Sunday, March 08, 2009 By Sadia Hanif
Women do two-thirds of the world’s work but receive only 10 per cent of the world’s income and own less than one pc, said Women Activity Portfolio Convenor Yasmeen Merchant in her welcoming speech at a conference held on Early Childhood Development at the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) Auditorium Karachi.
The conference was held to commemorate International Women’s Day and was organised by Aga Khan Council for Pakistan on Saturday. The audience mainly comprised of mothers who received answers to their queries about cognitive development of children from doctors and other AKU officials. Children’s development was also explained with the help of visual aids and research carried out by various teams of doctors at the AKU.
“The youth of the past was much better than the present generation,” informed Dr Zulfiqar Bhutta, chief of Women and Child Health-AKU and chairman of National Vaccine Research and Development Task Force. He explained various mistakes made by parents and also gave guidance.
Ismailimail 
I’m glad to see that women are being celebrated publicly in Pakistan at this conference. However the fact the the audience were mainly mothers somewhat concerns me. It is all well and good for women to celebrate their achievements, but in a country such as Pakistan I think the gate for womens rights is still very much closed. Think of women like Zille Huma Usman who was killed for paving the way for social welfare standards. Or Yasmeen Kanwal, a women’s rights activist who was raped and murdered just 3 years ago. In fact women are still being oppressed by Taliban extremists in Pakistan’s Swat valley today. They’re too frightened to speak in public and can only leave their homes accompanied by a male relative. These women are being neglected and sadly do not have anything to celebrate on this day.
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