Outlook
Violence Against Women: Pakistan's position
Countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal and Bhutan basically comprise the South Asian Region. There are certain common factors that are applicable to these countries. All these countries claim to have been influenced by their age-old history, civilization and culture. With the exception of few countries in the region they were directly under colonial subjugation and subjected to new attitudinal influence and also affected by new attitudinal influence, liberalist and Marxist concepts. These countries were also influenced by concepts such as Feminism and Women's Liberation in the recent times. Being members of the United Nations Organization they were integrated into the UNO structure and thus influenced by the UNO-based ideals, concepts and such thinking. These factors have had a perceptible impact on women's participation in politics in this region of the world. However, domination by males is still found in these countries especially in the rural areas despite the fact that countries in these regions have been subjected to diverse currents of intellectualism in the modern era. The importance of women's participation in law-making as well as in politics has been repeatedly stressed at Beijing Summit, Inter Parliamentary Union and United Nations Assembly but there is still the need to develop awareness of the majority of the people in South Asian region on this matter.
Men and women are almost numerically equal in the context of the world population, but representation of women in politics especially in South Asian region is very low. There are diverse factors that militate against women's participation in politics in South Asian countries. The traditionally held view that women should find their proper place in kitchen , biasness against women , unpleasant nature of politics, lack of political ideology that inspire women to take part in politics , lack of income and assets are some of the reasons that prevent them from getting seriously involved in politics.
During the period from 1945- 1999 there were 29 Lady Presidents and 30 Lady Prime Ministers in the world. Even though women held the positions of Heads of State, they were seldom given the chance of being actively involved in law-making or rather the Legislature. In many South Asian countries, women have held the mantle of the Head of State but involvement of women in politics on their own rather than on the strength of an illustrious family background has been a novel tendency being witnessed on the political landscape.
A survey conducted in 179 countries revealed that there is 11.7% women representation in Legislative Councils in the United States, 9.5% in United Kingdom and 18% in Canada. This figure is 8.6% in India and 4.2% in Sri Lanka. In Scandinavian countries namely Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland nearly 1/3 of the parliamentarians are women. Likewise, there are 100 countries where not a single woman has been represented in the legislature.
In South Asian Region it can be seen that though many Voluntary, Non Governmental and Women's Organizations have built up an ideology in relation to the rights of women and the importance attached to their role in legislature, this ideology has not been put across throughout the region . Basically such an ideology has not been linked to major political parties. So it is of vital importance to increase women representation in decision-making spheres and all South Asian countries should strive to achieve what is succinctly referred to in the words: "Men alone cannot decide the future of the country".
