Anita M. Weiss, Walls Within Walls: Life Histories of Working Women in the Old City of Lahore First published 1992. This ed. (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp.201.
Anita Weiss is a well known scholar who has conducted research in Pakistan. She has written on the consequences of the Islamization process on the lives of women during the 1980s. This book too was researched in 1987 and its first edition was published ten years ago. It is, however, still valid for the population it was written about---the working women of the old city of Lahore.
Weiss has chosen the case study method---the old city of Lahore being the case in point---to tell us much that is ignored about the poor urban women of Pakistan. She has done qualitative research having observed the women in question and talked to them on several occasions. In addition to that she has also obtained some data which has been quantified and provides statistical figures which tell us a lot about how much these women earn, how much work they do and what their standard of living is.
When she started work there were over 40,000 households in the Old City, which is also called the Walled City, of Lahore. An average household consisted of 7.2 persons. About one third of the women she surveyed lived in households of six to eight persons while half lived in households of nine persons or more. The houses they lived in had only one or two rooms so that their living space was cramped. As if the walls were not enough the women were constrained by convention and their own moral values. Others around them, and mostly they themselves too, believed in respectability (sharafat) which meant not only not having illicet relations with men but even staying away from them unless absolutely necessary. This idea of segregation (purdah) make them conceal themselves and restrict their mobility and working options. Thus, their lives are circumscribed and hemmed in by the walls of tradition and values besides the walls of brick and mortar which rise all around them in the narrow streets (the gullies) of the Old Lahore.
Anita Weiss tells us the life stories of the women dividing them thematically into different chapters. These stories were prompted by questions and they provide accounts of growing up, daily routines, marriage, marital relations, works and dreams or aspirations of the subjects. It turns out that they are mostly Punjabis from Lahore itself but some Urdu-speaking Mohajirs too settled down in this area. Their lives are extremely tough and tedious. Most of them get up early, clean the house, cook meals, wash dishes, wash clothes and carry out other household duties. Besides looking after the very young and the very old they also carry out economic activities. Most of them (21 per cent) stitch clothes; teach (18 per cent) or carry out small scale trade (12 per cent). Others help in making shoes (6 per cent), or food items. Still others prepare garlands or work as domestic helpers. In short, they are not idle even as economic agents. They do earn an income though it is sometimes seen as family income or part of the earning male’s income. For instance the woman who makes food items gives them to the male members to sell. The money, then, comes in the hands of the man who is perceived as the bread winner of the family.
Very often womens’ work is invisible. First, it is invisible because it generates no income however essential it is for the upkeep of the family. Second, even if does provide income the family, and sometimes even the women, do not undemtored that they have marketable skills which produce an income. Besides, in this male world, womens’ ability to work is controlled by men. Their income too is sometimes controlled though the book mentions cases of women having attained some degree of independence from their men under special circumstances.
Incidentally, in her study Anita Weiss left out the prostitutes of Lahore who also live in the Old City. They became the subjects of Fouzia Saeed’s study called Taboo (OUP, 2001). The parallel between these ‘respectable’ women and the prostitutes is that both try to empower themselves as best they can in the circumstances they find themselves. The ‘respectable’ women are, however, much more dominated by the men than the prostitutes. However, the prostitutes are dominated by older women so they too are neither free to choose their way of life nor financially secure.
A striking feature of the lives of the women is that they do not talk of their ‘dreams’ or ‘aspirations’. Some of them do not even mention the day when they were most happy. They seem to exist from day to day expecting nothing but the most modest of livings. It seems that their spirit has been crushed by such abject poverty and unremitting labour that they cannot think of the luxury of entertaining ‘dreams’ or remembering a happy occasion.
In the end the author has suggested some ways to improve the lives of these women. Apart from education, which everybody recommends, she suggests that they can be imparted appropriate training to sharpen existing skills. Morever, the informal networks and associations of women can be strengthened so that they can sell their products without being cheated by middlemen. Even such microcredit projects, as the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, can be initiated so that women can have the capital necessary for cottage industries. Women alone should co-ordinate these activities so that the working women retain their ‘respectability’. These are pragmatic and sensible measures but they will not bring about radical change. I wonder if anything can and I am not sure whether such change will not bring its own attendant problems. However, in my view an overall increase in educational standards, income and womens’ employment will empower women more and is, therefore, to be welcomed.
The book is most interesting in that it gives us a glimpse into that hidden face of Pakistan which is only a few miles from us but might as well be on another planet for many of us. That an American woman should have revealed this aspect of our national life to us is evidence of her commitment to sociological research.
While the stories make the subjects and their world come alive as no statistical figures and questionnaires can, one cannot be confident as to how representative the sample really was. In areas like the Old City random samples in the real sense of the terms cannot be taken. However, the author has done the best she could under the circumstances to include households in a random fashion. Thus, personally I feel the samples was representative and that one can even generalize the results to the lives of urban women in poor localities elsewhere in Pakistan. At places, however, the stories tend to become boring and repetitive. Some details occur in more than one chapter. I think this could have been avoided by some paraphrasing, summarizing and a different style of narration (Fouzia Saeed’s for instance). These minor caveats aside, this book is a rich source of information about Pakistani society which no educated Pakistani, or scholar of South Asia, should ignore.