The Normalcy of Female Empowerment

Pakistan ranks second to last in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report. Yemen has the distinction of first ranking; an absolute, utter and dismal failure as a society in its treatment of women. But it has plenty of contenders. Afghanistan's treatment of its women is legendarily dreadful, and countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Saudi Arabia are other countries where being a woman has its absolute miseries of demeaning, violent oppression.

Now, news that a Pakistani woman, Badam Zhari, who hails from her country's northwest tribal region, where fundamental Islamism holds sway, plans to run for parliament. In so stating, she has imperilled her life. To his credit, her husband is supportive of her decision to run for a seat in the National Assembly.

Badam Zhari, right, Khadr, Pakistan

      Photograph by: Anwarullah Khan , The Associated Press

The tribal region bordering Afghanistan where Ms. Zhari hails from is a comfortable base for the Pakistani Taliban. The Pakistan military has been battling their Taliban, whereas it has traditionally encouraged the Afghani Taliban, given them training, weapons and haven. When the government of Pakistan is threatened by its own home-grown militantly violent Islamists, however, crude reality steps in.

The 40-year-old woman  -- unlike most women in the tribal region who are uneducated, rarely work outside the home, wear long, flowing clothing to cover their skin in public -- has herself completed high school. She wears a shawl wrapped around her body and head, only her eyes visible.

It was in the northwest tribal area that 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot by Islamists bringing world attention to the plight of women and girls there. Her struggle to change her society to one that respects the right of girls to have a full education was rewarded by an attempt on her life. In a society that condemns women to live out their lives as chattels to their husbands, breeders of children.

The semi-autonomous tribal region is even more fanatically conservative than most of Pakistan. And it has no use whatever for central government interference in their affairs. It is an isolated area, dominated by Pashtun tribesmen, the very same Pashtun tribesmen who make up most of the populations of the isolated provincial regions of Afghanistan and where the Taliban dominate.

France, the EU country that hosts the most Muslim immigrants of Europe, has seen its Socialist President Francois Hollande planning to enact a new law to extend restrictions on the wearing of religious symbols in state jobs into the private sector. The issue is one that is meant primarily to convince Muslim women that they need not wear traditional demeaning garments.

Two years ago, France banned Muslim veils such as the niqab or the burka, both of which cover a woman's face, the niqab leaving a small open portion for the eyes, the burqa using a net for the face that covers it completely, allowing the wearer to view the world only through that net. The suffocating head-to-toe coverings imposed upon women in fundamental Islamist countries represents an offence against humanity.

Pakistani Badam Zhari, prepared to sacrifice her life for the potential of becoming a lawmaker while living in a region of her country that recognizes no federal law impinging on the tribal laws imposed upon the isolated population, has not seen fit to discard her face covering. She may, should she be successful in obtaining her goal to sit in the National Assembly, agitate for equality of women in her backward society.

Fundamental to equality is the right to an education, the right to be respected as an independent mind, the right to be free of the dictates of a fanatically patriarchal society that strictly controls its women, leaving them devoid of basic human rights. The most basic of which is to present proudly as a woman, not as a shrouded, fearful and obedient servant.