Syllabus area: Section IV: Feminist Movements of CSS Gender Studies.
Short answer
APWA and WAF are the two flagship women’s organizations of Pakistan, and they represent the movement’s two different faces: APWA is the face of welfare and institution-building, while WAF is the face of protest and resistance. Together they span the movement’s two defining eras, APWA belongs to the post-independence building phase, and WAF was born in the Zia-era downfall.
(a) Why these two organizations are paired
- APWA and WAF are the two flagship women’s organizations of Pakistan, and they represent the movement’s two different faces: APWA is the face of welfare and institution-building, while WAF is the face of protest and resistance.
- Together they span the movement’s two defining eras, APWA belongs to the post-independence building phase, and WAF was born in the Zia-era downfall.
(b) APWA: All Pakistan Women’s Association
- APWA belongs to the post-independence organizational tradition of the late 1940s and 1950s, alongside bodies such as the Karachi Business and Professional Club, the Family Planning Association, the Pakistan Child Welfare Council, and the Democratic Women’s Association (1948).
- It is associated with Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, the era’s towering figure, who also founded the Pakistan National Guard and the Pakistan Women’s Naval Reserve and served heroically during the Partition migration.
- APWA’s method was welfare and cooperation with the state: it worked for women’s education, health, legal awareness and social uplift through organized, structured programs.
- Its era’s legislative landmark was the Muslim Family Law Ordinance (1961), which required the documentation and registration of nikah, the kind of legal-reform agenda APWA’s generation pursued.
- In terms of theory, APWA maps onto Liberal feminism, because its method was the liberal method: rights must be established through law, pursued within the existing family and social order.
(c) WAF: Women’s Action Forum
- Asma Jahangir founded the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) in 1981 as an organized resistance against the subordination of women.
- WAF was born as a direct response to the Zia era’s laws: the Hudood Ordinance and the Law of Evidence, under which a rape victim needed four pious Muslim male witnesses, and failing that, she herself was charged with adultery and sentenced to 100 lashes, with the blind, pregnant Safia Bibi as the era’s cruelest case.
- WAF’s method was protest and public resistance: women marched, faced police violence, and publicly burned dupattas against the state’s demand to “dress according to your modesty.”
- Literature and art stood with WAF: Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge, the phrase Chadar aur Chaardiwari, and Salima Hashmi’s painting of police beating women all belong to this resistance.
- WAF’s struggle was Pakistan’s Second-Wave moment, lived under the slogan “The Personal is Political”, the state had reached into women’s private lives, and women made their subjugation a public, political battle.
- In terms of theory, WAF maps onto Radical and Marxist feminism, this exact mapping is a noted interview favourite: “Which feminist theory does a given women’s organization follow?”
- WAF’s harvest came after Zia: the harassment law, the acid-crime law, the Protection of Women Act, and the reform of the Hudood Ordinance in 2006.
(d) The comparison
1. Era: Ayub-era building → Zia-era resistance. APWA grew in the constructive 1950s, 60s, while WAF was forged against a dictatorship.
2. Method: welfare → protest. APWA worked with the state through programs and law, while WAF confronted the state on the street.
3. Theory: Liberal → Radical/Marxist. APWA legislated within the system, while WAF challenged the system itself.
(e) The closing judgment
- The two organizations prove the movement’s range rather than its division: APWA built the legal and institutional architecture, and WAF defended it when a dictatorship tried to demolish it, the movement has always needed both its builders and its fighters.
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Last updated: 2 November 2026.
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