Women’s/Gender Issues
Panel: Linking Our Past to the Future: Women, Education and Social Reforms
 Women, Education and Social Reform in the Pukhtun Society as Reflected in the ‘Pukhtun’ (1928-1947)
Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah*
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of women in the traditional male-dominated Pukhtun society with a particular reference to local prejudices against female education and its repercussions. The Khudai Khidmatgars, members of a social reform movement, led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan, were determined to change the existing values vis-à-vis the uplift of women in the Pukhtun society.
The paper would be analyzing in detail the various steps taken by Khudai Khidmatgars in this particular direction with a focus on the articles/papers published in the ‘Pukhtun’ during 1928-1947. These writings, contributed by both male and female members of the Pukhtun society, as well as the Khudai Khidmatgars, had a tremendous impact on the Pukhtun society and the women of the North West Frontier Province who participated in large numbers in the freedom movement. It enabled them to share the responsibilities with the men folk in almost every filed of life, thus introducing new trends in the Pukhtun society. The impact of these writings was so huge that it changed the whole outlook of the Pukhtuns that started encouraging their women to acquire modem education, participate in social activities and also in politics, thus enabling them to get their due share in the society. The results can be seen in the contemporary Pukhtun society where women form an integral part of the society, and do not lag behind their male counterparts in education, politics and in other fields.
*Dr. Syed Waqar Ali Shah is professor of History at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. He has done his Masters in History and Pashto Literature. His thesis of Doctorate in History is on Frontier’s politics with special reference to Khudai Khidmatgar movement.
Modern Education and Women’s Emancipation in the Sub-continent
Zaheda Hina*
The paper will focus on how modern education reached first to the Hindu and then Muslim women of South Asia in the last decades of the 19th Century. It will highlight prominent personalities that played important role in this regard and the impediments they had to face. It will also take in to account the attitudes of Muslim reformist leaders towards women education during the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century. The role of South Asian women’s journals in emancipation of women will also be discussed.
*Zaheda Hina is a prominent fiction writer in Urdu, an essayist, journalist and women’s rights’ activist. She is based in Karachi, Pakistan.
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