User:Bookku/Female dress code debates in Pakistan

According to Shenila Khoja-Moolji Pakistan continues to debate women's dress codes, Shenila  says anxiety about how women  dress themselves  is  a case in point of how the state as well as other social institutions and individuals in Pakistan promote their specified assumptions about public piety and morality. Shenila says state of Pakistan places special emphasis on educational platforms to produce idealized 'Muslims' and 'Pakistanis' and that is schooled through 'Muslim morality'  focused  curricula and dress codes.

Early discourse
Shenila Khoja-Moolji study 'Forging the Ideal Educated Girl' notes that with increased accessibility of printing presses since  19th century India of colonial times, reformers started printing various literature including various  periodicals. Few reformers also took their wives and other female relatives as co-editors. Through the periodicals some women authors also expressed their opinions on the then contentious topics like purdah (women’s dress and veiling culture) along with other topics like marriage, polygamy, right to vote, Age of Consent laws, and education. In a 1905 text named Sughar beti, author Muhammadi Begum adviceses  Muslim girls to continue with  quami   dress (i.e. ethnic / religious dress) and not to adopt English dresses or see through dresses. According to Shenila Khoja-Moolji by the 1950s, as the school, instead of the familial home, became the main platform  for education and moral instruction, lead to passionate discourse around curriculum, language policies, and dress codes. In her study 'Forging the Ideal Educated Girl', Shenila Khoja-Moolji brings to notice a generational anxiety that worried the emergent nation’s citizens around independence through one Zubaida Zareen's opinion in a 1950s magazine called Ismat saying that while it is okay  to learn from other nations but expresses displeasure over continuation of  dress in the convent schools even after Pakistan attaining independence after Britishers left  and expresses concern over perceived  undesirable effects on culture and religion.

Background of Zia regime
According to Shenila, in 1977 General Zia Ul Haq came into the power, with backdrop of political developments of international implications in neighboring countries i.e. Iranian revolution of 1979 and Soviet communist interference in Afghanistan; to counter communism expansionism, United States sought to use Islam as a defensive strategy (in Pakistan) and Zia patronized the Wahhabi version of Islam promoted  by Jamaat-e-Islami and Saudi Arabia to manage his otherwise illegitimate regime. Zia’s Islamization policies along with changes in all other  domains of life through changes in laws, school curricula, also strived to impose dress codes to focus on piety in public and personal lives. The ideal woman in Zia’s  discourse was the caretaker of the home, who conformed to strict compliance  of public piety - A domestically confined, sexually pure, and pious womanhood as the ideal which his regime strived to codify which institutionalised secondary position for women in Pakistan society with increased dependence on state and  family having a lasting effect on women’s autonomy. These Zia policies created space for feminism which is enfluenced by and idealised with international outlook. According to Shenila however, feminism  with international influence not only has to grapple with local sensibilities, due to differences in perceptions about ideal womanhood, but have also been frequently  criticized for  being closely aligned to promarket, neoliberal agendas which exacerbate women’s exploitation (Sic). Shenila says, still these discursive contexts shape contemporary meanings of girlhood and womanhood.

According to Nadeem F. Paracha in 1981 General Ziaul Haq personally took interest in starting a weekly televangelist show for then Islamic cleric Dr. Israr Ahmed on PTV, Pakistan's public broadcasting service. Rather than limiting himself to just religious preaching, Ahmed went on to include moral and political dimensions too. Since in 1982 hijabs and burqas were not too usual among middle-class  Pakistani women. When some women attended  Israr Ahmed' s  PTV show, in audience without hijab, Ahmed expressed his displeasure to the PTV producers. In response, General Zia's information ministry took steps to instruct women newscasters, and actresses in TV plays to wear least make up and be modestly dressed. According to Paracha those were same times when women were on the streets to agitate against General Zia's policies which were objectionable on human rights count to them. But when Ahmed started preaching to restrict women from watching men's cricket matches the Government stopped  broadcasting Israr Ahmed.

Dupatta burning protest
According to Ayesha Khan, General Zia Ul Haq used to distribute chadar cloths as modesty garment to girls and women at all academic functions he attended; in 1987 a rape of two burqa clad women took place in day time  while women were accompanied by their father, the incident enraged the activists and during a protests held at Lahore attended by activist Lala Rukh protesters burned their  dupattas and chadars as mark of their protest.

Drama
In her study Shenila discusses Pakistani drama in 2010s where in notions of middle-class respectability, by avoiding extravagant makeup, dressing modestly is depicted as a way to secure one’s honor and avoid the male gaze.

Academic institutions
According to Shenila, In October 2017,  the International Islamic University of Islamabad, a public university, issued a circular warning  non conforming to its dress code that such women shall be punished. The dress code was  informed as: “Shalwar Kameez with minimum  knee-length shirt, trousers are allowed only with long shirts, with all the dresses dupatta or scarf is compulsory; dress should not be see-through;  make-up and heavy jewellery [sic],  skinny jeans, tights, capris,  sleeveless shirts and deep necks strictly not allowed.”  Shenila says clothing of girls / women including female faculty  is regulated even at private educational institutions in Pakistan.

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Category:Clothing controversies
 * Dupatta burning protest