Gendered citizenship refers to 

a differential relationship between the state and citizens

based on gender, which leads to disparities in citizenship rights.

While both men and women were targeted by the senior Bhutto’s regime, women bore the
brunt when the political opponents of the regime were faced threats to the security of the female
members of their families (Jalal 1990). What has also not been taken into account in the analysis of this
phenomenon is the practice of abducting young college girls at the behest of Pakistan People’s Party
(PPP) ministers, which became rampant toward the end of the PPP’s reign. Thus, while on the one hand
women became more visible, on the other hand their personal security was threatened. The first was
fodder for the religious elements while the latter was a worrying point for the citizenry. This explains the
willingness with which the people took to the streets in their protest against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s regime.

Religiopoly was the merging of the military and ulema, two forces who had competed for power
since independence. It is the fusion of discourses leading to religio-political power which cause
subjugation of women and minorities. This led to Zia’s Islamization. The zina laws under Islamization
didn’t receive that much backlash because reliogopoly had become so prominent at that time. The intent
of Hudood laws was not of reform as they were selectively implemented on women and punishing
specific groups except men. Also did not apply to interest. Misogyny was present before Zia but he
aggravated it.

• This section discusses how the legal discourse of Pakistan affects the women of Pakistan, and it
specially highlights the changes that affected women’s rights in the history of Pakistan, specifically during
Zia’s reign. • Prior to General Zia’s reign, Pakistan followed a legal system that closely adapted its policies
from the British colonial pattern. In this time, women’s legal status equaled that of men almost entirely.
There was some discrepancy in issues like inheritance. • The basis of Zia’s reforms rest upon the Hudood
Ordinances and Qanun- e-Shahadat (law of evidence). • Claimed reasoning behind such religious laws
was the need for reform of legal system, however, similar laws were not implemented with the same
force, in the cases of the state’s fiscal system and issues such as interest. • In cases of religious laws in
the legal system, punishment was focused on more rather than reforms. Enforcement of punishments of
theft and robbery was lackluster, whereas cases of fornication were heavily enforced and several women
were punished. • The Zina laws were the infamous laws that put women in the country at a
disadvantage. • Prior to these laws: • Adultery and rape were defined as criminal offenses while there
was no punishment for consensual sex between unmarried adults. • Rape was a crime punishable for
men alone. • Rape of one’s wife was an offense. • Consent of children under 14, was immaterial. •
Children under 7 could not be punished. • Punishment for rape was transportation for life or prison for
10 years plus a fine or max 25 years. • Punishment for rape of a minor wife(under 12 years) was same as
that for rape. • Punishment for marital rape was prison for 2 years max. • Punishment for adultery was
either prison for 5 years or a fine or both.

Post Hudood Laws: • Adultery, rape and consensual sex between unmarried adults were all
considered zina. • Women could be charged for the offense of rape. • Rape on wife was not considered
an offense. • Children regardless of age could be convicted of zina. • Consent of a child could be put
forward as a defense by the accused. • Punishment for rape was now max 10 years, 30 lashes and a fine.
• Minors could be imprisoned for up to 5 years. • Adultery and consensual sex between adults were
made non-bailable offenses. • Charges of zina could be made by any person.
 • These laws would have sparked more unrest; however, the society had been normalized into
this religious extremism mindset. • Now that anyone could report zina, people became tools of
surveillance. • Furthermore, cases of zina were proclaimed against political rivals, to threaten, to handle
disputes and to destroy a women’s life in case of rejection of advances. • Moreover, the laws also stated
that a woman now had to prove rape was committed. For such cases, proof was the testimony of 4 pious
Muslim men. In cases where the evidence could not be established, women could be and were charged
with fornication as they had admitted a sexual act had taken place. • Therefore, women rarely gained
any legal justice in courts. • These laws, hence, tilted the power into the hands of the men even more. •
Religious courts pressed for even harsher laws. Laws that would see women, even sitting in suspicious
circumstances with a male stranger, punished. • Thus, a narrative was subtly introduced that women
were sources of impurity and seduction and therefore required control and surveillance.

