I just want to gave some instruction regarding my assignment. It is an argument assignment on any global issue facing by country. I choose the topic on gender gap issue in India. The assignment is of 1000 words with Chicago style references. It is argument assignment so need some relevant things from which reader can agree with my statement and just have proper research with years and provide some remedies from which it can be reduce and what will be the position in upcoming years. It should be in proper pargraphes and the introduction part is on some background information like thesis and topic sentences .The between paragraphs should have proper research and well written and the last a conclusion should be mentioned. I will also provide some example assignment of previous student to you from which you can help while doing the assignments but they all have the difernt topic so it just hint for you.and i just want it next wenesday so plz do it well.thnaks. i dont bother about pages but paragraphes should not so big.
Women Rights in Pakistan Women rights and their status is an important determinant of the Grass National Wellbeing of any country. No nation can succeed without giving women theirlegitimate rights and proper status. In Pakistan, Women’s status has always been a subject of a heated debate involving the women rights activists, religiousfundamentalists,and liberal leaders. Nearly half of the total population of Pakistan comprises women, yet they continue to be treated as second citizens of Pakistan. Women are deprived of their fundamental rights to education, health, mobility, inheritance and political participation. Gender-related issues in Pakistan such as domestic violence, harassment, women trafficking, bride price, honor killing, forced prostitution and early forced marriagesare linked to the low status given to women. Women rights and gender equality issues are highly misinterpreted in the light of religious teachings to favor men systematically. Some researchers such as Bhattacharya (2014) believe that Pakistan is a male-obsessed country where the other half of the population is rarely given a chance to participate in the mainstream processes of the country and that, women from all the socio-economicclass of the society have suffered at the hands of male perpetrators in Pakistan. Government of Pakistan (GoP) recognizes the importance of gender issues and continues to show its commitment towards ending gender discrimination but has never declared a firm stance on the issue when it comes to confronting with religious-cultural groups who term gender equalityinitiatives as western agenda and some conspiracy against Islam and Pakistan. National and International Organizations are also actively supporting GoP in addressing the ever prevailing gender differences. However, the progress against gender-related indicators is critically low. Women’s access to social and economic services is far behind than that of men’s, whether in education, health and job opportunities. There are two perspectives among the researchers and women rights activists on the failure of gender equality agenda in Pakistan. One of the viewpoints is that GoP has a will to address gender issues in Pakistan and is taking reasonable efforts, but the subject of equality between the men and women in a religious country is complicated enough to bring about visible positive results. While other researchers and women rights activists believe that the GoP clearly lacks political will to eliminate gender issues in Pakistan, otherwise the results would have been different. This paper will support the later one and will argue that despite all the claims and commitments of GoP, there is a clear lack of political will in Government Organizations working on gender equality, they compromise on this long term strategic agenda. An overview of the policy measures and institutional arrangements shows that soon after independence in 1947, the GoP realized the need for concerted efforts to address gender issues and adopted a number of the key International Commitments.These includedthe 1948 United Nations Human Rights Declaration, 1979 Convention on the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEDAW) and the 1995 Beijing Plus (Rai, Shah, & Ayaz, 2007).All of these commitmentscall for a just society with no human sufferings where both men and women can live their lives with dignity and have equal opportunities to participate in socio-economic and political affairs of the country. The GoP also hasNational laws and commitments such as the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, 2005 Gender Reforms Action Plan, the 2006 Women Protection Bill, and the 2010 Workplace Harassment Bill responding to gender issues.(Rai, Shah, & Ayaz, 2007).The 1973 Constitution clearly states that there shall be no discrimination by sex, and both men and women have the right to participate in every sphere of life in Pakistan. New structures have been formed such as the National Commission on the Status of Women established in July 2000, tracks the progress against the international obligations, documents the gaps and suggests recommendation for improved results. In addition to Government’s efforts, the Nongovernmental Organizations also play a major role in narrowing down the high prevalence of gender inequalities in Pakistan. The UNWOMEN and other UN agencies in Pakistan deal gender equality as a cross-cutting theme in their programs to support the government. As a result of the efforts mentioned above, the status of women has improved over the last three decadesregarding their political participation, literacy rate, participation in labor force, accessing social and legal services and mobility. As yet, however, the international commitments mentioned above have not yet been truly translated into legislative reforms, reflecting the deeper conservatism within Pakistan’s political institutions and a lack of willingness.International treaties are not directly applicable in domestic law on ratification, in Pakistan (Ali 2012), so there is no legal accountability for individual perpetrators of violence which is highly considered as a private or personal matter.There is no definition of gender based violence in the 1973 Constitution justifying its being personal matter to be handled within family. Government of Pakistan ratified the CEDAW Convention with a reservation on Article 2(f), which required state parties to modify or abolish