a year after bhutto, pakistani women left in lurch

A Year After Bhutto, Pakistani Women Left in Lurch

A year after the murder of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, onlookers say women are losing ground politically. Parliament may be 22 percent female, but they say the power structure is hereditary, male-dominated and often partial to feudal justice.



(WOMENSENEWS)--Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's first female prime minister, was shot dead on Dec. 27, 2007, as she was leaving an election rally and seeking a return to power as the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

A year later, some of the mourning that remains goes beyond her to the overall predicament of women in the country that she left behind, which holds 127th place among 130 nations in a 2008 global ranking by the World Economic Forum of women's social and economic status. The only countries ranked lower are Saudi Arabia, Chad and Yemen.

One prominent sign of women's difficulties in Pakistan are the two ministerial appointments this year.

Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, took her place in the party and eventually assumed the presidency. A few months after Bhutto's killing, he appointed Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani--who served ministerial stints in Benazir Bhutto's administrations--as education minister.

On the one hand, the powerful Oxford-educated Bijarani, in 2006, supported the modification of the Hudood Ordinance laws, which are modeled on Islamic Sharia and meted out harsh punishments on women in the name of God for extramarital sex, false accusation of extramarital sex, theft and drinking of alcohol

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http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3869