Chadar and Chardiwari: • The concept of Chadar and Chardiwari has been used to control and
restrict women. • Chadar refers to how women were and are pressured to dress. • Chardiwari refers to
the restrictive space women were forced into. • Women were restricted to the house, and any matters
outside their house, women were forced to be separate in they day-to-day matters. Separate banking
outlets, police stations, universities were implemented to ensure the restriction of women’s social space.
• Where women had to be allowed beyond the restricted space of chardiwari, the concept of chaddar
was used to surveil the personal space. • Surveillance of women by means of chadar and chardewari in
Pakistan became the domain of all men in the society. The purpose of chadar was subtly surveil the
chastity and discipline of women. • During Zia’s reign alliances between the military and segments of the
Ulema led to use of media and the mosque etc. to ensure intimidation and ensure control over women.

Women and the Media discourse in Pakistan: • Women were portrayed in the media as the
other of men, who were signified as heroes and providers of the state. • Moreover, the dynamic of good
woman/bad woman was created through media platforms. • Media images, shows, movies, newspapers,
articles and poems were used as a medium to put forth the image of a good woman, who they
considered would be self-sacrificing, domesticated, virtuous, emotional, religious and irrational.
Anything other than this would be considered a bad woman trait. • Censorship in the social realm was
extended. • PTV newscasters and announcers were pressured to cover their heads. PTV was directed to
curtail advertisements portraying female models or any advertisements that promoted obscenity. •
Directors of TV shows were instructed to not include any scenes where a man and women were sitting
on the same bed, even if they were portraying a husband and wife. • Hyperreality of Sermon: Religious
scholars also used platforms such as TV spots to spread their messages. However, some scholars
transferred very offensive and controlling opinions and messages to the community. Dr Israr Ahmad held
a narrative that stated all working women should retire and women should not be allowed to go out of
the house.

Women’s Agency in Pakistan: • Throughout the history of Pakistan, there have been agencies or
organizations that fought for women’s rights. • Contrary to popular belief, agencies even existed at local
levels and not just in the metropolitan cities. • At local levels, women were socialized into obedience, or
this was the norm they were raised into, that they could not discern gender inequalities. However,
women still at some level resisted the control over them. • Analysts are stumped over the existence of
right-wing political and social women’s groups. • However, in this whole narrative of women’s right and
the fight against religious extremism or control, we consider women as a unitary entity. It has been
assumed all women will react to or resist religion-political forces in the same way. • In reality, some
women find agency in opposing positions. • The agencies fighting for women’s rights use various
methods to protest against unfair laws and regulations, and while this agency has not won them the
rights, it’s not because they have been the subject of passive oppression. • They have made alliances
with different groups throughout Pakistan’s history.

State has not been a silent agent: it’s been a masculine agent that passes laws for men’s
benefits. Cultural, political and social levels are important to focus on. Women’s question still
unresolved. Hudood ordinances still not removed entirely despite some effort in 2006.

1. Prior to General Zia’s Islamization drive, what was the legal status of Women (their rights) in
Pakistan?

Ans. In most cases, the law provided with a status equal to that of men. Their rights and
responsibilities were also identical to those accorded to men. Those areas where they did not enjoy
equal rights, such as in inheritance, were also incidentally the ones in which the colonial legal
discourse denied women equal rights by invoking or not invoking religious laws of the respective
communities.

2. What has been the impact of hudood laws on Pakistani society in general; and on gender
relations in particular?

Ans. By partially devolving the surveillance function of the state upon society in general, which in a
patriarchal society like Pakistan effectively means men, and by removing the recourse to justice for
women, the discourse created power relations in which the balance clearly tilted towards the male
segment. (Surveillance: under the zina law, anyone can report and lay charges for a case of zina
whether aggrieved or not). (Justice for women removed: needed 4 witnesses to prove rape
otherwise charged with adultery). In a psychosocial sense, the female subject constituted by the
legal discourse is impure, enticing, and seductive and thus there is a need for control and
surveillance.

