A march during Covid’s time is difficult to plan safely. For Pakistani women, who are determined to hold their “Aurat March” today, there are other risks – to their physical safety as well as online abuse and trolling.
Noor is an organizer for this year’s masked nationwide rallies. She said she could not give up her surname for fear of retaliation for her work.
“The pandemic has significantly hampered mobilization,” Noor said. He added that the closure of public transport alone was a major obstacle for women in the country. But it is the health crisis that is the focus of this year’s marches in Pakistan in celebration of International Women’s Day.
The event is organized online as well as on the street, with organizers encouraging women to stay home if the health risks outweigh the benefits. Those who do venture into the streets are asked to wear political slogans on their masks.
Online women use the hashtag # PatriarchyKaPandemic (“Patriarchy’s Pandemic”) to mobilize women and proclaim everyday violence against women by ‘broadcasting dirty laundry’, Noor said. During the pandemic, Pakistan saw a sharp increase in domestic violence cases, coupled with a greater burden of working women in domestic and care work.
With around 600,000 cases of Covid-19 in Pakistan, the manifesto for the march this year is significantly different from previous years, due to the increasing focus on health. Women are calling on the government to increase the health budget to 5% of GDP; Implement a Covid-19 plan for women and minorities; to tackle violence against women; grant equal recognition to women’s labor; and allocate more health resources for women and transgender people.
In recent weeks, Noor has organized medical camps to talk to poorer Pakistani women about the health issues in their marginalized communities, most of which are related to water and sanitation. Pakistan has one of the worlds worst access to safe water, with almost 80% of the population not having access to clean drinking water.
“You realize how inaccessible and unaffordable health care is for many communities,” Noor said. “I may have access to health care, but they do not.”
Muqaddas Afzal, 25, vice president of a group called the Progressive Students’ Collective in Lahore, said the pandemic further exposed economic and social injustices. ‘It also taught us that the pandemic of patriarchy is far worse than the Covid pandemic. Covid will be exterminated, but what about patriarchy? ”
“It’s a very timely theme,” said digital activist Nighat Dad. “In the pandemic, women’s health problems came before everyone else. I would call it a health emergency, to be honest. ‘
This is evident in the country’s maternal mortality statistics: 140 maternal deaths per 100,000 births. Nearly half of Pakistani mothers experience malnutrition and almost 40% of children under five are dwarfed.
Women are also calling for a fairer deployment of the vaccine at Covid-19 in Pakistan, one of the few countries that has allowed private companies to import vaccines without price restrictions, which exacerbates social inequalities.
The pandemic has unraveled “many myths” about policies, said Zainab Najeeb, 28, who teaches gender and feminism at Lahore University of Management Sciences. Najeeb said women are experiencing a significant increase in care work at home, exacerbated by the increase in domestic violence.
An organizer of the march in Islamabad, Tooba Syed, said: ‘The fight against patriarchy is a fight for recognition of care work and women’s role in social reproduction. ‘
In the early days of the virus, female health workers who participated in mass awareness campaigns about Covid-19 faced hostility and violence. “As domestic violence increased during the pandemic, female health workers were the only form of care available for survivors of domestic violence,” Syed said. “This is the backbone of the country’s public health system.”
Organizers are also calling for universal access to contraception and safe family planning, Noor said. ‘Our healthcare system does not believe that women can make their own decisions. This is our cultural attitude – there are so many barriers and restrictions on women’s decision making. We must march, and we must continue to work on this movement.
“When we march, we see a lot of women on the street. It is liberating and gives you a lot of hope. You see how many women are in this together and you see the hope for a change. ‘