HOST: Welcome to the International Museum of Women and this monthly podcast for the exhibition, “Women, Power and Politics.” Each month, we’ll be talking to remarkable leaders from around the globe. This month’s topic? “Women Who Run.”
FATIMA BHUTTO: Of course, there are risks that come with it and it can be very dangerous. We had a case in Pakistan where a woman, she was speaking at a rally in the Punjab and she was shot and killed in the middle of this rally by a man who believed that women who shouldn’t be in politics.
HOST: In her young life, 26-year-old poet, writer and journalist Fatima Bhutto has witnessed and documented immense tragedy and small triumphs through her membership in a political dynasty and the power of her own pen. She is the granddaughter of Pakistan’s first-ever democratically elected president, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and niece to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was shot and killed in 2007 as she was campaigning for a third term. Fatima saw her father Murtaza Bhutto, a left-wing revolutionary, bleed to death after being shot under mysterious circumstances outside their home.
A witness to ongoing fear, repression and violence, Fatima now serves her country as a weekly columnist, writing about injustice and tragedy in Pakistan’s homes, streets, prisons and hospitals.
When it comes to women’s political participation, Pakistan is often lumped with other countries in South Asia and the Middle East as a Muslim-majority nation that disregards women’s rights. Reports of the intimidation and harm done to women voters at the polls abound in foreign papers, and critics are quick to point out the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as an indication that women have not, indeed, “made it” in the world of Pakistani politics. Fatima Bhutto herself has entered homes to convince women to vote, documented election fraud and interviewed many about the injustice of current laws.
Women, Power and Politics curator Masum Momaya spoke to Fatima Bhutto by phone from her home in Karachi. She asked Fatima to fill us in on the status of women in Pakistan.
BHUTTO: It’s complex. In Pakistan, you have a population of women that is incredibly politically active. They’re very politically aware, in the sense that women vote in this country, women are aware of their right to vote, you know, we have always had female participation in politics as far back as the 1960s. So it’s something that’s understood as almost common or normal.But on the other hand, you’ve got a system of laws in place in Pakistan put forward by General Zia al-Huq, the dictator we had in the 1980s. And these laws are under the Hudood ordinance and these laws are the most violent pieces of legislation against women around. And what the Hudood say is, for example, that any woman caught engaging in extramarital affairs or in sexual relations outside of marriage or before marriage will be put to death. You have very, very archaic laws that are still in place in today’s Pakistan that absolutely seek to oppress women and that are incredibly violent towards women. But then you have a population of women that also sees it as their traditional role to be involved in their society.
MOMAYA: Would you say that this population of women who is politically involved, would you say that they cross lines of socioeconomic status? Do they cross lines in terms of being women who reside in urban versus rural areas, women in the older generation versus women in the younger generation?
BHUTTO: Well, you know, if you look at the direct political engagement, it’s generally women of a certain class that are able to break the taboo line and come into direct politics. But on the other side of the spectrum, in terms of well, less direct involvement but nevertheless important involvement, that’s across boundaries, you know, that’s whether they’re women in villages or women in cities or women that come from a tribal background or women that come from an agricultural background.We had our first elections in Pakistan, our first democratic elections in the 1970s, and it’s a fairly recent thing, which means that they remember. It means that they remember that they have this right to vote and that it’s somewhat of a duty as well as a right.
MOMAYA: And would you say that’s true of the younger generation, women, I guess, who are in their twenties and thirties right now versus women who are older?
BHUTTO: It’s quite difficult to engage this young generation in registering to vote in Pakistan for several reasons, I think. You know, we have a tremendous problem of brain drain in this country where we have a lot of our, especially, educated young professionals leaving the country, and that’s mainly because they don’t see a lot of opportunity for their generation or for their skills. And that lack of opportunity, I think, extends to the political sphere at this point.Also, you have a country that’s ruled, well, really, for the last 30 years by dictators, you know, either civilian or military. So there’s an incredible amount of distrust that’s been lodged in the electorate so far. And you find that many people now--we had an election in February--many people are saying, “You know, what’s the point if I vote? They do what they like anyway.”
But fortunately, since it is a new country, since this is a new system, there is still space for them to believe that they will be heard, and so they do, if registered, if given ID cards, which, again, is a problem in a country that is something like 60% illiterate, if they are given the ID card, they take it and they vote. But dispossessed of the right of an ID card, of course, then, that's a different matter.
MOMAYA: Can you talk about the process of getting an ID card? Is that difficult?
