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BILL Gates’s first-ever visit to Pakistan delivered a strong message — but probably not the one he anticipated. More than his discussions with Imran Khan, the attendance at a lunch the prime minister hosted for Gates has made an impression, for all the wrong reasons: there was not a single woman in attendance.
This is appalling on two levels. Gates was in Pakistan to learn from our country’s polio eradication efforts. Women have been the backbone of the polio vaccination programme, building community trust, and comprising 62 per cent of the front-line workforce that vaccinates children. Why wasn’t a female health worker extended an invitation?
And even though Gates’s visit was polio-focused, he doesn’t traipse around the world without his tech hat. In this context too, women rank high among Pakistan’s tech stars, leading the field for digital rights and inclusion, online education and countering online harassment. Their strong voices resonate more in a country where women are digitally disadvantaged (only 13pc of Pakistani women have internet access, and there is a 33pc gender gap in mobile phone usage). What message does it send to exclude these voices when Gates visits? That they are invisible, irrelevant, inconvenient.
It didn’t help that Gates’s visit occurred soon after Minister for Religious Affairs Noorul Haq Qadri called for the UN-designated International Women’s Day on March 8 to be replaced with International Hijab Day. This was a not-so-veiled attack against...
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