to play an important role in governing their communities.

For women, a successful grassroots experience presents the opportunity to form a coherent voice, to be heard and to make a difference in their communities. Across South Asia, including in Pakistan, women's experience in local government has varied, with some countries being more successful than others in gaining higher female participation.

Until recently, female representation in local governance in Pakistan was negligible. Here, politics is traditionally a male domain. All financial, economic, commercial and political negotiations conducted outside the home are by men. Women have very limited access to decision-making powers, and they have a severe lack of access to and control over financial resources.

This reduces women's chances of contesting elections, since men have control over assets and are relatively better educated, they have a dominant position in terms of political power and women remain surrogate actors in the political process.

Tokenism is also an issue at the local level of government. Because women councilors may not necessarily be educated, their lack of awareness leads to situations where they may become dependent on male councilors or political parties, focusing more on men's interests than women's concerns. In some cases, women are elected without actually participating in the actual functioning of local bodies.

For example, in Baluchistan, Pakistan, while the proportion of women councilors was as high as 16 percent before the 1998 local election, many of the women were council members only on paper.

But local government is not the only grassroots level milieu where women can be empowered. As NGOs play a greater role in Pakistan's human development, another structure has emerged which has the potential to empower women locally: development organizations:

Development Organizations (DO) are community-based organizations, which are responsible for administering and running a specific project, often with the help of an NGO. One organization which has used this model effectively is the Human Development Foundation, which has development projects in every province of Pakistan. Its DO's work in conjunction with HDF staff. In their case, the salient features of the DO's include participation from both men and women, where male and female DO's have been formed.

There is a set of bylaws that the participants are given that they to agree to become a part of the DO. In most cases, since many people in the project area cannot read, the bylaws are read to them and translated in their native language. Individuals must sign or put their thumbprint to become part of a DO. These members then elect a president and secretary.

The president and secretary are asked to attend a Community Management Skills Training CMST) workshop. The secretary needs reading and writing skills whenever possible. Out of these DOs, members for health committees and parent teacher association are chosen (health and education are two of the foci of HDF's work. Economic development is the third).

From this point, the DO's not only administer and maintain HDF's micro-credit program which provides accessible and interest-free loans to poor, rural communities. They also encourage savings by the members. These savings are later used for internal lending.

Another side benefit of these organizations is that people learn to sit together and discuss their other problems and issues. This also generates a feeling of empowerment and self-help.

While the DO's do not necessarily work with local government bodies, they are, however, a powerful way of empowering both men and women at the grassroots level who have traditionally been disenfranchised. In particular, since women are allowed participation in these organizations, many of the problems they face in gaining power through local government bodies (i.e. lack of assets and education) are not reflected in the DO system.

The DO model can be replicated at the local level to encourage the empowerment of Pakistani women. However, they are not the only solution to the problem. Unless existing mechanisms and attitudes that deny women chances in decision-making are not changed, female participation and empowerment in decision-making will remain a dream in Pakistan.

Date/Time Last Modified: 6/18/2002 8:07:55 AM

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