Role of Women in Pakistan Movement

WOMEN played a major role in the Pakistan Movement. This was of great historical significance, for the Muslim women of the subcontinent had never participated in such great numbers in a political movement. It was a befitting culmination of the reformist movements of the late nineteenth century for the emancipation and education of Muslim women. The Quaid can be seen as source of inspiration for their emergence as players on the political scene.
The Khilafat Movement of the 1920s had been the first instance when Muslim women had made their presence felt. With Maulanas Shaukat Ali and Mohammed Ali in jail, their mother, Bi Amman, had taken up the cudgels against British imperialism. Her daughter-in-law assisted her. It took an old lady to strike the first blow at seclusion. She addressed meetings from behind the purdah of a sheet, and travelled to various parts of India to whip up support. Women came to hear her, and they were motivated to meet in various mohallas to raise funds. It was an old custom in the subcontinent that women sold their jewellery when the family was faced with a financial crisis.
When the Khilafat Movement demanded contributions from its supporters, the women came forward and gave up their jewellery, that being their only worldly possession. This would have been the first time that they made such a gesture for a political cause. However all this was short-lived and so with the demise of the Khilafat Movement women reverted to the strict seclusion of their homes and their domestic world.
The Quaid had seen the increasing participation of women in the Congress, his parent party. He realized the need to have Muslim women's participation in the Muslim League, which he had begun to re-organize and bring to life. It was at Lucknow in 1937 that he called for the creation of a Women's Wing of the Muslim League, but it remained dormant till the Patna Session of the Muslim League in 1938. His instructions were that there should be a recruitment drive