Fouzia Saeed is a Pakistani social activist, gender expert, trainer/facilitator, development manager, folk culture promoter, television commentator, and author.
Saeed is well known in the activist circles of Pakistan's social movement,"Is Taboo taboo?" by Shabnam Nasir, Books and Authors, DAWN, 16 February 2003 having worked for decades on women's issues, especially those linked to violence against women, prostitution,Men and sexuality women in the entertainment business, women’s mobility and sexual harassment. Her work on violence against women spans over 20 years and includes founding Bedari, the first women’s crisis center in Pakistan in 1991. For over a decade, she focused on reducing the level of sexual harassmentAASHA and the impact of debt bondageBonded labor conference on Hindu women.
On 10 March 2009, the Pakistan People's Party Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gilani, named Saeed to a three-year term as one of the 15 members of the National Commission on the Status of Women.Official GoP list of NCSW membership NCSW Press Announcement Subsequently, Prime Minister Gilani appointed Saeed as the Chair of the Sexual Harassment Legislation Implementation Watch Committee from May 2010 to May 2012.
In February 2015, the Pakistan Muslim League prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, appointed Saeed as the executive director of Lok Virsa, the National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage. She completed her term on 9 February 2018 with exuberant accolades from the press and civil society for her success in revitalizing Lok Virsa and expanding the space for performance culture in Pakistan.
In January 2020, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Prime Minister, Imran Khan, appointed Saeed as the Director General of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA).
In February 2020, she was recognized as one of the ten most outstanding women leaders of Pakistan by HUM TV "in recognition of her exemplary services for promotion of Pakistani culture, women’s issues, courageous stand against sexual harassment and commitment to women’s advancement".
In July 2021, while on a road expedition for PNCA to central Balochistan to identify young artistic talent, Saeed suffered serious injuries in a road accident. By July 2022, she had begun to reengage in Pakistani society. A women's group produced a short video in June 2022 enumerating her manycontributions to the advancement of Pakistani women.
Saeed says of herself: "I want to be judged by my abilities, my struggles and my achievements and not labeled or stereotyped by my gender, my economic background, my nationality or my beliefs."
Personal profile Saeed received most of her schooling and early college education in Peshawar, Pakistan, where she graduated from the University of Peshawar with a BS in Home Economics as the University Gold Medallist for Academic Excellence in 1979. As a result of her academic achievements, she received a Quaid-e-Azam Overseas Educational Award and spent 8 years at the University of Minnesota, where she earned an MS in design and a doctorate in education. She received additional funding from the Ethel L. Parker International Fellowship Award of the American Home Economics Association for her doctoral research. Saeed returned to her native Pakistan immediately after completing her degrees, but has returned to Minneapolis on several occasions as a visiting lecturer and to receive a Distinguished International Alumni AwardDistinguished International Alumni Award in 1998 and the International Leadership Award International Leadership Award in 2008, both presented by the University of Minnesota in recognition of her contributions to the field of education and the women’s movement in Pakistan.
The government of Japan named Saeed as one of seven Asian Leadership Fellows for 2010. She attended the Fellowship program in Tokyo from September to November 2010 ALFP and gave lectures at numerous Japanese universities and wrote about her experiences on her return.Saeed, Fouzia. "Some Like it Raw", The Express Tribune Magazine, 16–22 January 2011, p. 34.
Saeed was awarded the 2012 Battle of Crete Award by the Oxi Day Foundation for 'courageous action for freedom and democracy' based on her decade-long struggle for the criminalisation of sexual harassment in Pakistan.
She served as the director of Mehergarh: A Center for Learning where she headed its programs on youth, gender and human rights from 2004 until 2012. She remains an informal advisor.
Between September 2012 and February 2015, Saeed was a Fellow at the US National Endowment for Democracy (DC), Draper-Hills Fellow at Stanford University (California), Visiting Fellow at George Mason University (Virginia) and Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (DC) under the Smithsonian Institution.
She currently lives in Islamabad, Pakistan with her husband, whom she met in 1995 when they were both working in the United Nations in Pakistan. They have also lived together in Manila, Kabul, and Cairo. She is one of the very few Pakistani women of her generation who has learned how to SCUBA dive and has dived in Pakistan, the Bahamas, the Mergui Archipelago of Burma, Fiji, and various islands of the Philippines.
