A placard at Aurat March 2019.  The Urdu text reads, "Here you go: I am sitting correctly now". Photo: Facebook
A placard at Aurat March 2019. The Urdu text reads, "Here you go: I am sitting correctly now". Photo: Facebook

The audacity of ‘sitting improperly’

Navigating patriarchy on Karachi streets

Zoya Anwer is a Karachi-based journalist. A United Nations Reham Al-Farra Memorial Journalism Fellow, Anwer has covered a range of topics related to gender equality, ethnic and class dynamics, as well as social relationships between individuals and cities.

In November 2017, a few hours before my 25th birthday, a colleague sent me a tweet with a picture of me wearing jeans, sitting behind a man riding a bike in Karachi, my head covered with a floral stole. Soon, my Facebook timeline was filled with birthday wishes alongside the same photo, with my women friends lauding me as 'bad-ass'.

What was 'bad-ass' about the picture was the way I chose to sit: astride – with one leg on either side of the bike – like my male counterparts in the city. This, of course, is very unlike women who 'side-saddle' to conform to patriarchal pressures of how women must sit, even at the cost of their own safety; I have seen far too many accidents where women who side-saddle have fallen down face first.

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