First Trans News Anchor is Proof of Growing Acceptance in Pakistan

Pakistan’s first trans women news anchor, Marvia Malik, at the Kohenoor television studio in Lahore, Pakistan.

(Photo: Reuters)

As the first transgender news anchor in Pakistan, Marvia Malik is proud to be at the forefront of changing attitudes in her country but she says there is a long way to go.

The news of her first appearance on local channel Kohenoor TV on Saturday, 24 March, went viral on social media and was just days after she became the first transgender model to catwalk at the annual Pakistan Fashion Design Council fashion show.

Her catapult into the spotlight came after transgender activist Zara Changezi was named as star of a romance film, the Senate passed a bill to protect transgender people, and a Pakistani province agreed to an X gender on driving licences.

Malik, 21, says she has lost count of the positive telephone calls and messages she has received since beginning her new role, which is a major contrast as she battled to survive in the past.

I got a lot of appreciation from those associated with the fashion industry when I did catwalk modelling two weeks back, and now this... it is quite overwhelming.

Marvia Malik to Reuters

"I was thrown out after (10th grade) after which I joined a beauty salon, earned just about enough to put myself through college, but it was not easy. My story is no different from that of a ‘Hijra’ you see begging on the street," said Malik.

Many ‘hijras’ – a community that includes transvestites, transsexuals and eunuchs – in Pakistan, as well as other South Asian nations such as India and Bangladesh, are attacked, murdered, raped or forced to work as sex workers, dancers, or beggars.

Although transgender people technically enjoy better rights in Pakistan than in many other nations, in practice they are marginalised and face discrimination in education and jobs.

However, campaigners said there were signs of progress in the conservative South Asian nation where homosexuality is still a crime.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2009 ‘hijras’ could get national identity cards as a "third sex" and last year the government issued its first passport with a separate category for transgender people.

The transgender community was counted in the national census for the first time last year, recording 10,418 in a population of about 207 million, although many said this was too low.

Charity Trans Action Pakistan estimates there are at least half a million transgender people in the country.

(This article has been published in an arrangement with Thomson Reuters Foundation.)