BHUTTO: Well, it shouldn’t be. You know, the ID card in Pakistan is called the [Shanafti] card, which is the national identity card, and it’s a requirement of every 18-year-old citizen. However, in this country, you still have to pay to get an ID card. It’s a nominal fee, but it’s a fee nonetheless, and this is a quite a poor country. A thousand rupees, which is something
around ten, twelve dollars, is still a price to pay for most people. However, you need an ID card in Pakistan to complete most transactions. You know, to buy an airline ticket, to register for school, to complete the job process, to buy a SIM card for a phone you need an ID card.
So it’s incredibly integral, and what happens in certain closed segments of the society is that the woman will have to rely on a male figure to get her ID card, a father or a brother or a husband. And if the father, brother or husband is simply not pushed, then the woman can be made to feel that you know, it’s not necessary. If she needs a card for her phone, her brother will buy it. So it’s become a problem recently, when you look into these last elections, where you have almost 170 million people and just a fraction of them are registered and of that fraction, a mere fraction of those are women.
MOMAYA: And does one need to be able to read in order to have an ID card?
BHUTTO: No, because basically, the benchmark of literacy in Pakistan is to be able to sign your name, which is why the figures of literacy and illiteracy are highly inflated. Most people learn to sign their name in order to get an ID card, in order to get jobs.
MOMAYA: And it seems like some of the more conservative, I guess, norms or attitudes have become codified into law, as well, in the last twenty years?
BHUTTO: Certainly. I mean the Hudood ordinance, you know, which is the most violent piece of legislation against women and minorities, was signed into law in the 1980s and it remains today on the books.
MOMAYA: And have there been any efforts to overturn the Hudood ordinance?
BHUTTO: Only once, only once we had a woman prime minister twice in our history and that woman prime minister made no effort. It was actually General Musharraf.
MOMAYA: Was Benazir Bhutto pressured by women to overturn the ordinance?
BHUTTO: Well, she certainly should have been. You know, there was a great expectation when she came into office that as a woman prime minister who a lot of people placed a lot of hope in, that she would certainly rectify the Hudood ordinance, that she would remove this incredibly violent piece of legislation and she didn’t. Ultimately, because she had to appease religious parties, and she felt that her touching the Hudood would place her politically in a shaky environment. So, she protected the Hudood actually. She almost, it would seem, purposely went against the expectations that people placed on her.
MOMAYA: Yeah, so it sounds like there is some religious rhetoric that is used to keep some of these things in place.
BHUTTO: Absolutely. And what’s been most disappointing for women, I think, is that we’ve had, we’ve yet to have, a religious government in Pakistan. You know, we have technically elected, you know, members of secular party head the government. You know, even your
military dictators can be secular once and a while. And none of these elected officials have made any strides towards repealing this completely odious piece of legislation.
MOMAYA: Do you think the level of religiosity is changing amongst the younger generation, both men and women?
BHUTTO: I think it’s increasing, and I think it's most visibly increasing amongst women. And again, this goes back to religion being used as some sort of political identification, or some sort of political statement. And of course it’s more visible with women because a woman covers her hair.
MOMAYA: So it's a show of nationalism as well, patriotism.
BHUTTO: Absolutely. It’s a demonstration of national difference, of provincial differences, ideological difference as well as religious difference. And in this post 9/11 world we’ve certainly seen women do this in Pakistan. For example, I live in Karachi, which is quite a cosmopolitan sort of port city in the South. And it’s always been, because of its sort of strategic placement, it’s a gateway, commercially and otherwise. Karachi’s always been a fairly liberal city, and growing up as a child here I never saw a burqa in Karachi, I didn’t know what a burqa looked like. You know, I saw it on TV like everyone else.And now, you know, not only do we have women wearing hijab, which at least is, culturally, has a place, you know, in Muslim societies, but we have things like the burqa, which are really quite alien to most Muslims. You know, they come from places like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan; they don’t some from places we recognize or we are familiar with, and they’ve become more commonplace.
MOMAYA: Have you personally had to wear a burqa or hijab going into to certain places in order to protect your own for your safety?
BHUTTO: That’s a very good question. You know, the first time that I’ve ever had to cover my head for my own safety was this past year, in February. And I was working on a political campaign, and I was going door to door trying to get women registered to vote.
And again, I was going into women’s houses, I wasn’t going into, you know necessarily, offices. I was going in to see other women, and I was told at some point that if I wanted to make my point properly, then I might want to consider covering my head.
MOMAYA: Was it different for you, just personally, the experience of walking around having your head covered and still being in your own person? What was that like?