3. According to the author, how does dress/attire influence the embeddedness of gendered roles
in society?

Ans. Ghulam Mohammad and the ulema refused to sit with unveiled women in the Constituent
Assembly. Nor has it been confined to women solely. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, for instance, promoted
shalwar kamiz as the national dress. He also made mandatory a Mao Tse Tung–style uniform for the
members of the ruling party, especially for his inner cabinet. Indeed, much of his dress campaign was
clearly directed at men. Both men and women were encouraged to wear the awami (of the masses)
dress but were not obliged to. Women were free to wear other dresses, and veiling was expected
but not coerced. Women’s dress, however, became a major issue during the Zia years. It is
interesting to note that the concern momentarily moved away from the issue of purdah (the practice
of veiling) and was cast in religio-nationalist terms. The nationalist binary of Hindu-Muslim was
transposed to women’s dress so that sari was designated as “Indian” and thus by implication un-
Islamic. The shalwar kamiz and dupatta were declared the national dress for women. This was ironic
because, as Mumtaz and Shaheed note, “between Bangladesh and India, there must be between
two or three times as many Muslim women who wear sari as those who wear shalwar kameez”.
What is also ironic is that all Punjabi women in India, whether Hindu or Sikh, wear shalwar kameez
despite the fact that they are neither Muslim nor Pakistani

4. In addition to dress (Chadar), Zia’s regime also promoted the notion of Chardiwari – what was
this? And how did it reorganize women’s lives in Pakistan?

Ans. Zia ul Haq used the notion of taqadus or namoos (sanctity) of chadar and chardewari.
Repeatedly he proclaimed that he would ensure that the sanctity of chadar and chardewari was
upheld and safeguarded. Partly this was an implicit (but repeated) reference to the excesses of the
senior Bhutto era, especially with respect to women. But mainly the notion of chadar and
chardewari was to provide the panopticon from which not only surveillance could be performed but
also female sexuality and body disciplined.

Chadar both created and restricted the personal space of women while the chardewari restricted
and organized their social and cultural space. Though literally chardewari means “four walls” (of the
house), the restrictive space created by it was not only confined to the family or domestic sphere
(space). This space was reproduced outside the home as well. Outside the domestic context, the
chardewari extended to separate banking outlets for women, separate police stations, separate work
space within offices, and the women’s university. Wherever women had to be allowed beyond the
range of the panopticon of chardewari, such as in educational institutions and television, chadar
mandated the restrictive personal space in which she could operate.

The perpetrators were not apprehended clearly showed that the purpose of chadar and chardewari
is not to protect women from men: its sole purpose is the surveillance and discipline of women.
(1984 in Nawabpur, a small village in Southern Punjab, the female family members of a carpenter
suspected of having relations with the daughter of the local landlord were molested and paraded
naked through the village. The sanctity of chadar and chardewari was trampled.)

5. According to the author, how has the media discourse in Pakistan (print and electronic) fixed the
meaning(s) of what it means to be a woman in Pakistan?

Ans. On one level, woman in the media discourse is constituted as the other of man—the “national
hero,” the guardian of national and ideological frontiers, the provider of subsistence, and so on. In
each case, the superior meaning is ascribed to the other of woman, thus relegating her to an inferior
status. On the other level, a binary relationship is created at the intrawoman level, i.e., between the
“good” and the bad woman; between what Hafeez (1981: 224) terms as chiragh e khana (literally
“lamp of the home”) and shama e mehfil (literally, “party illumination”). Here, once again, the first of
the two terms in the binary is accorded superiority over the latter.

In literature, the characterization of women, such as by Akbar Illahabadi in poetry and Deputy Nazir
Ahmad in prose, creates the good woman/bad woman binary.

First, a different genre of texts started to displace the earlier media texts. Playwrights such as the
husband and wife team of Ashfaq Ahmad and Bano Qudsia, with their very fatalistic view of self and
society, started to occupy more and more space on the airwaves. On the other hand, plays that
projected the feudal culture also began to be aired. Together these texts conveyed an image of the
society that was fatalistic as well as traditional. In doing so they portrayed the image of women in
essentialist terms. Hussain and Shah’s survey of programming during this time included the following
essentialist categories in which good women were portrayed: self-sacrificing, self-abnegating,
virtuous, domesticated, mother, daughter, sister, honest in poverty, loyal, religious, emotional,
irrational. (1991: 169–73). Anyone outside these categories was a bad woman.

The second important way in which the media discourse engages in a meaning fixation exercise is
what I term the hyperreality of the sermon. Religious scholars do not confine themselves to
addressing captive gatherings of men (in the mosque): their message is now beamed right into the
living room (Dr. Israr Ahmad). It was not that ulema had never before been featured on the
television, but the message that was beamed into the living rooms was different. On women, his
stated position was that all working women should be retired and pensioned and that women
should not be allowed to go out of the house except in emergencies.