Pakistani Women in a Changing Society

Abstract

The decade of the 1980s has truly been a decade of the women of Pakistan. A powerful women’s movement made a dramatic impact on Pakistan’s political scene. The concrete achievements of the women’s movement in its struggle against policies of General Zia’s military regime, directed against women in the name of Islamisation, have not been inconsiderable. A number of women’s organisations in the country came together in this struggle, including the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), the leading and the most effective of these, the Democratic Women’s Association, the Sindhiani Tehrik and the Women’s Front, as well as the All-Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA), the oldest of these, which has been run by wives of senior bureaucrats and politicians and has had a reformist but rather a patronising orientation.