And the World Changed Read Free Page A

to legitimize his rule. Fatima Jinnah, sister of the nation’s founder, stood up as his political opponent to widespread support and became the first woman in Pakistan to head a political party and compete for the position of the executive head of state. Ayub Khan won his election but was ousted from power in 1968.
    A brief spell of democracy preceded another period of martial law. There were two wars with India. The refusal of the military and some West Pakistani politicians to accept the election results of 1970 led to brutal civil war in 1971 and the loss of a large portion of the country—East Pakistan—which declared its independence as Bangladesh. In December 1971, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto assumed power in a truncated Pakistan where he held the majority vote. In 1977 General Zia-ul-Haq overthrew Bhutto, and tried and executed him. Zia-ul-Haq ushered in a new era with religious extremists as his allies, ruthlessly pushing aside the liberal, modernizing precepts of the nation’s founders.
    As part of his campaign to “Islamize” society, Zia ul-Haq introduced the 1979 Hudood Ordinance, which did not differentiate between rape and adultery. He also passed new blasphemy laws. Both the Ordinance and the blasphemy laws victimized the weakest and most vulnerable—women and minorities. All this, together with blatant miscarriages of justice, provoked educated, professional women in Pakistan, particularly lawyers, welfare workers, and journalists. They formed the legendary Women’s Action Forum and came out into the streets to protest. Pakistan’s English-language press provided them with strong backing, and some of Pakistan’s finest women journalists emerged during this decade. Still, it took three decades to pass a watered-down Women’s Protection Bill in 2006, which was full of compromises for fear of alienating Pakistan’s right-winglobby and clerics (who were defeated in the 2008 polls).
    Despite political restrictions, in the 1980s a university education became the norm for many young women from professional families in Pakistan, and a number of careers opened to them, including ones in the civil service. At the same time, in Pakistan’s low-income groups, education remained—and still remains—a privilege, not a right, regardless of gender, but boys were and are far more likely to be sent to school than girls, although schools for girls have grown and expanded, particularly in urban areas. The disadvantages of the tiered educational system, inherited from colonial times—one in English, the other in Urdu, and a third in provincial languages—created schisms in society that have been continuously and fiercely debated since 1947, but Zia-ul-Haq’s attempt to do away with English as the medium of instruction met with great resistance. Instead, the demand for English grew: It became the language of global power, global knowledge, and the new electronic media.
    In 1988 Zia-ul-Haq died in a mysterious air crash, ushering in an era of civilian rule. In 1989, Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007) was elected Prime Minister and became the first Muslim woman to hold that office anywhere in the world. Bhutto campaigned while pregnant with her first child. When her second child was delivered, she became the first elected leader of a modern nation to give birth while in office. Her assertion of womanhood while serving as the executive head of state in a conservative patriarchal country was an important milestone for women everywhere. Bhutto used English to great advantage in her writings, and her posthumously published book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and The West (2008), has received much critical praise.
    Today an increasing number of upper- and middle-class families in Pakistan have allowed their daughters to receive the same educational opportunities as their sons. Several women have graduated from prestigious international universities and a large number of