Women urged to receive education, pursue careers

PESHAWAR: Speakers at a function arranged in the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University (SBBWU) urged the women to get empowered by receiving education and pursuing careers to contribute to the social and national development with confidence.

The event was arranged in connection with National Working Women’s Day which is marked on December 22 every year.

The day has been marked since the year 2010 to recognize the struggle of working women to secure a dignified and respectful working environment and acknowledge the economic contributions made by them.

The SBBWU, the first public sector women’s university of KP, arranged an interactive session where a known mental health expert, Professor Dr Khalid Mufti, shared his thoughts and experiences with the faculty members and students.

Prof Tashfeen Babar was the coordinator while Professor Beenish Azmatullah of the English Department moderated the proceedings where the resource person had not taken the podium but was seated among the audience.

The senior psychiatrist talked about the psychological challenges faced by the working women and how to overcome them.

Dr Khalid Mufti, who is chief executive of the Horizon non-profit organization and regional representative of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), broke with the traditional lecturing methodology to lay stress on his points.

With over 50 years of experience in the psychiatry and psychology fields, he interacted with the audience by narrating his personal and professional experiences to elaborate on his topic.

The psychiatrist said the number of women joining the workforce had increased in the last few years.

“The working women are playing important roles in various fields which must be acknowledged,” said Dr Khalid Mufti who is a former principal of the Khyber Medical College, Peshawar.

He said despite performing well in various capacities and even excelling in a myriad of fields, it was a fact that women continued to face gender discrimination of diverse types-an issue that, he said, needed to be addressed.

The expert said discriminatory attitudes and exploitation such as harassment sometimes lead to serious consequences for working women. He recalled he had to treat a woman official at the Lady Reading Hospital back in 1980 who was forced to attempt suicide for the very reasons.

Dr Khalid Mufti believed that the situation was bound to change with the social, economic and political empowerment of women along with the support structures made available to them to guard them against all forms of discrimination.

He said his Horizon organization had trained a team of psychiatrists and psychologists which was extending services at the Ibadat Hospital. “The 100 working women we came across at the facility had various problems, such as discrimination at the workplace, dressing, lack of full family support, imbalanced finances and high expectations from households,” he said while giving a rough percentage of the issues raised by the women seeking counselling and therapy.

Dr Khalid Mufti advised the working women to come forward and discuss these issues with the relevant mental health professionals. “You will undergo mental and physical breakdowns if you did not speak up and receive counselling from experts,” he stressed.

The resource person, who has launched a Virtual Clinic recently under the Afghan Support Programme, shared his experiences treating Afghan women as well.

“They have been going through turbulent times for the last over four decades. The prolonged trouble in Afghanistan has multiplied the miseries of the Afghans in general and that of Afghan women in particular,” he said while pointing to some mental health issues faced by Afghan women in the light of his interaction which such patients.

Dr Khalid Mufti was all-praise for the SBBWU for empowering women through education for the last 19 years. “You are producing strong women and thus serving the society well,” he said.

SBBWU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Rizia Sultana paid accolades to the working women for their role and work, saying solid family support would enable them to work more effectively.

She talked of the social attitudes that impeded women to work freely and said these could be countered if the working women had a clarity of thought and acquire the ability to solve problems themselves, especially those pertaining to home so that that they perform better at the workplaces.

The vice-chancellor advised women, particularly Afghan women, to receive education as that would empower them to cope with the challenges.

Prof Dr Rizia Sultana thanked Prof Dr Khalid Mufti for sparing time and interacting with the SBBWU faculty and students to discuss the mental health challenges of working women. She also expressed gratitude to the WPA and Afghan Support Programme.

The house was opened later where the audience put up questions which the resource person and the vice-chancellor responded to. This was followed by an activity where the faculty and students were asked to name characteristics of the working women.

Some of the attributes mentioned were empowerment, confidence, passion, determination, clarity of mind, decision-making power, time management and teamwork.