BHUTTO: Well, it was very strange, because in my personal life, if anybody told me to cover my head, I’d tell them to fly a kite. You know, my personal life, when I go to the store or when I go to my bookstore, I dress as I like. And I’m of course respectful you of the cultural sensitivities and so on. But I’m a Pakistani, and I’m no different than other any other Pakistani woman. So, I don’t feel the need in my personal life to change my appearance for it to signify
anything about me. And to have to do it when you’re engaging in political work, it’s disheartening. It’s disheartening to know that you can’t take a message that is really quite objective, to take a message like the importance of voting or registering to vote for women, that that has to be shrouded in something for it to be heard.Also, and this is, I suppose, an intentional effect of the veil, you feel quite managed. You know, your peripheral vision is blurred, for one, because you’ve got this fabric on the side of your face. It falls over your head. You’ve got to sort of look to other people for directions, it makes you manageable, and that was very strange to feel.
MOMAYA: Do you feel smaller?
BHUTTO: You do, actually, that’s a good question. I’m quite small, generally. I’m about 5’3,” but I certainly felt smaller and you know, I felt younger. And in the door-to-door work, I was going into women’s homes and I was going and knocking on their door and walking into their houses to talk to them about registering, I always felt really quite strong doing it before, because the message was strong and because the act of one woman going to another and saying, “How do I help you be part of this process?” is quite empowering, and the minute they put a veil on me, it took that away and I did feel small. And what was amazing to me, is, when I went into these houses with my head covered, how different the reaction was, and how accessible everything was on the other hand. It’s almost like you’ve been let into a secret society of sorts.
MOMAYA: I imagine this is a place in the country where everyone covers their head?
BHUTTO: Well, it is in a place in the country now where everyone covers their heads. Again, this is Sindh, and Sindh is traditionally, you know, Sufi. It’s traditionally sort of irreverent outside of the Sufi nature of Islam because it’s so diverse religiously. It’s not known to be a conservative place. Now culturally in Sindh, you do have things like the chador, which women might wear when they left the house. I mean, it’s not a burqa, it’s not a veil, it’s sort of a covering.
I found that the women I visited were mainly covered. They were behind purdah. They were very serious about maintaining their purdah or their space between men. They were not only covered but they wore burqas, you know, and on the other hand, I couldn’t find them, really, in the marketplace, which is why I had to go to the door.
MOMAYA: And, were these women mothers and daughters? Women of different generations?
BHUTTO: Yes. And, what was interesting in many cases is that the older women of the family, the mother or the grandmother, would have ID cards, because they come from that generation that remembered being given an ID card and being told that you have the right to vote. So they keep their ID cards wrapped in fabric in a special part of their house. But the younger women were almost bored by the idea of having an ID card. They weren’t sort of taken into the immense importance of having an ID card like their grandmothers were, liketheir mothers were, and it just wasn’t something that was useful to their lives.
MOMAYA: So a grandmother could have hers from twenty years ago and that’s still recognized?
BHUTTO: That's still recognized, absolutely.
MOMAYA: And just to clarify a point from earlier, when women are observing purdah, does that mean that there are, in addition to a certain kind of covering, that there are also restrictions on mobility, or that they also restrict their own mobility?
BHUTTO: Well, in Sindh, purdah specifically has to do with mobility, I think. Purdah in Sindh was very literally translated.
MOMAYA: Curtain?
BHUTTO: As when you would enter a house, any house, almost, there’ll be a door and you’ll knock on the door, and once the door’s open, there’ll be a curtain, an actual piece of fabric, so that if it’s a non-family member coming in, they can go “a-hem” and clear their voice and the women will have time to move. So not only is this very literal, there is actually a curtain behind the door.
MOMAYA: Move so that they cannot be seen?
BHUTTO: Yes, so that they can be moved to another room they won’t be exposed to this non-family member or this male who is a stranger. And on the other hand, it is very seriously practiced in the sense that once you push aside this curtain and you walk in, you better be a woman. Otherwise, you will have seriously disturbed the sort of calm and peace of the family. So, their mobility is restricted but in many ways it seems they do it to themselves.
MOMAYA: That they’re adopting these restrictions willingly.
BHUTTO: Yes, willingly.
MOMAYA: So when you got to the point of being able to have the conversations, which it sounds like, was a challenge in and of itself, what were the conversations like? Did people engage you? Was there a lot of resistance?
