By: Asem Mustafa Awan
The world celebrates the International Women’s Day with hold seminars, speeches and variety of events and at home front in ‘land of the pure’ two extremes of opinion was on road.
The nation has 52 per cent of women in the total population and the women march in pictures has given enough food for thought for the common reader.
The liberals had the slogans with ‘my body my wish’ while religious faction of women had a slogan ‘my home is my heaven’.
These two extremes also depicted the difference of approach in the women thought. International Women Day on March 8 had more pictorial than usual as the two extremes had one thing in common and the two sides besides the difference marked the same day without any fireworks.
Breaking away from all taboos and norms one side of the picture depicted dancing and party going women with posters that can be classified as porn literature while the other side had women dressed and covered from head to toe with posters that were on morality and Islamic teachings.
Leaving the two extremes the BT photographer captures the real life image of a how women celebrate the day in Pakistan unlike the protesters.
The young woman in picture is selling sugar cadies to make ends meet and she is not aware of the fact that the world celebrates ‘her’ day and at the home front in Pakistan women representing ‘her’ are at daggers drawn.
She is not from their class a common woman who has only one objective in mind is that is to make enough for the day to feed the family which could be her younger siblings, children, ailing parents etc etc.
Working on the road and coming across people from different walks of life she is the real embodiment of courage and self-sacrifice which the two warring sides in their approach are forgetting.
Hats off to this woman who is making ends meet with an honest day’s work. How much she earns during the day should be the bench mark for the economists who make plan for the nation and always leave these poor out.
International women’s day will have global coverage and this woman will not even see or read the newspaper as she comes in the class which is unaccounted for.