Category Archives: Media

When women became professionals

Media, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

‘A woman in a man’s world!’ That is how working women, my contemporaries in the 1960s, were described. We chose to give up the comfort zone of our homes to crash into a preserve dominated by professionals. Since these professionals happened to be men (except in the fields of teaching and medicine where the female presence was pretty visible) it required us to break the gender barrier as well. Yet we regarded ourselves foremost as professionals.

(Front Row) Hasan Abidi, Chappra , M.A. Qayyum, M.A. Shakoor, Ahmed Ali Khan, Mohsin Ali, Habib Khan Ghouri; (2nd row, left to right) Fazal Imam, Ghayurul Islam, Zubeida Mustafa, M.A. Majid, Saleem Asmi, M.B. Naqvi; (3rd row, left tor ight) Hazoor Ahmad Shah, M.J. Zahedi, M.H. Askari, Salahuddin, Iqbal Jafri - Karachi Press Club, 1994 (photo provided by the writer)

We were also seen as bulls in a china shop Continue reading When women became professionals →

Violence: beyond statistics

Media, Mental health, Social Issues, Terrorism and Violence

By Zubeida Mustafa

A NEW book that is making waves in the West these days is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Written by Harvard’s professor of psychology Steven Pinker, the book argues that “violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most ‘peaceable era in our species’ existence”. Continue reading Violence: beyond statistics →

Media without dignity

International Politics, Media

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

THE scandal surrounding the now defunct “News of the World” which has brought much embarrassment to the high and mighty in London will hopefully prove to be the proverbial watershed that the media in our globalised world badly needs.

One positive result of the fall of Rupert Murdoch’s empire in Britain is that questions are being asked about the integrity of his 200 or so outlets that span several continents. Mercifully, the first bubble to burst was in a country known for its Continue reading Media without dignity →

Television & mental health

Health, Media

By Zubeida Mustafa

True, we have politicians – in the government and in opposition – who have failed to display a measure of competence, integrity and statesmanship. We have an army which sucks up a huge chunk of our resources and yet has not provided us the security one could rightly expect from it. We have economic managers who have been unable or unwilling to shape the national economy in a way as to bring some relief to the people. All this is bad enough.
Continue reading Television & mental health →

After Davis, what?

Defence and Disarmament, Economy, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, Media

By Zubeida Mustafa

One TV anchor asked rhetorically, “If our diplomat had killed two men in cold blood in Washington, would the Americans have allowed him to go home under cover of diplomatic immunity?” Obviously not, because the United States is a superpower and Pakistan is not. In short, we have an unequal relationship, notwithstanding the hype about state sovereignty. We have trapped ourselves in an unsavoury situation by tying ourselves too closely to the American apron strings with the incumbent indignity.

The time has come for serious rethinking of our foreign policy and this cannot be done in the glare of publicity. We need to realise that ‘the burden of US aid’ that our leading intellectual, Hamza Alavi, had written about in 1962 is growing heavier by the day. It has implications for our politics, economy, and foreign policy. It is also demeaning.

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