Aurat March Pakan international women’s day

Four years ago, some women in Karachi took a small step that has grown into a giant leap for Pakan’s womankind—the Aurat March. Held on International Women’s Day on March 8, this annual event has attracted ridicule, threats, counter-rallies, slut-shaming, and branding of participants as “agents of Western immorality”.
This year, the nod for the Islamabad chapter came at the last moment after the High Court was involved and the starting point of the march changed. Pakan’s Miner for Religious Affairs Noorul Haq Qadri wrote to Prime Miner Imran Khan, requesting March 8 be declared as ‘International Hijab Day’, and that the Aurat March not be allowed to “question or ridicule Islamic values”.
And yet, attendance at the event swells each year, as it spreads to more towns and cities—from Karachi to Lahore, Islamabad, Multan, Hyderabad. What motivates young people to come out and participate in the March, in the face of certain and severe backlash?

This Aurat March poster Rameen Salman really hits home https://t.co/RWo2H3pW3x@AuratMarchKHI pic.twitter.com/tHCzfZmUxj
— Sameen (@sameen_mohsin) March 2, 2022
The answers, from people of different regional, economic and gender backgrounds, have common threads—watching violent patriarchy in action up and close; awareness that systems of oppression are interlinked and need a concerted fightback; and a sense of urgency that change must come NOW.
Harrowing encounters with sexism
Jawaria Abbasi, 28, now a World Bank professional in Karachi, saw her village headman father routinely counsel men to “allow” their daughters to exit abusive marriages.
Sorath Sindhu, 29, a doctor from Sindh, has seen parents of sexually assaulted boys try to hush up cases. An agnostic born into a Hindu family, Sindhu says the plight of girls subjected to forced conversion makes her “tear up every time”.
Shafique Soomro, 27, a bank employee, saw one too many women with burn injuries on their thumbs in Shikarpur—the burnt digits would ensure they could not attest property papers.
Ayman Fatima, a graduate student at Punjab University in Lahore, realised early on she would have to work twice as hard, and “prove herself every day” to win the approval teachers liberally showered on male classmates.
“The backlash we get is a measure of the impact we are making, and hence a motivation of its own,” says Abbasi. “Everyone in power is threatened the Aurat March – feudal lords, politicians, clerics. They claim we are questioning Islam, but it is them who are using religion to hoodwink people.”
Posters of hope, power
Soomro says for him, staying silent was not an option. “Every other day in Pakan, you hear of horrific violence against women. Killings over “honour” abound in a society struggling to give women respect. Self-proclaimed upholders of piety gobble up their sers’ property, when Islam guarantees daughters a share. The Aurat March is one outlet for us to voice all this rage and frustration. It is a venue for us to find like-minded people. People march with slogans and posters they make themselves. It is the self-expression of a society long denied that.”

The posters Soomro mentions have been one of the prime generators of outrage over the Aurat March. Slogans such as ‘Mera jism meri marzi (My Body My right)’, ‘Apna khana khud garam karo (Warm up your food yourself)’ and ‘Lo main seedhi baith gayi’ (Look, I am sitting straight) featuring a woman sitting with her legs not daintily crossed)’ have made grown men froth and foam at the impending collapse of civilisation.
The slogans, all the participants hasten to explain, are born out of actual stories of oppression—a wife who was brutally beaten up because she did not warm up her husband’s food as she was sick, a 13-year-old who was killed her father for not making round rotis, as well as the many other stories of women being denied bodily autonomy. But the backlash over them has seen even some supporters of the March call for them to be “toned down”.
Yet, for others, the posters mean hope and power.
“All my life, I have feared authority. Of my parents, of society, of the maulvi saab. Before I read some of these posters, I had no idea authority could be laughed at,” says a 22-year-old person who wants to be identified only as “ek rooh, ek jism (one soul, one body)”. The 22-year-old from a town in Sindh is yet to figure out “my gender or my pronouns”. “I had no tools to engage with such questions. I was focusing my energies on suppressing them. But in 2019, I just happened to be near the Aurat March in Karachi, and heard some of the slogans and speeches. I suddenly felt a lot less alone.”

