Haider Ali questions the role of South’s elite class in running community organizations and marginalization of GBC By Haider Ali Shakespeare in his two classic masterpieces Hamlet and Merchant of Venice has exposed the aristocracy and upper classes’ corruption, immorality, their oppressive behaviour towards the middle and lower classes, their victimization, exploitation, and commodification of the poor through rituals. The …

Besides Ms Elma, Pakistan’s Zainab Abbas and India’s Ridhima Pathak have also been inducted into ICC panel of Insiders for the World Cup 2019. Pakistan’s Zainab Abbas and India’s Ridhima Pathak are other two shinning ladies from the biggest cricket event on planet earth who have been inducted into ICC panel of Insiders. While Zainab Abbas and Ridhima Pathak are well-known …

The stories of murdered women are recorded with grim regularity in one and half inches of a single newspaper column Mohammed Hanif You can find the news about Pakistan’s war on women buried deep inside the metro pages of Urdu newspapers. I stumbled upon it a few years ago. I noticed that I could pick up my newspaper and almost …

Dr Reshma Perveen-Mosofir Today I woke up to photographs on my newsfeed on social media showing women sitting in a ground with flour bags distributed on behalf of Saudi King Abdullah under Ramazan Package to the people of Hunza and Ghizer, prompting an uproar on social media raising many questions. Although, for people outside Gilgit-Baltistan and across Muslim world, this …

Herald Report A number of academics from public and private educational institutes of the city have set up a forum for protection of academic freedom and articulate progressive interventions based on scholarly research. This was announced during a discussion on the crises of Pakistani universities and mapping a progressive future at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) office in …

In Gilgit-Baltistan, exists a remarkable oasis with high literacy rates and gender equality. By Sam Dalrymple In the disputed Karakoram mountains, the isolated Hunza valley feels cut off from the fractious politics surrounding it. As one approaches 8,200 feet, pine forests and orchards envelop villages that glint orange with apricots drying on their rooftops. The blue and mustard shuttlecock burqas, …

By Shahzaib Hassan What is the role of women in economic activities and social development of Gilgit-Baltistan’s society and what are the impediments in the way of emancipation and empowerment of women? These questions perplex me. I don’t know about the past, but I have been trying to understand class structure, social relationship and status of women in the setting …

EVEN for a society that views most form of rights-based activism with suspicion, the backlash against Aurat March has been particularly acrimonious. In the days since the protests were staged in several cities across Pakistan, countless women have been subjected to retaliation — from photos of their placards being doctored, to receiving death and rape threats, to having established political and …

Tooba Syed MARCH 8, 2019, will be remembered as a day of hope and unabashed protest, in which thousands of women in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Hyderabad, Quetta, Peshawar, Gilgit-Baltistan and Mardan took to the streets and marched. Aurat March and other women’s marches reflected the collective consciousness of Pakistani women coming together organically and wilfully to march against deeply entrenched social and …

Patriarchy is the name given to a dynamic web of ideas, policies, laws, and social practices that bring male domination and privilege into effect. It manifests in constrained opportunities for women, writes Dr Shenila Khoja-Molji. During a recent interview with a Pakistani TV channel, organisers of the ‘Aurat March’ noted that they were marching against ‘patriarchy’. Many of them have …

News Desk The Awami Workers Party (AWP) has expressed solidarity with working women struggling for equal rights and social justice in Pakistan and around the world. In a statement issued on the International Working Women’s Day, the AWP leadership and workers resolve to revive the revolutionary and radical vision and spirit of the day, when socialist leaders like Clara Zetkin …

WDF, WAF, HKM, WC, PSC and Azaad Fankaar plan rallies in 10 cities to commemorate International Working Women Day Herald report A host of programmes have been slated to mark the International Working Women’s Day (IWWD) to reaffirm their commitment to fight against patriarchy, retrogressive norms, traditions, and exploitative socio-economic and political system in Pakistan. The Women Democratic Front (WDF), …

HOSSAM EL-HAMALAWY Counterrevolution has taken hold across much of the region, but uprisings in Sudan and elsewhere show the potential for the tide to turn, writes Egyptian journalist and socialist activist Hossam el-Hamalawy, in an article published at Al Araby. Eight years after the explosion of the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions, the situation in the region looks bleak in the eyes of …

Zaighum Abbas Social media outburst over a video clip of few girls dancing on folk songs in a TV’s morning show touched new highs last week. The gunnery sergeants of ‘honour’ and ‘ghairat’ encamped in their laptop trenches and started their shelling with vitriol, bigotry, abuse and misogyny as prime weapons messing up with emotions of people. The female students, …