Nida Kirmani, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences (MGSHSS) has co-authored an article titled, ‘Moving Beyond the Binary: Gender-based Activism in Pakistan’ which has been published by Feminist Dissent (No. 3, 2018), a journal of Warwick University, 2018.
Dr. Kirmani’s article challenges the binary framework within which women in Pakistan have been viewed, by political actors, the state, and more broadly as well, as either ‘secular/feminist/godless/westernised’ or ‘authentic/Islamic/traditional’. The article begins by contextualising the geneology of this binary in Pakistan’s colonial and political history, which has led to the state’s side-lining of moderate religious voices and promotion of right-wing religious parties that suited its political objectives. “Even the scholarship produced by the women’s movement, which arose in response to a politicised the Islamization process begun under military rule in the 1980s, inadvertently reproduces this binary as activists sought to assert a rights-based agenda and were supported by international donor funds. A shift in recent years in response to west-based international scholarship post 9/11, which focusses on the subjectivity and organisation of Islamist women, has influenced work on women in Pakistan as well as a donor turn to funding faith-based initiatives,” elaborated Dr. Kirmani.
The paper also examines current gender justice movements that emerged independently at a grass-roots level, and draws attention to their effectiveness despite lack of strong linkages with either the women’s movement or Islamist women. These include rights-based mobilisations by peasant women, community health workers, tribal women in the Taliban/conflict-affected north-west, and transgender activism. It ends by challenging feminists to engage more deeply with these forms of activism.
Dr. Kirmani is Associate Professor of Sociology at MGSHSS. She has published widely on issues related to gender, Islam, women’s movements, development and urban studies in India and Pakistan. She completed her PhD in 2007 from the University of Manchester in Sociology.
Article details can be viewed here.
