Role of Women in Pakistan: A case Study of Begum Shaista Ikramullah

Abstract

This research analyzed the great personality of Begum Shaista 
Ikramullah and her services for the Muslim women. She belonged to 
elite family and her family were very prominent in politics. Her 
cousin Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy also remained prime minister of 
Pakistan. Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah was a Pakistani 
author, politician, diplomat and social-activist whose life bridges the 
late colonial and post-colonial phases of South Asian history. Her 
biography illustrates the discursive pressures shaping the lives of upper 
and intermediate class men and women of her generation, 
particularly as manifested in the unquestioned tropes of 
modernization theory. However, the same life reveals that her notion 
of the tradition-modernity dichotomy does not extend to the equation 
of Islam with tradition. The secular-religious divide, in fact, does not 
feature in her thought or activism at all. The latter activism also 
problematizes the assumption that Muslim women, any more of less 
than non-Muslims, are marginal or peripheral players in the history 
of the twentieth century. She was one among the two women of first 
Constitution Assembly of Pakistan. Begum Shaista stood for the 
reservation of seats for women. The earliest post-independence 
women’s agitation was to secure economic rights for women which led 
by Jahanara Shah Nawaz, Shaista Ikramullah and other thousands of 
women marches to the assembly in 1948. But the role of Shaista 
Ikramullah for the women made her an ideal figure. Shaista’s work 
became the cause of emancipation of Muslim women. In every society, 
women played a very important role. This thesis is exploring the role 
of women in politics, especially in the context of Begum Shaista 
Ikramullah. Begum Shaista Ikramullah has been known politician 
1 Lecturer, Visiting faculty, university of the Punjab, Gujranwala campus.
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and leader in the social welfare. Thesis additionally plates the different 
organization which had started of women during freedom movement. 
Very few works on the Pakistan movement have analyzed the efforts 
of women in the freedom struggle. Further, available works highlights 
services of women in the elite section of societies. This research is an 
attempt to bring to light the process of developing political 
consciousness among women belonging to all section of society. It also 
elaborates their services and sacrifices which they rendered during the 
Pakistan movement.