Literary Output She is the author of several well-regarded books. Her first bookTaboo Review DawnTaboo interview Sikh Spectrum "Puneites are a very discerning audience", Richa Bansal, The Times of India, Pune, Times City, 26 May 2007 is an ethnographic look at prostitution in Pakistan, TABOO!: The Hidden Culture of a Red Light District.(Oxford University Press , Karachi, 2001, 2nd edition 2011) Her second book, Working with Sharks: Countering Sexual Harassment in our Lives (Sanj, Pakistan, 2011 and Advances Press 26 February 2013), is an autobiographical exposé on sexual harassment in the United Nations and the revenge meted out by the UN management she and 10 other women faced for making their case."New culture for women", , "Review: Working with Sharks by Raza Rumi" , , "Literate, NOS, The News International" In 2012, she published Forgotten Faces: Daring Women of Pakistan’s Folk Theatre (National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage, 2011), a heavily illustrated book based on her field research on the dying art form of travelling theaters of Punjab in the late 1980s. While the Executive Director of the Lok Virsa, she conceived and edited a substantial coffee table book with text and 500 photographs, Folk Heritage of Pakistan: Glimpses into a Cultural Diversity (Lok Virsa, 2018) Her next book, On Their Own Terms: Early 21st Century Women's Movements in Pakistan(Oxford University Press, 2020) is based primarily on field research she did in Pakistan. The book covers four case studies of Pakistani women's efforts to regain their rights. The book also provides an introduction to the academic concept of women's individual and collective agency based on literary research conducted while she was a Fellow at the Wilson Center. Her latest book appeared after her accident. Tapestry: Strands of Women's Struggles in the History of Pakistan (Lightstone Publishers, Karachi, 2021). Research for Tapestry was conducted in Pakistan and the US Library of Congress while a Fellow at the Wilson Center. Tapestry provides a deep background to the modern cases covered in On Their Own Terms by chronicling the stages of women's political development throughout the history of Pakistan.
Areas of work Sexual harassment In 2000, Saeed was instrumental in forming a network called AASHA (An Alliance Against Sexual Harassment) in Pakistan. Six organisations form the core membership of AASHA. They, along with several hundred individuals and organisations serve as partners and friends of AASHA. In 2002, AASHA, together with the Government, developed a Code of ConductCopy of the Code on gender relations at the workplace that was initially adopted voluntarily by over 130 companies List of employers adopting the Code in Pakistan. From 2002 onwards, AASHA continued to collaborate with the Government to press for the passage of a law requiring all public and private organisations to adopt and implement the Code. In November 2009 an amendment to the Pakistan Penal Code was passed by the Pakistan National Assembly explicitly making sexual harassment a cognisable offence anywhere in the country. This was ratified by the Senate on 20 January 2010 and signed into law with immediate effect by President Zardari on 29 January 2010. On 21 January 2010, the National Assembly approved a second bill requiring all organisations in Pakistan to adopt and implement the Code of Conduct.Dawn.com After lengthy debate, this bill was also passed by the Senate on 25 February and signed into law by the President on 9 March 2010. On 10 May 2010, Saeed was named by the NCSW to head the Government's Implementation Watch Committee, which will facilitate and monitor the progress of adoption of the sexual harassment legislation.Nation.com
On 22 December 2010, Dr. Saeed, under the AASHA banner, organised the 10th Annual Working Women's Assembly. The Assembly was held in the Prime Minister's Auditorium and the Prime Minister, along with Fehmida Mirza, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Ferdous Awan, Minister of Women's Development and Shanaz Wazir Ali, officiated at the gathering of over 400 working women, including agricultural field workers, police officers, parliamentarians, doctors and senior government officials.Malik, Javeria Azaz. "Civil Society Triumphs", The Friday Times, Vol XXII, No 48, 14–20 January 2011, p.9. In his speech, the Prime Minister declared 22 December as National Working Women's Day and he fulfilled a major aspect of the law by naming Ms. Musarrat Hilali as the first Ombudsperson for Women's Rights.
Although she had been working on gender issues since the late 1970s, her attention became more focused on this particular issue when she and ten other women found themselves trapped in a systematic sexual harassment scenario by several of their managers Discussion of the case when she was working for an agency of the UN in Pakistan. Despite being competent, well respected and committed to their careers, they each had to take the risk of jointly reporting their supervisor to the UN Headquarters in New York. The women fought the case together, despite serious attempts by the UN leadership in Islamabad to break them up and discredit their professionalism, and finally won after nearly two years of effort.Announcement of official UN decision After the main perpetrator was removed from the UN, the case became widely known and resulted in many policy changes in the work environment of the entire UN system. However, as reported in May 2009, this issue remains one of the most difficult for the management of this large, international organisation to properly address.Ban Ki-moon comments on SH in the UN This case has been fully documented in Dr. Saeed's publication, Working with Sharks: Countering Sexual Harassment in our Lives. The publication of book was warmly received by a cross-section of Pakistani society. Daily Times "Book reveals sexual harassment in the UN-Pak office" "How to sink wild sharks at workplace" and internationally The book now has its own Facebook page. The early reviews of the book have praised her bravery while questioning how such a situation could unfold with the management of a well-known international development agency fully backing the perpetrator.