An Open Letter on International Women’s Day

On this International Women’s Day, I would like to write an open letter to my community.

I don’t feel safe walking alone on the street outside my home. At times, I wear my abaya and joggers, and head outside for a walk. Sometimes during the day and sometimes at night. But most times, after about 20 or so minutes of walking, I quicken my steps and head back home. Nothing about beautiful sunsets, dazzling stars, and towering trees scare me. Men scare me. I know not every man intends to harm me but growing up in Pakistan has taught me that every man has the potential to harm me.

The ‘Feminist Movement‘ in Pakistan has its supporters and enemies. I don’t want to talk about either today. Each year, Aurat March is appreciated and bashed. I don’t want to talk about either of those reactions today. On this International Women’s Day, I only wish to speak of my experience as a young woman growing up in Pakistan. There is beauty in my experience but there is also pain. One is not mutually exclusive of the other.

My heart breaks when I hear ‘women are less intelligent than men’, ‘women belong in the kitchen’, ‘women are weak’. I want to scream when I hear about a husband hitting his wife, a child being molested, a girl not being sent to school, a boy being told not to cry, a woman being killed for speaking up. There are so many injustices but there is one strand of commonality: someone bleeds, someone gets hurts.

We Don’t Have to Agree to Empathise

There are political, social, moral, religious, and institutional debates about feminism. There are so many ways of looking at the same issue, slogan, incident, demand, and solution. Each of us looks at these through our own moral and social standpoints. Maybe yours is different from mine. Maybe if we sat down to have a discussion about the female experience in Pakistan, we could disagree on most things. But there is only one thing I would ask of you during our discussion: to have empathy. Maybe you don’t want to call yourself a feminist, maybe you don’t agree with the message, or the ideology, or one of the multiple interpretations it has. But you know as well as I do, women and men in our society are hurting. In our relative capacities and differential ways, we are hurting. Maybe your version of woman empowerment differs from others.

Still, on this International Women’s Day, I would encourage you to talk to your mothers, wives, daughters, sisters about what their experience is being a woman in Pakistan. Maybe if we can’t agree on anything, we can at least acknowledge our society is flawed and needs to grow. This world can never be heaven, it can’t be perfect and ideal. But it also doesn’t have to be hell. Spread a little kindness and appreciate the women around you.

Also Read: Fatima Al-Fihri’s Contribution to Education and Lessons We Can Learn From Her