BHUTTO: When I would go into the houses and I would deal with elderly women, when I would deal with the elderly mothers or the grandmothers, I would be met by this enthusiastic chorus of “Yes, yes, voting, we know all about that and we’re very excited about it.” They would sit me down and they would show me their ID cards. You know, they would take out their ID cards from the drawer or from the handkerchief it was placed in to show me that they knew and they were fully aware of their right.But when I met with a lot of younger women, when I met with a lot of women my age, you know, in their twenties, they would sort of giggle and tell me that they didn’t have ID cards. And I’d say, “Well, how are you going to vote then?” And they would say, “Oh, well, we won’t. What difference does it make?” And I would, you know, try to explain to them, “Well, look, it does make a difference, because in a country where rigging is almost part of the national work ethic, if you don’t use your vote, someone else will. If you don’t vote in your name, even if it’s a protest vote, then your name will be used for an illegal vote.” And I tried to explain this to them and they wouldn’t really agree with me that it was of tremendous importance that they have an ID card.
MOMAYA: So it was apathy versus sort of a calculated resistance or a calculated disdain?
BHUTTO: Absolutely. I think that’s the best way to put it. They were very apathetic, and they were almost condescending about the need to have an ID card. I remember one house I went into, and they were a bunch of young women, and they were excited to have someone in their house, but at one point one of the giggling women stopped me and said, “Oh, we don’t…none of us have ID cards.” So I said, “Well, don’t you need them?” And you know, all of them again very sort of enthusiastically told me they didn’t.
So I asked them, “Do you girls have phones?” And they all had mobile phones, and they were very proud of their mobile phones, so I asked them, I said, “Well, how do you think that chip was brought for your phone? With an ID card. So if you didn’t have an ID card, who bought it for you?” And one of the girls said to me, she said, “Well, my father bought me my chip.” And I said, “Okay, and when your father dies?” And she said, “Well, then my husband will buy it.” And I said, “Okay, and when your husband’s not there?” “So then, my brother.” And I said, “Okay, when your brother’s not there?” And we had to go through, really, the sort of patriarchal line of her family until she said, “Well, I guess, then I would get it.” And I said, “Okay, how could you get it without an ID card?” You know, she considered it for a moment but it was so far down the line of her practical life that didn’t really bother her that much.
MOMAYA: Was access to income a factor, or the money to be able to buy it a factor?
BHUTTO: No, it really wasn’t, actually. In certain cases, of course, when we went into the villages as opposed to the city, women didn’t have ID cards and in that case, finances and the socioeconomic background was a factor. But in the city, it wasn’t. In the city, we went to homes that had, you know, televisions and had three or four rooms in it and with girls that had the latest mobile phones in their hands. But for them, it was either, you know, this apathy slash disdain, or it just wasn’t something that factored as meaningful. While, their mothers or their grandmothers held it to be you know, almost a sacred right and they would keep their ID card with the family Koran or they would keep their ID card with their most prized possessions.
And when I met certain women who said, “Well, look, we have ID cards, but we don’t like the candidates, so we don’t want to vote.” And I would say, “Well, I don’t like the candidates either, which is why I’m using my ID card to stamp a protest vote.” That would make a difference to them because they would see the act of voting as almost empowering or as transgressive or rebellious, as opposed to something that you do to fulfill a duty.
MOMAYA: And, protest vote means you go in but you don't vote for any of the candidates?
BHUTTO: It means you usually stamp the whole paper. So you use your vote so that it’s not used illegally by someone else, so the vote’s invalid but it’s a sign of no confidence. No, we have a lot of strange laws that have been put into place in Pakistan almost to enable rigging. You know, when I said it was part of a celebrated work ethic, I wasn’t exaggerating.
You know, there was a law put into place before this election that said that women in burqas don’t have to show their face. They hand over an ID card with no picture. And traditionally, someone would be at the polling station, you know, member would be allowed to say, “Okay, this ID doesn’t have a picture, could you show me your face so I can see that you are Zubaida Khan, age fifty-eight years old?” And they put in a law that you have no right to do that so the person who comes in and hands you an ID card could be a man. It could be a teenager with an elderly woman’s ID card. It could be the same person coming in with forty different ID cards and you have no way of knowing that. It almost condones rigging, you know. It makes it easier to do.
MOMAYA: Who would have thought that the burqa would be enabling in that way. They’ve managed to turn that around!
BHUTTO: It’s amazing, and it was and the only way when you're not allowed to ask a woman to show her face, the only way you have any idea if it’s the same woman coming back or not is by her shoes. If she’s clever, though, she’ll change her shoes every time she comes in to vote. But imagine the sort of concentration and alertness it would take to staff a polling station and look at people’s shoes and register to yourself whose shoes came in when.And we came across it so many times on the actual election day, where a woman would be breastfeeding a baby and her ID would say that she was born in 1938. And she would lift her burqa up because maybe she’s breastfeeding the child or she’s in a room with women, and she can’t read so she doesn’t know what her ID says. So, when you see her ID and say, “Well, this ID says you’re supposed to be about seventy-eight years old, but you’ve obviously got a newborn baby in your hand. What does that mean?” She’s almost empowered to do that because the laws allow her to come in with a fake ID card. The laws allow her to come in with her face concealed.
