Women’s And Minority Rights Movements: The Resistance Movements Led by Women, Under General Zia-Ul-Haq’s Regime and Religious Minorities Fighting for Equal Citizenship, Remain on the Margins of Formal Historical Narratives

Abstract

This paper investigated the movement of women rights and minority rights in the regime of General Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) in Pakistan. The aim was to understand the ways in which these groups were opposing authoritarian policies but they are still on the margins of official historical accounts. The research design adopted by the study was qualitative research design that was historical and critical. Secondary sources of information, such as scholarly literature, policy documents and archives, were used to gather the data. Purposive sampling was used to ensure that only those sources, which focused directly on the struggle of women and minorities under the Islamization policies of Zia, were used. Thematic analysis was the method used to analyze the data to highlight themes like patriarchy, legal discrimination, resistance and exclusion and occur in recurrent themes. They applied the Feminist (Tong, 2009) and Minority Rights Theory, which clarified the intersection of patriarchy and state power to oppress women and minorities and also condition the resistance forms. The results have shown that legislations like the Hudood ordinances and the law of evidence institutionalized inequality and lessened the legal rights of women, and further marginalized the minority. Resistance movements such as the Women action forum opposed such laws and established their own alternative space of empowerment. The agency of women, however, was usually complicated, as it empowered women and supported the standards of patriarchal relations. On the same note, the minorities opposed the discriminatory policies but received no equal citizenship and were shoved to the sidelines of the national identity. The research has an impact on the literature, as it reveals the suppressed presence of women and minority movements in the Pakistani political history. It demonstrates the means of marginalization of the marginalized groups with the help of language, law and power, and how it was overcome through activism and faith-based agency. The results highlight the necessity to rewrite the history of Pakistan, including women and minorities as the key participants of the process of equality and democracy.

Keywords: Women’s rights, minority rights, Zia-ul-Haq, Islamization, resistance movements, patriarchy, Feminist Theory