This is going to be a thread of this year’s Aurat March placards.RT for visibility people. pic.twitter.com/iEDMJ5x0Id
— Hunza (@__femint) March 6, 2022
The 22-year-old has since been attending “informal counselling sessions” on gender and sexuality. “The fact that some people could mock authority, which to me till then had been a suffocating, stupefying force, started the process of setting me free,” the person said.
Of contradictions and solidarity
The slogans, however, also represent some of Aurat March’s contradictions. “For some women, freedom is the choice of clothes. For others, it is preventing female infanticide. Some dream of seeing many women become CEOs. My dream is a society where a capital concept of a high-flying CEO is not celebrated,” says Fatima.
Sindhu says the issue of forced conversions is not as much of a burning priority for everyone as it is for her. “The term ‘forced conversion’ doesn’t cover the scope of the horror it is. Girls as young as 12-13 are abducted, forced to give up their religion, gang-raped, married off against their will. If the case goes to the police, it drags on. I have seen women crying, begging to meet their abducted daughters just once, and returning empty-handed. One girl being abducted ruins the family. The scared parents don’t allow their other daughters to study or work. We need a law against this, but a collective struggle for it is still a long way off,” Sindhu says.
Women and men carry signs as they take part in an Aurat March, or Women’s March in Lahore, Pakan March 8, 2020. (Source: Reuters/Mohsin Raza)
However, the participants also say the March is an opportunity to form solidarities across the divisions that separate them. “Religion is not our only identity. We can bond over regional identity, over gender identities too,” Sindhu says. “This March is about giving space to, and celebrating, choices. And that involves learning about each others’ choices,” says Abbasi.
As with any mass movement, the March has also had to deal with the class question.
“Some critics of the March have claimed that women who participate oppress female servants at home,” says Sindhu. “But what these people don’t say is that the prevalent social system allows such oppression, in which everyone is complicit. Our economy is such that only the oppressor, and the very oppressed, stay here. Those who can, get out of Pakan. I don’t see the Aurat March critics agitating for better labour laws. The March is a place for everyone to learn and reform,” she adds.
Fatima says participation from across class strata is growing. “People think attending the March is all about rich women ticking a trendy box. For middle-class women, it is about survival. They need to earn to feed their families, but that whole process – studying, travelling to work, the workplace, coming back to demands at home – is full of injustices. Thus, they are marching for pay parity, for shared domestic chores, for safe workplaces.”
The proclaimed goal of the Karachi Aurat March official chapter this year is “march for our labour”. For the Lahore chapter, it is “legal, economic and environmental justice along the lines of femin futures”.
All hands on deck
The manifestos of the Marches are products of work participants do all through the year, creating awareness and collecting views.
Fatima is part of a group called Progressive Students’ Collective. Sindhu is associated with The Rise Foundation, which works for social justice. The others say they are active on social media, in seminars and discussions. Fahmida Baloch, a student who will participate in the Karachi March for the first time this year, says she made up her mind thanks to the efforts of such activs.
“Till a few years ago, I was convinced all these femin agenda was just to ruin our culture. But as I read and lened more, I realised feminism says we deserve equal opportunities, which we will never get unless we fight for them. I will march this year as a way of participating in this fight,” Baloch says.
“At least our March is making people google terms like feminism,” Fatima says. “For me, that is a win. A bigger win came a few days ago – a male student at the university, from a right-wing group, gave me a poster for their counter rally to the Aurat March, the ‘Bint-e-Hawwa march’. I gave him some of my posters and a piece of my mind. He stormed off, and I could see him telling his friends about me. That rage and confusion on his face, something I, every woman, is so used to the feeling, made me exultant. I now have the power to make my oppressors uncomfortable, all thanks to the Aurat March.”