Archive for July, 2011

The benefits of educating women in the Muslim world have tremendous ramifications on us, more than many of us realize until much later in life. Yet there are entire regions of the world where a change of mindset is needed regarding education of women and its merits. Contrary to popular belief, emphasis is required not in the most obvious economically depressed and illiterate circles, but in educated families steeped in tradition and restricted by societal constraints.

I come from one of those families, where mind numbing traditions and societal restrictions were as hard to battle as poverty and lack of education elsewhere.

Muslim societies are by definition conservative. It is a combination of our religion, culture, and timeless traditions. Even today, boys are expected to receive an education and earn a living while girls are supposed to receive theirs, marry well and raise children, thereby ensuring security for them and their children. The rules defining the roles of men and women have not changed much in the last one hundred years.

But increasingly, marriages are not working out in Muslim societies due to a variety of reasons. In the face of this adversity, the average Muslim woman has very few attributes to enable her to support herself or her family. The decreasing numbers of eligible young men who want to marry women chosen by their families means more and more women from conservative families may never enter the state of marriage at all. Marriage is no longer a guarantee of security and comfort. Nearly all Muslim women, no matter what our circumstances, are dependent on their families or their husband’s family at some stage. But prolonged dependency is not a coveted virtue, nor does it encourage self respect or dignity. Education and experience are the only tools that enable women independence and the ability to recover from adversity. I learnt this wisdom first hand.

Like many Muslim women, I was raised in an affluent, supportive and protected environment until I was married. But then the unexpected happened and I suffered the debilitating loss of my husband before I was 30. There was nothing my deeply supportive but conservative family could teach me, or had taught me, to recover from such a devastating experience. But devastating experiences happen to women every day, often after marriage and children. Death, divorce, desertion are today as commonplace in the Muslim world as they are in the West. Yet our societies resist allowing daughters the freedom to work and learn to become financially independent.

My education enabled me the opportunity to work and to change the mindset of my traditional family, my even more conservative in laws, and recover my life after the nightmare of losing my husband so unexpectedly. Every one of my personal victories against archaic ideas is a result of my education. It was a gradual but consistent process over many years, culminating in my struggle to learn survival outside the family.

It began with the conversion of my father’s ideas of women’s education. My father left the folds of the village at fifteen to join the Pakistan Navy, something he was passionate about since the age of seven. The Navy of those days gave him the opportunity to study at Dartmouth in England, enabling him to benefit from the best education and experiences reserved for Officers of the British Navy. Leaving the Navy after the 1971 war with India, he went on to subsequently join the merchant navy of Pakistan, moved to Dubai for a few years where he worked for a shipping company, eventually settling in New York as the owner of his own shipping company. I, therefore, left Pakistan at the age of eight, and had the privilege of living overseas all my life.

The Navy and the Dartmouth education evolved my father’s perceptions away from his upbringing and background since he allowed his children to attend mixed schools, an unusual decision for someone from Madina, Gujrat. We attended the best available school in Dubai in the 70s, Choueifat, and upon moving to the U.S., the high school in Scarsdale in Upstate New York, which was at the time one of the most renowned in the region, and why my parents decided to move to that particular town.

Although a good education was important to my father, my father’s idea of education and mine began to differ widely as I began to grow up. After all, my father’s experiences and mine were developing separately with our individual experiences. I was reminded in no uncertain terms who we were, where we came from, and where we were expected to return. My parents did not want wish for me to lose touch with our roots in Pakistan, and rightfully so. Those values kept me grounded much of my life. At the same time, my father encouraged my new found passion for equestrian show-jumping, while family members in Pakistan were dismayed and embarrassed.

By the time I was ready to go to college, my father was not. My father’s ideas and mine evolved separately. He disliked that my first choice of Columbia University in New York. He insisted I attend a Swiss Finishing School for a year after high school. I suspect he secretly hoped that I would complete my one-year learning etiquette and advanced French, marry well, and settle down by 19, in keeping with family tradition. I refused to waste a year fearing I would be left behind by my peers, so my father and I were at loggerheads. In hindsight, completing one year of finishing school would not have altered my life irrevocably, but at twenty one it seemed like the end of the world.

