[DAWN] IN Pakistain, the case of Tayabba, a 10-year-old maid allegedly beaten and tortured by her employers, a judge and his wife in Islamabad, serves as an ugly reminder that the myriad of programmes and campaigns for girls’ education, awareness and empowerment, aren’t making much of a dent in changing negative attitudes towards girls and young women in our society.
Perhaps that’s because we aren’t addressing a basic paradox: that Pakistain’s girls are not just socially shortchanged but are also vigorously economically exploited in all strata of society. In 2012, 12.5 million Pak children were involved in child labour, according to the ILO. No official study on child labour has been conducted by Pakistain since 1996, so no figures exist to examine the huge economy of girl-child labour in Pakistain. Yet it’s precisely this economy that we have to short-circuit before any meaningful change will take place for Pakistain’s girls.
Some development programmes in Pakistain try to offset the economic losses parents face when choosing to send their daughters to school instead of putting them to work. Nutritional interventions feed girls in school, such as the Tawana Pakistain project; others provide a small stipend, as in the Girls Stipend Programme in KP. But these projects are largely symbolic and financially nugatory. They do not compensate for the monetary worth a girl can provide her family through more profitable but illegal means. |