Mehvish Hayat representing Pakistan in the U.K

Last week, Pakistani actress Mehvish Hayat was invited by the Pakistan High Commission and Queens Mary University in London to speak about Women Empowerment and Pakistan. It was a great platform for a woman from Pakistan to come forward and share her views with an interested audience.

The international film industry, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, is now putting an unprecedented focus on women issues, sexual harassment and the gender gap. Movements such as timesup and metoo have been initiated  and women are bravely coming forward, sharing their experiences with an outcry of enough is enough.

Abdurrehman Chinoy of Chinoy group who was the organizer of this event.

Across the border in India, we have Kangana Ranaut leading a women’s empowerment movement criticising the objectification of women in Indian films, the pay gap and again sexual harassment. She has garnered considerable support and it is due to brave women like these that a filmmaker like Karan Johar was led  to reflect and eventually apologised for including item songs in his movies,  with a promise to not do so anymore.

On the local front, after the horrific rape and murder of 7 year old Zainab, celebrities like Freiha Altaf  and Nadia Jamil came forward to share their experiences, reinforcing the view that there is no shame in being the victim, it is the perpetrator who should be shamed.

It was with this background, that the organisers likely thought that a woman from the pakistani film industry would be a good choice to share her  perspective and experience. But Mehvish Hayat’s speech didn’t do anything for us. The parts that we saw showed a  rehearsed, pre written speech read word to word, with pauses in the correct places (for effect and applause), emotions that seemed more like acting and all in all like a speech being given in a movie.