The Human Development Report has consistently defined the basic objective of development as enlarging people’s choices. At the heart of this concept are three essential components:

• Equality of opportunity for all people in society.
• Sustainability of such opportunities from one generation to the next.
• Empowerment of people so that they participate in – and benefit from – development processes.

In the light of the above, the condition of women in our country, especially the ones who constitute the rural masses is far from fair or morally and ethically correct. This fact has been highlighted on numerous occasions by the ill treatment of women in rural areas. One often hears of disturbing and tragic incidents in the news.

There are many faces of a woman of Pakistan. In the rural areas of Frontier or the villages of Sindh, she lives with the identity of either the mother of the future feudal lord, wife, daughter or sister of the feudal. There is a vast difference in attitudes of women, and their behavior, in urban and rural areas. She has been fighting the battle of life and society since years, and will keep fighting always.

And whenever we will see her, she will be found thanking her Lord for whatever she has proving the fact that endurance and patience is what a woman possesses most strongly. Women had to defend themselves not only vis-à-vis the state but also against hostile mischief-makers in the society at large. Such attacks still continue. Women have fought back.

These developments must be viewed against the background of quite far-reaching changes in Pakistan’s society in the four decades since independence, that have affected women’s place in it, both in the rural and the urban society. It is the latter, the urban society, with which we shall be most concerned here, for this is where the changes challenge the most forcefully established social practices and attitudes.