MOMAYA: And she can’t read so…
BHUTTO: And she can’t read, so she doesn’t know what’s going on, really, and she was paid to come in and vote twelve times or however many times by whoever. So she’s really doing what she’s got to do.
MOMAYA: And just a couple clarifying questions around the voting process: Does the purdah prevent women from going to the polling booth? Are they concerned about going to a public place? Are there women-only polling stations?
BHUTTO: Yes, well what happens is that in every polling station there is women’s booth and a man’s booth, and by booth, I really mean room or area--upstairs would be for the women, downstairs would be for the men, for example. Or if there is enough space, then they will use separate buildings. And they’ll be staffed by women polling agents.
MOMAYA: And is it hard sometimes for women to actually physically get to the polling stations?
BHUTTO: Well, what will happen is that usually, the candidates in the area will arrange transport usually for women. So let’s say, you’re running in this district. You’ll arrange five buses on that day to go around the neighborhood and pick up the women. That’s obviously problematic because you’re sort of using party transport to cast the votes and that’s difficult, but you know, in today’s Pakistan, that’s really the only way sometimes for women to go and it’s also the only affordable way, because let’s say they are allowed to leave the house. Let’s say they’re able to leave, it’s costly to get a rickshaw, to get a taxi or maybe the bus isn’t running.
MOMAYA: What about women who can’t read the ballot? Do they have pictures, photographs of the candidates?
BHUTTO: So, because most of the population in Pakistan is illiterate, instead of having names you have symbols, a party symbol for example. So there’s a picture of a lamp shade. There’s a picture of an arrow. There’s a picture of a fist. There’s a picture of a lion. And you stamp it. Now what is difficult, there are two opposing parties running for seats, let’s say, and there’s a national seat and a provincial seat, and there are two different ballot papers to vote on. Now, they’re different colors, but to be fair, you know, it is quite hectic, the actual polling stations. So when a woman comes in and she’s told the white is national and the green is provincial, if she’s not really paying attention she won’t understand why she has two of the same paper, because they’re exactly the same except for the color.Another thing people do, parties will say, “Look, on top, meaning on the national seat, vote for this party. And on the bottom, meaning on the provincial seat, vote for that party.” Now because they can’t read, they look at the sheet and as it turns out, the top party symbol is on top and the bottom party symbol is on the bottom. So they’ll stamp the same paper twice as opposed to stamping two different symbols on two different papers, so it invalidates their vote.
MOMAYA: And there isn’t someone available or there is not a provision that someone will help them read the ballot?
BHUTTO: When they come in and they get the ink put on their finger, and again, you don’t sign or you put your thumbprint on a sheet and then you stamp on the paper. So while they’re putting their thumbprint, someone, the polling agents, are meant to explain to them this difference. And then you go behind this sort of cardboard box. Now, if someone goes with them behind the cardboard box to sort of explain it further, you know, that’s quite
compromised, I think, and they should be able to go in alone. You know, the other thing that they use intimidation-wise to rig is that they don’t give you a box. They’ll just make you do a khula vote or an open vote.
MOMAYA: Stand there in front of everyone.
BHUTTO: Stand there in front of everyone and put it openly and most women are afraid to do that because for women, voting, it’s still new. They still don’t feel confident enough in their right to vote and the right, you know, of how to vote to demand otherwise and that’s the way of saying, “Well, look, we know who you are, we’re local, we know where you live, we have your ID number and now we know who you vote for.”
MOMAYA: There were also, during the February elections, I know the New York Times had several articles that talked about how there's a lot of voter intimidation of women – that they were threatened and told to stay home, otherwise there would be consequences. Is that consistent with what you experienced when you were out and about during the election?
BHUTTO: There is. There is a lot of voter intimidation. I saw it both I saw it with men and with women. I mean, with men it’s more violent, you know, with men it's physical violence that’s used to intimidate them and with women it’s really the threat of violence.We went to polling station where the presiding officer was obviously politically obliged to a party and was intimidating the polling agents, and the polling agent's job is to contest illegal votes. In this polling station the women who were the polling agents and who were local were being intimidated by the presiding officer and were being told, “If you keep contesting these votes, we’ll come and take care of your family.” You know, now that’s a threat of violence, whereas in other stations, you know, we saw men who had been beaten and we saw men whose clothes had been ripped and we saw men who had been physically turned away from the stations.With the women, if it’s not the threat of violence, it’s just the lack of access. So the woman will come to the station to vote and her neighbors see her and they see who she is and they know who she’s politically aligned to and who her vote will be cast for and it’s, “I’m sorry, Ruksana, you are not registered here to vote.” And she says, “No, I am. I’ve checked my name is on this thing,” but she can’t read so they can tell her whatever they want, really. And they send her away.
