Benazir Bhutto and the Future of Women in Pakistan

Abstract

By a slim margin, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) was successful in the November 1988 elections, more than 11 years after its founder, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had been overthrown by General Zia ulHaq in a military coup d'etat. Those ensuing years had witnessed much social confusion and antagonism within the country, much of it focused on the place of women in society. The lifting of martial law on December 31, 1985, did little to alleviate the existing scenario, as repressive laws continued to be passed right up to the end of Zia's tenure. State policy under Zia ul-Haq was pursued in a rather complicated ideological framework. His stance contradicted popular culture in which most people are personally very religious but not publicly religious. An untoward outcome was that by relying on an Islamic-based policy, the state fomented factionalism; by legislating what is Islamic and what is not, Islam itself could no longer provide unity as it was now defined to exclude previously included groups. Shi'a-Sunni disputes, ethnic disturbances in Karachi between Pathans and muhajirs (migrants from India), increased animosity toward Ahmediyyas, and the revival of Punjab-Sind tensions can be traced to Pakistan having lost the ability to use Islam as a common moral vocabulary. Most importantly, the state had attempted to dictate a specific ideal image of women that was largely antithetical to that existing in popular sentiment and in everyday life. Following the August 1988 plane crash in which Zia ul-Haq and a number of other high-ranking generals died, many people considered that the era of women's suppression in Pakistan had come to a close. Benazir Bhutto had led her party to victory, and had been invited by President