law, regulations,customs and practices, which constitute discrimination against women. So the gap between ratifying the conventions and translating them into national legal systems has restricted the conventions, laws, mechanism, initiatives, project and programs in bringing about the desired positive change in the lives of women in Pakistan. Another indicator challenging all the efforts undertaken on behalf of Government and NGOs in Pakistan is the World Economic Forum Gender Index,which reports that Pakistan ranks second lowest or second worse country followed by Yemen among the ten worst countries for gender equality.Moreover, Pakistan has not been able to improve in this ranking and has maintained the second lowest position for three consecutive years from 2013 to 2015, among 145 countries of the world. (WEF 2015). The World Economic Forum publishes this yearly report in collaboration with Stanford University and Harvard University, after assessing world countries on how well the governments divide resources and opportunities among men and women. This ranking questions the quality of efforts and level of commitment of both the government and non-government organizations including the UN agencies in Pakistan. It is true that the GoP is struggling to bring a positive result regarding gender equality; however, the majority of women are still bearing the brunt of discrimination in their access to education and health care, inequality in treatment in the labor market. Women still constitute more of the poor segment of the society and illiterates compared to men. The incidents of gender-based violence such as women trafficking, selling daughters, acid throwing, murders in the name of suicide and forced early marriages are increasing day by day as per the media reports.A recent report of Gender News Pakistan provides an overview of the general situation of women rights in Pakistan, according to which a total of 2,138 cases of violence against women were recorded in the year 2015. 939 of these were sexual abuse cases, 279 domestic violence, 143 women acid attack or setting women on fire, and 777 were suicide cases. 1079 women were murdered in the name of honor killing. (PGN, 2015)This data says much about where GoP stands in its efforts for gender equality despite all the global and local commitments and to what extent the commitments have been translated into real world achievements. The data also reflects to what extent the benefits of international conventionsare filtered down to ordinary women and girls of Pakistan. The situation of women in rural tribal areas of Pakistan, where a sizeable majority of the population lives, is worse compared to urban cities from where these measurements are taken. Women are used as a commodity. Parents sell their daughters in the name of marriage in some areas of KPK and Baluchistan province. As discussed in a journal on the status of women in Pakistan “in the tribal areas of Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), girls are sold as brides under the custom of Walwar” (Bhattacharya 2014, 189). There are still many traditions in practice in rural villages which are against the dignity of humanity. One of such customs is a marriage of girls with Quran, according to this custom, young women are forced to remain unmarried for the rest of their lives as they are married to the Holy Quran. The purpose of this marriage is that the woman will not claim her inheritance rights.Furthermore, in some of the areas, the customary act of Suwara is still prevalent especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan. Under the Suwara custom, in the case of murders instead of giving blood money as compensation; the accused family give their girl or girls in marriage to the aggrieved family to settle down the dispute between the two tribes. (DawnNews 2011, Noreen and Musarrat 2013). The age of the girls does not matter in such cases. There are cases where seven years old girls have been given in compensation. The GoP justifies its failures in CEDAW (2012) progress report saying that the challenge of gender equality has not been overcome due to lack of general awareness among women, illiteracy among women and entrenched societal attitudes which affect the quality of initiatives undertaken for the promotion and protection of women rights. Some researchers such as Karmaliani (2012) and Weiss (2003) also believe that the GoP has the willingness to address gender issues, but there are other pressing issues including entrenched patriarchal norms, joint family systems, economic disempowerment of women, illiteracy and a lack of awareness of legal rights impeding the gender equality progress. Weiss states in his paper the barriers, Government of Pakistan faces in eliminating discrimination against women and in implementing the laws are the prevailing sociocultural norms, the existing patriarchal system, legal guarantees that are often not translated into concrete actions, and the society’s feudal values. Most of the substantive challenges lie in implementation, especially at the grassroots level, due to locally perceived cultural restrictions and political necessities to appease certain groups (Weiss 2003, 12). In contrast, the NGO alternative report on CEDAW (Zia 2012) states that that the major impediments to gender equality are an ambivalent political will on the part of the State and resultantly its institutions; the absence of a firm commitment to the inherent principles; and a reluctance to own the State’s obligations under the international conventions. TheGovernment and Nongovernment institutions operate in a male dominant culture; leadership is highly associated with masculinity, so few women hardly manage to decision making positions and for most of the men leaders gender is women’s agenda. Hu (2015, 37-55) states “the problem is that the leaders do understand the issue of gender, but they do not want to give up control. Women have not yet been able to exercise a high voice”. The religious groups have disproportional influence at national and provincial level decision making bodies. Attempts to reform discriminatory laws have been labeled un-Islamic, unfaithful to and out of touch with Pakistan’s inherited traditions.Another report by Shirkat Gah (2007) while acknowledging NGOs contribution to Gender equality in Pakistan says that NGOs work is crucial given the absence of concerted governmental effort to document the prevalence of violence against women and