SLOUGH, ENGLAND:
Quick, without Googling or consulting ChatGPT, riddle us this: what is the most ludicrous, outlandish, woman-in-men’s-field thing a female person do to earn the respect of a man? Is it building a rocket? Sliding into a parallel parking spot in 0.5 seconds? Building a career as a petrol station attendant?
We need neither brains nor AI to assist with this answer, because we have Imran Abbas toiling away on Instagram Stories to tell us: it is number 3. Possibly because women have little time left for rocket-building over the course of a busy work day, and also because very few women in their right minds would attempt to parallel park when there is a perfectly good spot available half a mile away free of both other cars and braying bystanders. Which just leaves us with the petrol station thing.
Earlier this month, Imran was impressed enough to post (with consent) a video of the woman refuelling his car, not unlike a tourist on safari in Africa pulling over to quickly snap photos of a wandering leopard before it slinks away into the bush. Just before telling us all this her name, Imran urges us to check out this rare sighting of a ‘working woman’, saying, “Look at this, women here are in every field of work.” The label splashed across his video read “Respect!!!”. Yes, all three exclamation marks are his own.
What’s the problem?
In an interview earlier this year, when touching upon society’s favourite oxymoron (the “working woman”) the ever dependable Sania Saeed, fierce defender of those of those she shares a gender with, pointed out that in rural areas, women had been working and farming alongside men for generations without anyone recognising their value.
Bearing Sania’s observation in mind, the real question here is this: why is it noteworthy for a woman to be working at a petrol station in the first place when women have been working since time immemorial? Why can a woman not be out in the wild earning a living without people getting out of their cars to marvel at the spectacle? Is it because there are so many barriers for women to break through that by the time they make it to the finish line at the petrol station, it is time to hand out medals and/or film it all for posterity? Is this the awed state the equivalent of a woman overcome with raptures over a man who is both liberal and culinarily advanced enough to boil himself an egg for breakfast?
As a man as social media savvy as Imran must be aware, in the wake of any content posted online, it is the prerogative of followers to comb it for subtext with the diligence of a forensics expert searching a crime scene for clues. On social media, a spade is rarely ever a spade. You put up your post, and in return, we put on our Sherlock hats and ask the important questions: What does this photo really mean? Why has it been put up now? What can we glean from this five-second video about this person’s innermost thoughts and society at large?
In Imran’s defence
We have little interest in Imran’s innermost thoughts – unless, of course, he is reckless enough to publicly compose a post titled “My innermost private thoughts”, in which case it is open season on the poor man. In this spirit, it is necessary to back up Imran’s one-word helpful caption and note that, as he so thoughtfully pointed out, it is of course entirely respectable to earn a living at a petrol station. He is not wrong on that score.
We must also absolve him of any nefarious intentions of patronising this woman in the same way as someone else would praise a four-year-old’s drawing of a cat. This is not meant to be an attack on Imran, who, lest we forget, was amongst the first male celebrities to publicly condemn the murder of Sana Yousaf, a woman who fell afoul of a man spurned. In this petrol station situation, Imran’s was an entirely innocuous post, put up to celebrate the power of women defying social norms to go out and earn a living that does not involve a more traditionally female career, such as teaching or making snide comments about blackheads whilst threading 50 eyebrows a day.
All of which is a very roundabout way of circling back to our original question: why are there so many social norms that necessitate defying in order for a woman to find work at a petrol station? Is such public appreciation yet another example of hidden patriarchy?
Of course, it is a bit pointless to go searching for hidden patriarchy in Pakistan when we have such a rich abundance of the in-your-face variety, displayed so gloriously on our dramas on our screens and there for your viewing pleasure on the off chance that you have not had your fill of patriarchy in your real non-drama life. To pick at random, Naqsh, starring Hina Altaf, shows us a father informing his daughter that she must marry the man of his choice on the grounds that he is her father, despite her protestations to the contrary. Meanwhile, Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum (in which a woman felt compelled to marry a stranger so as to spare her parents awkward questions about why there was a bride-shaped space on the wedding stage) shows Hania Aamir’s Sharjeena sprinting to the kitchen after putting in a full day at work without anyone batting an eye (although her more sympathetic housemates do take care to compliment her cooking, a heartwarming moment for which we are urged to give them an undying round of applause.)
Down with patriarchy
Many educated women will be fortunate enough to no longer have to put up with a father stubbornly insisting they marry whatever specimen he parades before them, but unfortunately they will still find themselves occupying the Sharjeena end of the spectrum when it comes to striking that work-life balance. And naturally, if a real-life Sharjeena lands herself a man who will voluntarily boil that egg, she it to be congratulated for winning the lottery.
We should not belittle Imran for recognising the hard work put in by a woman. It is, after all, the very thing that Sania stressed people fail to do. But the very fact that a woman is celebrated for being able to work in what would otherwise have been a post taken up by a man points unwittingly to a society rooted in preferring that that woman stay home instead and trot out beautiful rotis as if drawn by the hand of God. Or a compass.
As Morgan Freeman succinctly remarked way back in a 2006 interview, the only way to get rid of racism is to stop talking about it. In the same vein, the only way to hack away at deep-rooted patriarchy is to not stop and take note every time a woman steps out of the house to earn a living just like a man. Hopefully, we can achieve this noble goal before Katy Perry builds a second home on the moon. Although perhaps if we insist on entertaining such notions, we are just the dreamers of dreams.
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