For the first time in my entire memory, however, my mother did something that changed the dynamics in our family forever. She stood up against my father. Historically she always sided with him, presenting a unified front with my father when it came to matters of discipline. Her reason for taking my side was simple: she was in college when my father met her and they married, and she did not see why her daughter was being barred from higher education when it was her turn. She never attended a finishing school, and failed to see the merit of forcing me to attend one if I was unwilling.

I take great pride in admitting that I was, and possibly still am, the quintessential ‘daddy’s girl”, like many women in the Muslim world, viewing my mother as an additional benefit to our wonderful family that revolved around my father. But that changed that day. I was stunned my mother broke tradition on my behalf. I looked at my mother with a new appreciation. Her education had made her defend my right to one, on my terms. What I did not know was that my mother was contemplating returning to school, and education was foremost on her mind.

In 1986, both my mother and I attended Columbia University together. I worked toward my undergraduate degree, while she worked towards her Masters in Social Psychology. We had lunch together on Tuesdays at a restaurant near campus. I met her friends, she met mine. It was a great bonding experience and one that matured our relationship.

I discovered newfound respect for my mother, who’d returned to school 20 years after getting married and having four children, the oldest of whom was eighteen and the youngest five.

I learnt gradually that education for women in my family was perceived as an accomplishment, like cooking, or sewing, something that would ‘raise’ my stock on the marriage market, but certainly not as a means of earning a living. The tradition was to encourage women to attend college if they wished, but it was rare for any of them to complete it since good proposals were more important than a graduate degree. It started with my grandmothers’ generation and is still the norm today, with many female cousins “married well” before they complete their education. As a result, female cousins with Masters Degrees sit around the house in the village for years waiting for the best marriage proposal, often from a gentleman with lesser qualifications. The only respectable jobs allowed were teaching, working from home designing clothes, running charities, catering, or decorating.

I found myself at loggerheads with my father’s and families’ antiquated ideas yet again when I graduated from college and refused to return to Pakistan immediately because I wanted to work. I got an opportunity to work in New York and wanted to use the experience knowing fully well I would not be permitted to do so in Pakistan. I completed my two years of work experience, and obediently returned to work at my father’s office in Pakistan until I was married two years later.

While the first two were mere struggles for an education and the right to work and learn to support myself, my real victory against tradition using my newly acquired skills came when my late husband ran into financial problems three years after our marriage, during his election campaign. Fazal came from an even more conservative feudal political family from Jehania, Multan, although he was personally quite liberal, having been raised in California for 18 years and training to be a doctor. He was the tribal chief of the area and his family observed full Purdah, where the women did not venture out of the haveli even in cars without their chadurs covering their whole faces except their eyes. Adjusting was not a problem. I was used to the journey from New York to my father’s village every year, I could handle the one from California to my husband’s village. I was a stay at home mom, and offered to work to help him through the difficult period in Pakistan.

Fazal was apprehensive of his family’s reaction to my working, especially as the wife of a feudal lord. We tried to keep it a secret for as long as possible, but five senior male relatives showed up at my office one day to confirm the rumors. I was in a business suit, and could see their shock at my lack of the appropriate attire. My in-laws stayed for tea and carefully observed my office, the secretary, the tea boy, and VIP service. Reluctantly, they acknowledged that I must hold a position of respect. True to form, they demanded outright how much I was earning and why I was bent on mortifying the family. I was working as an HR manager for an international oil company, and was hired on an expatriate package in dollars because of my educational background and work experience. When I informed them of my package, they were astounded that women could earn such large sums. Two instantly asked if I would get their wives jobs as well. Both Fazal and I were taken aback by their reaction. We expected recriminations and accusations, instead I encountered respect and admiration.

