Prof. Dr. Shirin Zubair 

In Pakistan, women have long been confined by the clergy and successive governments to the domain of family. Clergy and governments have controlled their access to education, health, and other public sectors. Since 2018, women from all social strata have been taking to the streets, holding placards, chanting slogans, performing, and addressing the public at rallies. Women use posters, banners, slogans and street theatre to demand their rights and protest against sexual harassment, forced marriages, domestic violence, (marital) rape as well as discriminatory laws. The language of slogans, the visuals, and performances adequately capture the local women’s struggles against the patriarchy, state structures, and dominant narratives in indigenous languages and vernacular expressions to include women from all walks of life and ethnicities. Women who may not be formally educated are mobilized through street theatre in local languages and visual performances. Artists use graffiti and digital art to spread awareness about women’s rights in the informal sector by reaching out to women of all social strata, and rural and urban centres in various ways including outreach classes where posters are displayed and discussed to educate and mobilize women. When activists and participants were interviewed, they said that performing arts engage women very powerfully, thereby sensitizing them informally but also raising awareness about the women’s rights-based manifesto of these marches.