Sexual harassment at work in Pakistan

One of the topics we covered was sexual harassment and at the end of the morning session one of the class came up with a fellow class member to tell the story of a woman in her factory who had been raped at work but because of the shame felt unable to report it. She wept a little as she told the story. In the afternoon we did an activity on involving women and she felt able to raise the story and a discussion followed. Such shocking stories are all too frequent and fit with the picture of misery painted by the collection of short stories by Pakistani women writers we have at home, ‘Neither night nor Day’, edited Rakhshanda Jalil, New Delhi 2007.