LAHORE – Sajida Mir is the kind of no-nonsense person that does not take no for an answer and pursues what she wants until she gets it. This characteristic has pushed her straight from the grass root level into the halls of the Punjab Assembly. Surrounded by an aura of mischief and liveliness, she is not the person one would expect to be after. Born in 1967, in the low socioeconomic areas of Lunda Bazaar, Lahore, this woman, in her forties, says she has never hidden her background, often to be sidelined by the more ‘important women’ around, but she did not care.
“For me, the more important thing was to be born ‘right under’ the flag of my party – the party to which I still belong,” she says, proudly smiling. Her father Mir Hamid Hussain was a trade worker, and part of the union workers that later helped in forming the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). “The party papers were signed in Dr Mubashar Hasan’s house, and my father was there. But even though I was just a child back then, it is all a part of me,” says Sajida.
Sajida grew up in a time when about 20 families had taken the reigns of control in the Punjab and democracy was still a mirage that many were fighting for. Sajida knows what struggling in politics is. “Being a woman has not entirely helped me, you know,” she says. “It is much more difficult for a woman to do things or to achieve something unless of course one belongs to an elite class or a powerful family which can pull some strings for them. But women like me, have to bring out that power from within to only take a step,” she says.
Always the thorn in the establishment’s path, through organizing riots, demonstrations and protests, Sajida has also managed to be arrested a number of times, not counting the times where she courted arrest herself. In all her years of political struggle, she has spent about three years in jail. She laughs as she remembers the first time.
“When Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged, some time afterwards, I along with some other women, were protesting on the streets. Then we were all arrested and FIRs were lodged against us,” she says. There is nothing strange about that except that Sajida was just a ten-year-old child! “The SHO was so angry at the policeman who had arrested me,” she said. “He said to him, ‘I told you to arrest women and here you are with a child!’. Despite that however, I stayed in jail for about 15 days. This was in 1979, and since then I have been getting arrested as if it was a part of my profession – in fact, in a way it was.”
Turning of events came when Sajida was chosen by Benazir Bhutto as the Lahore President of the PPP Women’s Wing, and was put to a test, as she terms it, to perform. “Under me, about 400 women came on the general seats while 31 won from the districts.” Unfortunately, while anything Sajida did was appreciated by her party leader and chairperson Benzair Bhutto, she still finds that Pakistani political parties do not give respect to women. She won elections against reserved seats in 2008, becoming a member of the Punjab Assembly, but even today, she says she does not get the respect that an MPA should.
“I am a humble person and have no intention of acquiring wealth and flaunting it, but I have seen that even within the party, class differences still occur, they have only increased after BB’s death. An MPA who has good social contacts and is influential will automatically get more respect than I will. And while this is happening, I feel angry sometimes and bitter about the political struggle I have been through.”
She says that there are women who fight for their positions and seats; something not very easy to do, but there are more women, who come only because their husbands are powerful, and this has carried on for generations. “Its like sycophant versus sycophant,” she remarks. It was only last year when Sajida was wrapped in a controversy regarding her being sacked from PPP’s presidency. “People like me will not be supported. The women with a feudal background are more important. But I will not lose hope,” she says.
Where gender equality is concerned, she says that the more women enter governance, the better it would be. “But if they use relations and sources to enter, then it just defeats the purpose,” she adds. She has a more serious response when it comes to the position of women in the parliament. “The parliament comes much after,” she says. “First the position of women must be improved within the political party itself. None of the parties, and that includes mine, is fair to its women. They contest elections and later no one knows what happens to them because they have little power.
We are asked, ‘What’s your constituency?’; it’s the most humiliating question. Even at the top level, after BB was martyred, there is a political vacuum left to be filled, and no woman is fit enough to fill it. We want intelligent women who are ready to struggle for their political will,” she says. Sajida says that hard working women in parliament, despite party boundaries, are all unifying against one objective. “To be included via merit list is our top priority, with empowerment given to women wings. We should have our own constituency to rule and work from, without depending on men.
Males should not be able to use us for fighting their elections. Soon after we make them win, they do not give us the respect of even consulting us with anything. We appealed to the Election Commission of Pakistan to help us on this. A woman candidate fighting against another woman candidate will be much more fruitful for a party,” she says.
In today’s time and age, Pakistan needs to give women a role in its democracy. Analysts and experts say, democracy cannot exist without women stepping in to take care of the situation. And for this, women in parliament, women like Sajida, who has risen from the grass root level, and has struggled to the top, are the ones needed most. “Men have been ruling for 64 years and no one counters them,” says Sajida. “We have only come in since 2002, but we are always being cornered. How about giving us a chance?” she says.
