Of all international benchmarks, I often find International Women’s Day the hardest one to celebrate. This is rather odd, given that I consider myself an unabashed feminist and much of my work is devoted to celebrating women.

My problem is thematic – how does one cogently, let alone comprehensively, attempt to celebrate one half of the world’s population? There is also a problem with laying claim to something that is intrinsic to ‘all’ women; by attempting to generalise a global experience into a gendered one.

It is challenging to speak both specifically and generally, and, more importantly, to not project personal experiences onto the whole. I used to do this when my friends abroad would belittle and generalise the experience of women in Pakistan, I would bristle at the terminology rather than the truth.

“Yes Pakistani women are largely marginalised and there is a lot of violence but many of us also excel. We attend the best schools in the world and lead in our respective fields, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

And then, I returned to Pakistan.

Armed with a degree in Gender and Human Rights, I began to work on Southern Punjab’s districts as a journalist. It was a humbling experience to say the least.

It took me less than a week to swallow my self-satisfaction. Over two years, on an average, I encountered nearly 5-6 rape cases, 2-3 child rape cases and a macabre assortment of acid attacks, public parading of naked women and gender violence in the name of ‘honour’. These figures are not exaggerated, if anything, they are downplayed.

I never qualified myself as a benchmark speaking for ‘Pakistani women’ ever again.

Also read: Five ways Pakistan degraded women

I soon became accustomed to compartmentalising a daily dose of gender violence: speaking to reporters, survivors or family members on the phone and then driving home trying to process it all without collapsing under the staggering weight of it.

It was a shock, it shouldn’t have been. We all know that violence against women in our country is staggering, we have plenty of annual Human Rights reports (local and international) to confirm this, moreover, enough of us know enough people who have experienced it.