Articles in The Friday Times by Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
Discover Dr. Rakhshinda’s incisive writings featured in The Friday Times — Pakistan’s premier independent weekly known for bold and fearless journalism.
By Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
How Pakistan’s High Court Is Changing The Economics Of Marriage
There are moments in this work when time collapses, when something you planted in urgency and exhaustion quietly surfaces, years later, in the precise language of the law. The Islamabad High Court’s ruling in Mst. Amara Waqas v. Muhammad Waqas Rasheed (W.P. 365/2023) is one of those moments, and I am still sitting with it. Read the complete article via the link below.
By Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
A Forgotten Community And The Politics Of Historical Silence
On the morning of Pakistan Day, a young Bangladeshi journalist sent me a WhatsApp message. “Warm greetings on Pakistan National Day. Wishing peace, progress, and prosperity to the people of Pakistan.” I replied with a photograph: mishti doi from Emaan Dhaka Sweets in Islamabad, a Pakistan flag sticker on the container.
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By Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
Digital Exploitation In Pakistan: How Women Entrepreneurs Lose Control Of Their Websites
In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the land of the pure, it seems that if one entity is really 100% pure, that is exploitation.
Exploitation is too often normalised. Therefore, it remains usually undocumented and rarely challenged. One such undetected form prevails in the digital space, where website owners unknowingly lose control over what should rightfully be theirs.
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By Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
Gender Inequality In Pakistan’s STEM Sector Threatens The Nation’s Future
In 1996, I was writing a weekly Urdu science column on science and technology for the youth page of Jang in Rawalpindi. Nobody else was doing it. Information Superhighway was a phrase most Pakistanis had never heard. Cyberspace was a concept more than a destination.
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By Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
Dowry As Violence: Patriarchy, Power, And The State’s Failure In Pakistan
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, it will take approximately 123 years to achieve global gender parity at the current pace of progress. In Pakistan, where dowry remains socially celebrated, economically incentivised, and politically protected, dismantling the patriarchal structures that sustain this practice may take far longer, unless the state chooses to intervene decisively.
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By Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
Why Pakistan’s Most Educated Women Entrepreneurs Struggle To Scale Their Businesses
Watching business forums between Pakistan’s Prime Minister and Central Asian delegations, I see conference rooms filled with men in suits signing MOUs and discussing trade. Where are the women?
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By Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
Decades Of Abandonment: The Stranded Pakistani Biharis And A Crisis Of Citizenship
Can demographic anxiety and economic cost justify the abandonment of human beings for more than five decades? This question lies at the heart of the catastrophe of the Pakistani Biharis stranded in Bangladesh. It remains politically inconvenient, morally troubling, and legally indefensible.
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By Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
Stateless Patriots: The Silenced Story Of The Biharis In 1971
I believe in memory as coexistence, not competition. I believe in acknowledging the pain of the “stateless” Biharis, a community that has endured immense suffering, and I insist on recognising the genocide not out of emotionalism but academic rationality.
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By Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen
Decades Of Neglect: Stateless Urdu-Speaking Pakistanis Stranded In Bangladesh Since 1971
Whenever I write about the trauma and endurance of approximately 324,000 Urdu-speaking Pakistanis stranded and their administratively managed statelessness in Bangladesh since 1971, I rarely receive solidarity or empathy. More often, there is a deafening silence. At times, there is derision.
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