MOMAYA: So, given that, it seems like this is fairly widely known. Is there widespread confidence in the election results or do people just accept that this is a part of the system and so they’re never really going to know?
BHUTTO: Well, you know, this year the government claimed that there was 40% turnout but it had to have been under 10% and it would have been in the single digits. And you can tell this from the amount of votes that people win with. Of course, the numbers are inflated because of the rigging, but let’s say that one candidate in 1980 won with a 100,000 votes, in 1993, he
won with 60,000 votes, and then in 1997, he won with 30,000 votes, and then now, he’s really winning with around 3,000 votes. Of course, again, we can’t tell for certain, because they add votes and they add numbers to these things, but ideally, you look at the numbers and it’s not even half, I mean, it’s more than that it’s really just been decimated. You also see, for example, when we were going around to polling stations and the one thing I would ask is how many votes have been cast and you know, it’s close to 4 pm, an hour before the polling closes. In women’s booths you had maybe 20 votes cast or 25 votes cast.
MOMAYA: All day?
BHUTTO: All day, and then in men’s booths we heard nothing higher than 60 you know, if we went to a station and 60 votes were cast in a men’s booth, that was a good station. And then the votes are counted and the candidate wins as 90,000 votes. So, it’s become ridiculous to the point where you know, you’re part of the process. I mean, you go and you stand in line and it takes you ten minutes to vote because there is no one in line ahead of you. And then at the end of the day, you’re told that the candidate won a landslide. It’s perfectly obviously that there’s been rigging. So people have almost resigned themselves to the notion that this happens. They know they can’t change it, so they let it be. You know, they don’t think they’re powerful enough to fight it, especially women, because they are already dispossessed of agency and power.
MOMAYA: Yeah, and I think the challenge of not being able to read – because you can’t contest things.
BHUTTO: Well, you know, for example, this happens all the time, that there’s a party symbol that’s a tractor and a woman will come to vote and she will say, “My husband told me I have to put the stamp on the tractor.” And the polling agent will say, “Well, okay, here’s the paper.” And she goes, “No. He said I have to put it on the tractor. So where’s the tractor?”
MOMAYA: Oh, the physical tractor?
BHUTTO: They want a physical tractor, and you’ll try to explain to them that, no, it’s not a physical tractor, it’s a symbol of a tractor, and I promise you I’m not lying because it says so on the paper. But they don’t believe you because they can’t read the paper, and they only know that they’ve been told, and if they’ve been told by their family to vote a certain way, then they are feeling intimidated by their family or by their husband. You know, the husband wants them to do a certain thing.
MOMAYA: I want to also ask you about women’s experiences as candidates. I know there is a reservation system in Pakistan where a certain percentage of women must come through parties to be put forth as candidates. Could you comment on that?
BHUTTO: Well, you see, the reserve system is very controversial. Because, even with all these blocks, even with all these cultural or religious impositions, Pakistan is a country where women have always been politically aware. They’ve always been politically included, you know, more than in many Western countries, at least, earlier on in the voting process. You
know, the first woman we had in politics was Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s sister, was the founder of Pakistan’s sister, who ran for elections in the 1960s, when Pakistan was 15 years old as a country.So we traditionally have women involved. We have parts of the country that are run matrilineally, where women really are in charge of the community. So, when you introduce a system of reserve seats, what you do is you don’t empower women in the least, because you are putting a woman in parliament who has no constituency, who has no mandates and who has no connection with the voting public.Most of the women who come in on reserve seats are wealthy women from high socioeconomic backgrounds. They are women from prosperous neighborhoods or from prosperous communities, and they don’t represent women as such in that way. It’s not that the reserve system is being used to take the illiterate woman from the village and put her in parliament. It hasn’t been. It's been used to take the socialite from Karachi out of her posh residential neighborhood and put her in parliament so that she can have “wife,” “mother,” “hostess,” “parliamentarian” on her resume.
