#Pakistan - On abuse and silence in schools

By Dr Ayesha Razzaque

Making schools liable for the conduct of their staff, teaching children about their rights and tackling societal attitudes — the sexual harassment issue at schools requires a multi-pronged approach.

Last month, we learned about the harassment of students at the hand of a group of employees at a
prestigious girls-only school in Lahore. We also learnt that before the matter became public, the students had complained to the school management but were blown off. Now that the news is in the public domain, the management is scrambling to be seen taking ‘swift’ action and firing the teachers involved. Unfortunately, harassment in places of work and learning is widespread. A #MeToo movement is badly needed in Pakistan to highlight the extent and spread of the problem.

During the day or two the harassment report managed to stay in the media headlines, before it was swept away by the usual grist of TV talk shows, we saw the usual arguments for moving forward.One side put forward the knee-jerk reactionary proposals - ban men from serving in girls’ schools, end co-education, make burqas mandatory, etc. The school of thought had banned YouTube a few years ago over an objectionable post, and has more recently banned the game, Playerunknown’s Battleground (PUBG), after it was blamed for a teen suicide. It routinely blocks websites for being objectionable for one reason or another.

Such proposals elicit on-camera eyerolls from a crowd that stands on sound principles, but often does little more than offer solutions copied from developed economies that may be impractical in our context. A recent proposal entailed deploying student counsellors at all schools (and universities). Certainly, student counsellors in schools can serve as a first-point-of-contact for children reporting harassment incidents.

Let’s consider some numbers to assess its practicality. We currently have approximately 235,000 schools (public and private) across the country, covering every grade from K-12. Add another 1400+ degree colleges and universities. Given that almost no school currently employs student counsellors, we are talking about hiring roughly 236,000 counsellors. As voters who were promised a million new jobs last year, you might think 236,000 jobs is no big deal, but let us put this number in perspective to understand just how pie-in-the-sky this proposal is.

According to the Annual Statistical Bulletin of Federal Government Employees for 2018-19 of the Pakistan Public Administration Research Centeer of the Establishment Division, the sum total of all employees of the Government of Pakistan (Grades 1 to 22) stands at 580,000. Out of these, the number of Grade 17 to 22 employees is under 27,000. Hiring those 236,000 counsellors would add a highly-educated workforce equal to nearly 40 percent of the entire federal workforce across the entire country. In a country where in recent years the federal government could not find enough people capable of passing CSS exams to fill its open positions, how can we possibly hope to find and pay for such a large qualified, professional workforce? Putting in place a counselling/ grievance redressal system with untrained and insensitive counsellors will not take the burden off of the victim. No child should be put in a place where they have to convince adults that they are being abused, harassed or just made to feel insecure or awkward.

I have personally witnessed gender specialists in the Pakistani development sector, who are expected to be aware of workplace gender discrimination and harassment, carelessly passing sexist remarks. It makes me wonder, if that is the level of talent the well-paying development sector attracts, what level of talent can we possibly hope to hire for schools?

It pains me to say, on the proverbial ladder of civilisation, too often our society proves itself to be on a rung somewhere between illiterate and savage. It is not that harassment and assault do not happen in more ‘civilised’ societies, but that those instances are usually dealt with without the kind of victim-blaming seen here. If we are unable to afford the resources needed to protect our children this way, what options does that leave us?

Long-term, we need changes to societal norms which is harder to accomplish and takes decades. Most important among these should be an end to stigmatising and blaming victims when they find the courage to speak up.

One thing the recent episode has shown is that while the school was quick to act and fire the four accused after the story broke, they did nothing other than attempt to sweep it under the rug before. By doing so, the management enabled the abusers. Schools are more concerned about their public reputation and less about the safety and well-being of their students. Businesses, even businesses like schools, do not care much about moral complicity unless it can cost them their bottom-line. To fix these lopsided priorities, it is necessary to make schools legally liable for the conduct of their staff. Once schools know they are liable, better supervision and hiring practices (use of employer references, criminal background checks etc) will follow naturally.

Long-term, we need changes to societal norms which is harder to accomplish and takes decades. Most important among these should be an end to stigmatising and blaming victims when they find the courage to speak up. Recently, a middle-aged woman was attending an official training course on Zoom. She is an accomplished senior government official in her own right, belongs to an educated family and has a husband who occupies an official position high enough to command respect nationwide. However, none of this dissuaded her colleague of 15 years from harassing and sending her lewd messages throughout the official online training. You would expect a woman at her station in life to feel confident enough to report this incident, but she did not. Such is the societal pressure on women to swallow their pride and keep quiet. Imagine how much more difficult it must be for a school girl to stand up to an abuser with an asymmetric power relationship.

While we can begin by making schools liable for the safety of their students, we cannot just sit back and wait for society to change for the better on its own. The conservative proposal of all-female staff in girls’ schools has a historical precedent and can be considered without being seen as throwing in the towel. In the US, historical black and women’s colleges provided disadvantaged groups with a protective enclave, shielded from a world where the odds were (are) stacked against them. Historically segregated colleges, based either on gender or race, were founded to grant access to people excluded from higher education.

Today, opponents of the idea question whether such institutions are needed any longer. Proponents counter that unless institutional racism and sexism are fixed, segregated colleges must continue to allow minorities to flourish in an environment where they have a fair chance to grow. This, they argue, will allow them to better counter discrimination when they step out into the world. In our case, this idea makes even more sense, given that even home environments can be stifling for girls. In many cases parents will stop sending girls to school if they believe schools are unsafe.

Segregation is a valid but partial solution because while in most cases, we hear about, perpetrators are men and victims are girls/women, there is no fixed template for harassment and extending gender segregation in schools to the staff level will not safeguard boys.

A longer-term solution requires that both girls and boys be taught about harassment. As part of the social studies syllabus, they should learn about their rights, laws and systems available for their protection, and who to approach to report incidents to. While student counsellors may not arrive in all schools, and society may not change for another 30 years, there is one thing every parent can do right away and will not cost anyone a penny: be more open in their communication with their children, tell them that harassment happens, and if they experience it, they are not to blame, should not feel shame, and should feel safe to report it to their parents/responsible adults. We may not be able to change society overnight, but we can change our culture at home.