Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Abused and missing women

From the Nation:

Eighty per cent of women in Pakistan face domestic violence at one or the other stage of their lives and seven million of them are missing, revealed Farhana Faroqi representative of Oxfam at a seminar on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women here on Monday.

"Missing women" was a term coined by Amartya Sen to label the skewed male to female gender ratio in Asian countries, where the abortion of girl foetuses and the maltreatment of girl children resulted in fewer of them growing to maturity.

The Nation's article is a reminder for every Pakistani that the fight for female emancipation is not just against obscurantist beards, but society itself.

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