There are two women who are on the reserve seats, they host talk shows or they write columns for fashion magazines. And now they’re reserve seat women parliamentarians.Another factor is when these reserve seat parliamentarians want to push something through, where are they supposed to get their support from, in parliament? They are weightless. They don’t have voters that back them up, a base where support comes from. They don’t have a mandate of any kind. They’re benchwarmers. I mean, they’re basically there to cast the extra votes that their party needs in a critical crunch. But they don’t empower women voters in any sense. They don’t empower communities of any sense.
MOMAYA: What do campaigns actually look like? In the U.S., they are obviously very money-laden as well, and we have T.V. and commercials and debates and conventions and things like that.
BHUTTO: Well, you know what's funny is that I went, I was in college in the States during the 2000 election, and I went to a Ralph Nader rally and I was amazed at how like, silly the whole process was. And in Pakistan, it’s really more intense. The media is not really the best way to go through the campaign. I mean, you don’t have debates. Parties with a lot of money do put ads on television, but it’s really just like Chinese water torture, the ads, you know they just repeat them and repeat them until people haven’t seen anything else on TV for like, a week.
But most people are not going to have TV, most people in villages, there’ll be a TV in the main bazaar in a teahouse that people will go and watch TV in. But it’s not accessible to them all the time, you know. It doesn’t make sense, really, to use the newspapers too much because many people can’t read what’s in the newspaper.
So what you do is you have public meetings and they’re not traditionally large. I don’t know why you know, when you see images of Pakistani elections in the media, they're always of one person talking to eight million people. And that’s really unfeasible. I mean, you’d have to
have a tremendous amount of money behind your campaign to arrange that kind of public meeting.But really, what it is, is that you go and have public meetings, maybe you’d speak to a different religious community at once and you speak to communities, you speak to families, you speak to blocks of houses in a go where you talk to 20 families at a time, maybe, or maybe five families at a time. Or to speak to the schoolteachers or to speak to the lawyers community or to speak to the shopkeepers association and then hopefully that’s how you reach the widest spectrum possible.But it’s very intense. I mean, this is a very large country, you know. To go from one end of Karachi where I live to the end of Karachi would take me three and half hours. It’s a huge country and there are so many different communities and so many different languages and different ways in which people group themselves that there’s no easy way to reach everybody, it is very grueling to do.
MOMAYA: I imagine that this mode of campaigning would be more challenging for women, because, for example, for a woman to go and speak to a group of men? Is that possible?
BHUTTO: It certainly is. I mean, of course like I said, you’ve got to fight for it. It’s difficult. It is not easy, but if you fight for it, you can do it. Now, if you sort of present yourself as the woman who is too frightened to speak to a group of men, they’ll never come and hear you speak. But if you go and you stand on a table in a teahouse and you say, “Well, listen, I’m here and I have to talk to you and please listen to me ‘cause I don’t have a microphone,” they’ll come and listen.
But again, it’s about your comfort level, it’s about your ability to feel safe in your community and certainly that varies across communities. If you’re in Peshawar, clearly that’s a very different matter, where conservative attitudes, and you know, where the Pakistan Taliban is increasingly popular, a woman is not going to feel safe speaking to men. A woman is not going to feel safe standing in the middle of a bazaar and talking.You know, we had a case in Pakistan, I think it was a year and a half ago, where a woman who was a provincial minister of agriculture, she was speaking at a rally in the Punjab and she was shot and killed in the middle of this rally by a man who believed that women who shouldn’t be in politics. Now, you know, certainly men feel this way and certainly they react violently on occasion but it’s hard to say where that’s more likely to happen, you know. We can assume that in certain areas of the country that are more conservative are more likely to have these dealings and it’s likely to be more dangerous but there’s no telling.
MOMAYA: Yeah, and It just takes one bullet.
BHUTTO: Absolutely, and she was a very young woman. She was just starting out, really, in her political career. She was untainted by corruption and that’s incredibly rare for a Pakistani politician, and she was shot in the face. So you know, while I am saying that women politically
active and they can, of course, there are risks that come with it and it can be very dangerous.
MOMAYA: Fatima, did you ever watch your aunt [former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto] campaign or accompany her on any of her campaigns, especially early in her career?
BHUTTO: I did. I did when she was first prime minister.
MOMAYA: Did she get exceptional treatment on the campaign trail? I imagine because of her relationship to your grandfather [former Prime Minister and President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto], she would not be treated as every other woman candidate would while campaigning.
BHUTTO: Certainly. I mean, absolutely. I think the basis of how she is treated stems from her father and that obviously means that she’s treated differently, like you said, than other women candidates. It also means that she comes guarded and already pre-approved for large masses of people because she is the daughter of someone who they respect and she’s the daughter of someone who they politically agree with. It almost didn’t matter what she was.
