Gender segregation & women’s rights in Muslim societies: de-constructing feminist opposition to spatial boundaries through the lens of feminist documentary film

ABSTRACT

In many Muslim societies including Pakistan, the notions of spatial boundaries and gender segregation are becoming critical site for women’s rights and feminist activism. Sanctified through patriarchal culture and interpretations of religious scriptures, such notions undermine women’s agency and autonomy, hence invite greater attention from feminists, whereby they seek to unravel how these restrictive codes, deprive women of their fundamental rights such as access to the public sphere, education, and financial independence. Lately, feminists in Pakistan, have been demonstrating their opposition to these restrictions through various cultural and political activities that include the arrangement of the annual ‘Aurat March’, social media campaigns and other forms of cultural resistance. Feminist documentary has emerged as one of these effective tools, through which feminists confront religio-cultural constructs such as spatial boundaries and gender segregation, concepts that contribute to women’s oppression. These documentaries are providing new tools for cultural resistance and should be seen as a distinctive Muslim feminist documentary. Owing to the distinctive nature of feminist documentary in Pakistan, this paper explores feminist contestation of spatial boundaries through the lens of feminist documentary.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist documentary
• spatial boundaries
• feminism
• women’s rights
• women’s activism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Chaddar and Chardeewari surfaced as a political slogan during Zia regime, which was stoked by his political alliance JI. It’s a religio-cultural concept that either demands women’s confinement to their households or mandates compulsory veiling in case women trespass public sphere.

2. Carol Hanish (1970) in her essay titled ‘The Personal is Political’ maintains that personal experiences of women are rooted in their political situation and gender inequality, and hence require collective actions for the solution of feminist issues. Thus, the slogan ‘Personal is Political’ became an essence of second-wave feminism during the 1970s.

3. This clause regarding the sovereignty over the state affairs in the Objective Resolution, reads as the sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Almighty alone. The authority which he has delegated to the state of Pakistan through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust’.

4. The filmmaker and her friends have offered their definition of what constitutes a liberal society. During their conversation in the backdrop of the Jinnah Mausoleum, Sumar and her friends define liberal society as the one where religion is a personal and private issue and there is a greater tolerance towards those with different belief system and those who do not conform to any religious tenets.

5. Qawwali is a form of Sufi Islamic devotional music that is immensely popular in India and Pakistan.

6. The politics of embodiment includes narratives about how bodies come to take meaning, representation of bodies varyingly dressed and undressed, and the integration of iconic glimpses into a kind of propaganda that creates an understanding of how bodies may be treated, circulated, and interpreted without ever stating these explicitly.

7. Copied from dialogue in the film.

8. Ibid.

9. Copied from the subtitles in the film.

10. Ibid.

11. Human rights and gender equality are the bedrocks of progressive Islam. This essence of fundamental equality embodied in progressive Islam lays the ground for feminist activism for attaining social parity, something the rigid Islam adopted by the Pakistani state denies them. See, Safi, Omid 2003, Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender & Pluralism, Simon & Schuster, 2003, pp. 2–4.

12. Sustainable Social Development Organization, ‘State of Violence Against Women and Children in Pakistan’,https://www.ssdo.org.pk/storage/app/uploads/public/604/9f2/3fb/6049f23fbf245777465964.pdf

13. Copied from subtitles in the film.

14. Copied from the subtitles in the film.

15. Ibid.