Her name is Maryam Sharif, she is the daughter of her father Nawaz, one of the leaders of Pakistani politics. But she is also now the first woman to head a province in Pakistan. Maryam Sharif becomes patron of the Punjab region, 127 million inhabitants. It’s proof, she says, that being a woman and a girl cannot thwart your dreams.
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In the past, his father, uncle and cousin all held this position: head of government of Punjab, Pakistan’s richest and most populous province.
But no woman before her had achieved this, while Pakistan had embarked very early on a virtuous slope in terms of parity, in 1988, with the appointment at the age of 35 of Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister. minister, the one nicknamed at the time the “iron lady”, becoming both the first woman and the youngest democratically elected leader of a country with a Muslim majority.
Maryam Sharif is not there. And will first have to make a name for himself, to distance himself from the dynastic label and from his father Nawaz, the titan of Pakistani politics, three times head of government. We must hope, writes a Pakistani academic, that she uses her office as a platform for gender equality, and that she serves as an example throughout the country.
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