In their messages on occasion of the International Women’s Day today (Thursday), President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani on Wednesday vowed to emancipate and empower women. This year the day would be observed on the theme ‘Empower Rural Women-End Hunger and Poverty’. Zardari complimented women and assured them of full support in their just struggle for rights and reiterated the commitment of the federal government to emancipate and empower women. He reaffirmed the PPP-led government’s commitment to take comprehensive action to ensure that policymakers adopt a systematic approach for empowerment of rural women. Rural women and girls could not wait and governments could not afford to fail them, the president said.
He said that promotion of women’s rights was part of the history of struggle of the PPP. As the first woman ever elected to head an Islamic nation, Benazir Bhutto felt a special responsibility to address issues relating to women, the president said. Zardari said that it was this vision of the PPP that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government appointed women for the first time in the subordinate judiciary and police. The subsequent PPP governments appointed women to the high courts and created special family courts headed by women judges and special women’s police to investigate crimes against women, he said adding that they did not want women facing shame in having to relate to men the violence they might have been subjected to.
The president said that for the first time in the country’s history, the federal government appointed a woman speaker, a woman foreign minister and a woman as ambassador to the US with a separate ombudsperson for women.
Gilani said that the International Women’s Day reminds us of the heroic struggle waged by women’s rights activists against anti-women policies and restoration of women rights and pledged to work even harder for their empowerment. He said that this year’s theme calls for a level playing field for rural women. The PM said that the federal government fully acknowledged the fact that women in rural areas were contributing a lot to the national economy in diverse ways.
Gilani said that the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) was his government’s flagship programme aimed at empowering rural women economically. Financial support was being provided particularly to the rural women through the BISP while the Waseela-e-Haq, Waseela-e-Rozagar and Waseela-e-Sehat were other major facets of BISP, which were serving as major vehicles for economic empowerment of rural women.
National Assembly Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza, in her message, said that parliament was fully cognisant to the plight of women and enacted various pro-women laws. She said that women participation in public affairs was central to the functioning and strengthening of democracy and struggle against oppression.
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