ISLAMABAD: Sherry Rehman, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) vice president, urged more women to stand as politicians, in an interview with Arab News on International Women’s Day on Thursday.
Rehman worked as a journalist before Benazir Bhutto, the country’s twice-elected former prime minister assassinated by terrorists in 2007, brought her into public office.
“Benazir Bhutto, the first female prime minister of the Muslim world, was a truly inspiring figure,” said Rehman who witnessed the death of her mentor.
Bhutto guided her through the complexities of Pakistan’s political system, helping her to step up to the challenges involved. The PPP, she added, has always welcomed women.
Rehman added that women could bring about change from the corridors of power, saying that politics in Pakistan was “very much a testosterone-dominated field.” She argued that politics around the world desperately needed women to “genuinely shake things up and produce legislation that reflects the experience of being a woman.”
Farah Azeem Shah, a member of Balochistan National Party Awami (BNP-A), who wants to become her region’s first female Chief Minister, concurred with Rehman.
She said: “It’s time for a woman to step in where men have failed to resolve matters.”
Shah decided to step back in 2017 and took an indefinite leave of absence from politics, disheartened by “corruption and self-serving bureaucracy.”
Outside of politics, she embraced causes such as poverty alleviation targets, increasing access to education and health care, fighting for women’s rights, before concluding that it was all “futile without political assistance.”
Shah is now preparing to run for the 2018 general elections from her constituency, Kalat.
According to the UN 2017 global survey of women in politics, women’s voices are still missing from the executive branches of governments and parliaments worldwide, slowing achievement on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly gender equality.
Pakistan ranks 174th globally, according to the women in ministerial positions along with 12 more countries, and 89th, according to the percentage of women in the lower house of parliament.
However, Krishna Kumari, a female senator-elect who comes from the minority Hindu community, has emerged as a symbol in Pakistan’s conservative and male-dominated society.
“What seemed to be unthinkable in the past decades has happened,” said Rehman. “For me, this truly is a historic moment for Pakistan and an empowering one for all women and minorities.”