MOMAYA: So do you think she transcended her gender in some ways?
BHUTTO: It’s difficult to say, because she played the gender card very trickily, you know. In one hand she was the first woman prime minister of this Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and that’s special to Western audiences, but to Muslims, you know, five of the most populous Muslim countries have all had women prime ministers.
MOMAYA: And all through family lineage.
BHUTTO: Yes, and it’s always been through a feudal family sort of step. But on the other hand, her gender, while it was celebrated or it was something that she supposedly transcended to become this incredibly powerful person in her country, she also used it to hide behind. I don’t know if American audiences watch David Frost, he’s a very famous English journalist. You know, he’s interviewed Kissinger and Nehru and all these people throughout time and he interviewed Benazir just about two years ago on his show on Al Jazeera, and he asked her about her corruption cases, of which there were many, and she said, she responded to him, she said, “Oh, David, that’s a sexist question.” I’m sorry—it’s not!
You know, if it’s very easy for woman to pull the woman card and she did that certainly and to say, “Well, look, I’m a woman, and obviously people want to destroy me for this reason but…” and that was used to a fair degree. There’s also a certain amount of uncomfortable nationalist rhetoric that can be easily plied with the gender thing. You know, “The mother of the nation,” and things like this and “sister of the people.” That is all encompassing and that doesn’t transcend gender that is actually exploited as of gender but is used and that was used by Benazir.But ultimately I think, she was the first--the only--woman prime minister we’ve had and yet nothing substantial was done for women. You know, the Hudood laws were kept in place.
There was no significant or, really, any increases in how women’s education was dealt with or how women’s health care was programmed.And towards the end of her second government, Benazir’s government, under her leadership, recognized the Taliban in Afghanistan. Well, you know, they had a large part in funding it too and then promoting it across the border.
MOMAYA: Do you think there was a symbolic power, for instance, in inspiring other women to become involved in politics, or did was it seen as she was exceptional and therefore people didn't--even if they were women--didn’t relate to her specifically?
BHUTTO: I think it’s a bit of both, I think on one hand, she would have been an inspiring figure for young women, but she wouldn’t have been the first. You know, like I said, Fatima Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan’s sister, again, through family feudal sort of means, was a very active member in Pakistani politics in the 1960s. So we’ve had women in politics before. We’ve seen women be politically involved before and unfortunately, we keep seeing them come from this feudal sort of families. We keep seeing them come from this socioeconomic background that makes up 1% of the country. We keep seeing them come from, you know, wealthy agricultural or industrial families.
So on that side, it’s not inspiring. On that side, you do see them as exceptions and you do say, “Well, if she can do it because she’s from this background and I’m not.” You know, I wouldn’t say that either Fatima Jinnah or Benazir galvanized the cause of women in Pakistan and have opened the floodgates. They really haven’t. They really are a question of birth. Most of Pakistan was not born into that kind of status, so they don’t benefit from it. However, I think it is significant that women are still politically aware. I think it is significant that women come to political meetings. I think it’s significant that women are part of protests, and I think they’ve begun to do this in Pakistan really outside of party lines. They’ve begun to do it outside of organized politics.
MOMAYA: If you could sort of have three wishes, or if there are a few things that you could really change that you feel like would have a very significant effect, what would those be?
BHUTTO: Well, the three things, the first is I would repeal this national reconciliation ordinance. And what that does is it excuses corruption on the governmental level. So, it places, really, corruption, it takes it from under the table and puts it on the table. It sort of glorifies the lack of accountability. I would repeal that. And immediately after it, I would repeal the Hudood laws which sort of legally advocate violence as a means of dealing with society.
And the third thing that I would do, if I could do something miraculously, is I would make sure these 170 million people we have in this country are registered with the right to vote, because nothing is representative, let’s even assume it’s not rigged, when you have like 4% of your country voting, that’s not representative of anything. And when women don’t have the feeling that their numbers added together make a difference then they won’t vote, then five of them won’t vote, why should 500,000 of them vote?
MOMAYA: Thank you so much we really appreciate you taking the time and also just sharing the stories from your own experience.
BHUTTO: It’s really just a delight to be able to help in any way.
HOST: You’ve been listening to Pakistani journalist Fatima Bhutto, in conversation with Masum Momaya, curator for Women, Power and Politics, at the International Museum of Women in San Francisco.
Women, Power and Politics is a groundbreaking multi-media, multi-lingual online exhibition that showcases inspiring stories of women claiming and exercising their power. It connects women from around the world to transform their communities for the better.
Source:www.imow.org.
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