My second victory against society’s expectations came at a very high price. My family and in-laws were devastated when my late husband was killed at the age of 36 while trying to prevent an honor killing. After my father, my world revolved around my husband. I was almost 30, the children were two and four years old, and my life shattered. If anyone’s pain was greater than mine, it was my father’s, for all his wealth and power he was unable to protect me against my fate and agony. I was debilitated with grief, but my father’s pain regarding me was overshadowed by his pain for my children. I was an adult, my children were infants and without their father.

Fazal was the head of the tribe, and after his death our two year old son was the new head of the family, so the children’s and my reputation were of utmost importance to the family. As a young widow, there was no question of my living alone, and the children and I moved in with my parents the night my husband was killed, a decision my conservative in-laws endorsed, fearing all sorts of rumors and remarks were I to take up residence alone in any of our three homes. My father became not just my father, but my children’s father. The children grew up knowing that their father died, never actually experiencing life without one. They gained a ferociously protective one the night they lost their real one.

My father resolutely supported the children and I for five years. I spent two of those years in a haze, trying to put myself back together. Everyone in my sympathetic extensive family, including my parents and in-laws, was hoping that someone would marry me again as I was so young, so that the children and I would be taken care of in future. I realized with horror that I was expected sit around and wait to ‘marry well’ like the dreaded cousins in the village, and as tradition dictated. Widows are very significant victims in our societies, but I did not wish to spend eternity being pitied as a victim, nor did I want my children to suffer it. The awareness prompted me shake off the comfortable complacency, and take drastic measures to prevent my inevitable slide into self pity and dependence on others, be it on my father or another husband.

My education enabled me the opportunity to work in Afghanistan with UNIDO in 2001 for the reconstruction process, and I leapt at the chance of leaving Pakistan. My father was, yet again, against my decision to take the job and to go into a highly dangerous war zone. True to his nature he tried to be protective, realizing my need to stand up on my feet again, but resenting my radical methods. My children remained with my parents while I attempted to put myself back together and commuted back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Afghanistan was the ideal reality check for my wounded soul. The degree of suffering and anguish I encountered daily was a stark reminder of how fortunate I was to have my children, health, family, and education. I lost my husband, but was piecing my life back slowly through work so I could support my children and myself, but the women in Afghanistan lost everything and didn’t have any means to reconstruct theirs.

The Afghanistan experience led to my freedom from society, my second marriage and my move to Dubai. Today my father is the strongest proponent of women working and earning a living among my family, frequently encouraging girls in our family to work and advising them on their forays into business. My late husband’s family is proud that I work alongside my new husband and earn an income, instead of liquidating my late husband’s assets as many women in my position are prone to doing in order to subsidize their income. My husband Akbar encourages me to continue to learn and grow, teaching and guiding me along the way, and proud of my achievements.

Education and work experience for Muslim women is a chance at freedom. The freedom is not always from oppression, tyranny or poverty, but often from complacency and tradition. Most of the time, Muslim women do not need to use their education, waiting instead of suitable young men to propose so that they may make a good match. But there are very good reasons to start encouraging the use of education to gain experience in light of the growing statistics of women who are divorced, abandoned, widowed, or never married.

The worst mistake parents can make today is assume their daughters will have the good fortune and blessings that fathers and mothers pray and plan for. The best gift they can give their daughters is an education and support their endeavors in finding a job to gain experience, so in the event that the much anticipated fairytale marriage doesn’t materialize, their daughters and their grand children are not forced into dependency on brothers, husbands, families or society. It gives two generations a chance at self respect and dignity.

An education and work experience gave me opportunities very few women from the Muslim world are fortunate enough to enjoy. My experiences changed the mentality of two generations and two families, thereby altering the futures of generations of young women in two separate villages in Pakistan. Even though there must be thousands of stories like this all over the Muslim world, there are still not enough of them. While the Muslim countries of the world are beginning to increase the emphasis on education generally, there is so much more that can be done on an individual basis, beginning with every educated household, and with every educated young woman born to a Muslim household.

(Uzma Sarfraz Khan is Managing Partner & Group Editor, Who’s Who International Magazine. She can be reached at: [email protected])

Uzma Sarfraz Khan: Education and Liberation: One Muslim Woman’s Journey

Thursday, 14 July 2011