No other issue is as contentious and debated in the politics of contemporary societies as the question of gender and politics. Women activists all over the world have started to question inequalities between the sexes.
Fundamental questions have been raised about the essence of male-dominated democratic system in which women find themselves formally or informally excluded from political power.
In recent decades, we should focus more on the vital issues of empowerment, rights, social and political equality and discrimination in all its forms. The feminist movement, even in a male dominated and socially conservative society, like Pakistan, has brought into sharp focus, more or less, the same issues about the social status of women and their inadequate representation in political power and participation in politics.
SABEEN IMAN,
Lahore, January 11.