Women’s Day Youth Jirga – Women Leadership And Future Challenges – Sharing Nation Building Processes
In the spirit of celebrating International Women’s Day, on the 8th of March, Pak-Afghan Youth Forum held an all-female Youth Jirga, in order to highlight the problems that women face on both sides of the border. The event boasted women from different walks of life, participating in the fields of media, policymaking, academia and medicine. The spirit of the fourth instalment of our Youth Jirga, was in essence to celebrate extraordinary women who have persevered and endured the challenges in the past, to build a better future for themselves, for other women and for their communities. This panel of notable women included Farzana Hakimi, Leeda Karimi and Batoul Ghulami, representing women in Afghanistan; while Pakistani Panelists included Dr. Shabana Fayyaz, Dr. Salma Malik, Dr. Sajida Naseem, Javeria Khan, Sana Jamal, Bakhtawar Mehmood and Saira Shams. The event was hosted by Reema Shaukat, and was moderated by Urooj Raza Sayyami.
The discussion followed various aspects of life as leading women, exploring the different roles that women can play in their own communities. All of the panelists are community leaders, and hence had to experience scrutiny from some, while receiving praise and support from others. The discussion also explored how outbreak of COVID-19 and the resulting implementation of the lockdown, gave rise to different issues for different women in terms of the fields they worked in.
