SI was privileged to take part in the Commonwealth’s ‘Women as Agents of Change’ competition, launched to celebrate the theme of Commonwealth Day 2011. Although we were restricted to only 3 nominations we received many fantastic submissions. This week, we will be running a special blog series to celebrate all the nominations – a fitting close to a month where women have been celebrated across the Commonwealth!
Talat Pasha – Pakistan
I think I began my work when I was just a teenager. Seeing the plight of the domestic servants in urban areas, I started teaching young maid servants in a small room of our house. That was my attempt at “Adult Literacy” though I did not know this fancy word then. I soon started writing articles in Sindhi which was the local language for the women urging them to stand up for their rights.
When I realised that most of the women were illiterate and so could not read, I joined the Radio Station and did many programs which promoted Family Planning, Empowerment of women and raised awareness on Gender Violence and Domestic problems. The outreach was huge and so was the impact. In a weekly program I played the character of a woman who has to deal with Domestic violence, family planning and women’s rights issues. This program became very popular and Radio to me became a great medium to promote women related issues.
As I graduated from the medical school, I continued my work and decided to open a small clinic in the suburbs of Kotri in an area where there were no lady doctors. The clinic gave me opportunity to have a base and interact with a large majority of women from various backgrounds. Here, I interacted not only with women from the rural villages and came to know their problems, but also women from urban areas who due to shame and to avoid anyone knowing their predicament would come to a rural area to get help. For the rural women I began to represent a great hope. I became an embodiment of an empowered woman to them who could make important decisions on health, jobs, education and family matters. And I tried to come up to their expectations in every way. I became their physician, gynecologist, family counselor, financial advisor, Banker, Micro credit financier (though was not aware of this word too, then) and a big threat to the men of the area as I would take the women to the police if I suspected domestic violence. This continued for 25 years until I had to relocate to
Religious tolerance became a burning issue for me and I started working for that. Soon, I was elected as the SIGBI Assistant Program Director for International Good will and Understanding and my work began to have a global impact. I wrote articles for the “ The International Soroptimist” magazine and also for the “ Soroptimist News” Magazine. My articles focused on the following issues: “Honor killings”, “Health issues of women in the
When the floods devastated
The ‘women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights’ mantra raised expectation that violence against women would be taken seriously by governments and people around the world. Instead, the epidemic of gender violence, namely rape and other forms of sexual violence has escalated, from wars zones to main streets and blind alleys including rural areas without ‘formal’ wars. This is is an area where I would like to see a major change happening and would like to focus all my energies on the implementation of the policies agreed upon 15 yrs ago at
Our Soroptimist Agents of Change will be shared every morning and afternoon this week. We hope you will continue to follow our celebratory blog spots this week!