LAHORE – No matter how resistant they are to establishment and how much they demand for democracy, the unfortunate fact is that no union in Pakistan has the same ratio of representation of women as men. The journalists unions are much the same. Male dominated, and sometimes in certain splinter groups, they tend to follow more of the personal agenda of a few top leaders instead of following the plight and misery of the media workers and journalists. Nevertheless, one woman broke away with tradition, and for the first time in the history of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), Fozia Shahid became secretary general of this nationwide union. Fozia Shahid was always part of the Rawalpindi and Islamabad Union of Journalists. Her career in journalism was unprecedented and she started off as a column writer for an Urdu newspaper.
In fact it was March 8, 1975, (she still remembers the date, thanks to Women’s Day), that Fozia’s first column appeared in weekly Shahab. Though her section attempted to solve everyday problems – much like the Agony Aunt columns that magazines commonly have – Fozia was always more inclined towards reporting and had a more head-on approach to news. “I never in my life imagined that I would make it big as a journalist,” she said. “But I can safely say that passion has always ruled me when it comes to my work, and perhaps in those days that is what mattered most.” Once she joined daily Taameer in 1977, a newspaper which later closed down thanks to General Zia’s black press laws. Fozia bloomed as a journalist.
After General Zia’s forces began to harass liberals in the press, Usmani, the editor of Taameer, who was also now her father-in-law, sent her away to work with the Soviet Information Department, something which many journalists of the time were associated with. “It was not easy for me,” she says. “I received a lot of threats for my work, but I think that is where I got my courage from. Taameer was frequently attacked by Zia and soon it had to be closed down. But being involved with the Soviet Department of Information, I had to leave all my friends. Most of them left me,” she laughs. From 1983 to 1991, she worked there, after which the Cold War ended and USSR broke up, also putting an end to the Soviet Department in Pakistan.
“Zia started his attack on the press first so that politicians, whose major channel of communication was newspapers, came under his control,” she explains. “He used the 1963 laws, drafted by Altaf Gauhar, the information secretary of the time, and started to crush all the liberal papers one by one.
These included Aman, and Taameer, which were the most affected among Urdu papers of the Islamabad-Pindi region, while many English papers of the same region such as The Muslim were also closed down.” Everyone knows about the media versus establishment war during General Zia’s regime. But once the dust settled down, Fozia was now part of the team at Daily Pakistan, another well known Urdu daily of the time, which she joined in 1996. “Even in the late 90s, very few women were associated in hard news reporting,” says Fozia. “In fact I had been dismayed by some female friends of mine who were happy to have ‘Lady Reporter’ written on their visiting cards. I never had that on mine and would never have tolerated it.
It is the most humiliating thing ever. A journalist is a journalist, with no gender, race or religion, but sadly not everyone realizes that.” She says that women would usually be in a hurry to go home. There is nothing wrong with that, she says. But the fact that most women lack professionalism when it comes to work like this has affected the quality of work itself in general. “I was different because I have always regarded myself as a worker, an activist, so I never followed the herd,” she says. The journalists’ union had been dysfunctional since the Zia regime. In 1993, some senior journalists like Minhaj Burna, Abdul Hameed Chhapra, and Ahmed Hasan, for the benefit of other workers, revived it once again. To her surprise, Fozia got the most votes and was elected as senior vice president for two years.
In the next election she became President and after that finally secretary general. With immediate effect, she put her best foot forward and led the journalists into making an initiative for their rights given to them. As an authority in her union, she managed to get the government pay its advertisement dues to the workers in 1995 to 1996. She also associated Pakistan with the International Federation of Journalists, a big achievement, and also helped in implementing the sixth wage award.
“Today the mushrooming TV channels have changed a lot of perceptions and brought about a lot of awareness among the public and I appreciate that,” she says. “But now there is no idea of unifying for someone’s problems anymore. Now people have their own agendas and no one comes to anyone’s help. It’s all about opportunism. In addition, there is hardly any representation of women. I tried my best to induct as many women as possible in my time but today it seems no one is interested enough in joining in. And somehow, I have never thought of women as separate. I welcomed anyone who wanted to join.
There were already so many issues to take up such as low wages and salaries, and poverty and other things that this was never given the importance and perhaps I regret that in some way or the other,” she admits frankly. Today, however, Fozia, is still taken by young female journalists of Rawalpindi and Islamabad as a mentor. She is well respected for her work and the support she has given to her colleagues and friends, regardless of which publication they belonged to. She is today a member of the journalists’ union but does not hold an office. But even then, her rich experiences in life as a journalist leave an impression and must be known today’s generation of media people.
