Female members of Imran Khan’s party claim that Pakistan’s new leader has their interests at heart. Does he?
Image Courtesy: BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images
The days before the bill was finally passed in 2016 were difficult ones for Sufi; religious hard-liners fired shots at his house. At the last minute, male members of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the political party of the former cricket star Imran Khan, walked off the assembly floor, refusing to vote for the legislation. The women of the party stayed, in protest. Later, when the vote was called, the men never returned. In the words of one female lawmaker, the men “feel they are being plotted against.” Still, the bill passed.
The fact that Khan and his party opposed domestic violence legislation in 2006, failed to back the Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Act in 2016, and deferred to the Islamic council on Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s law the same year doesn’t bode well.
The fact that Khan and his party opposed domestic violence legislation in 2006, failed to back the Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Act in 2016, and deferred to the Islamic council on Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s law the same year doesn’t bode well.
For the 2018 elections, his party selected just six women to run, barely meeting the 5 percent quota that the Election Commission of Pakistan required of all parties to compete in the election. Only two of them won, as opposed to 114 PTI men.
There is some hope. One of the two women elected was 33-year-old Zartaj Gul, a political newcomer, who unseated a longtime feudal candidate belonging to a powerful clan. Gul, who lost her brother in a terrorist attack, connected with a population that has been plagued by both terrorism and military operations.