Realism as a masculine concept largely prevails not only in
our society but even in the most developed ones. Need of women in international
relations cannot be denied and the male to female ratio in IR has a lot of room
for improvement. Even in the United States, which has the highest percentage of
females in the military than anywhere else in the world, the male to female
ratio is 85:15 which is very low for such a developed country.
Pakistan is one of those developing countries where women
are actively taking part in politics and IR. Taking example of Benazir Bhutto, she
was the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan and also the first one in the
whole Muslim world. She has been a role model for every Pakistani women and
after Fatima Jinnah, she was the most loved and respected lady of the nation.
Pakistani constitution provides separate seats and quotas
for women participation in elections and as a result we have a good percentage
of female politicians. With people like Benazir Bhutto as our role models, we
can hope for more feminist participation in our politics but we still have a
long way to go in future.
1 comment:
Mention of quotas and reserved seats for women in legislative assemblies raises an important contradiction and paradox. We argue for the inclusion of women in national politics on the premise of equality. A question worth raising is the need for quotas and reservations in a system of equality. If equality exists, in national politics or in the framework of international relations, or it is an endpoint that we are striving towards, doesn't the imposition of quotas undermine that effort by conceding defeat to a system that we silently, through the quota, accept is unequal ? For gender inequality to be eradicated, other methods must be employed. Quotas and forced election to assemblies is a self-defeating mechanism.
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