title: Women in Pakistan

text: Watta satta is a tribal custom in which brides are traded between two clans. In order to marry off a son, one must also have a daughter to marry off in return. If there is no sister to exchange in return for a son's spouse, a cousin, or a distant relative can also do. Even though Islamic law requires that both partners explicitly consent to marriage, women are often forced into marriages arranged by their fathers or tribal leaders. Watta satta is most common in rural parts of northwest and west Pakistan, and its tribal regions.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Like in other parts of South Asia, the custom of dowry is practised in Pakistan, and conflicts related to it often result in violence, even dowry deaths. At over 2000 dowry-related deaths per year, and annual rates exceeding 2.45 deaths per 100,000 women from dowry-related violence, Pakistan has the highest reported number of dowry death rates per 100,000 women in the world.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: A 2020 Report by Aurat foundation on "Violence against women and girls in the time of Covid 19 pandemic" from identified 25 districts of Pakistan reported 2297 cases of domestic violence against women which included crimes like honour killings, murder, rape, suicide, acid burning, kidnapping; out of which 57% cases were reported from Punjab, 27% from Sindh.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In 1999, at least 1000 women were murdered in Pakistan and 90% of women reported being subject to domestic violence. Law enforcement authorities routinely dismiss domestic violence as private disputes. With domestic violence cases, it is important to acknowledge that marital rape is not considered a crime. Most women do not report the abuse they experience because they want to avoid ruining their family's reputation, they are scared the abuse will worse, and they are afraid they would be separated from their husband and kids. For the women that do report abuse, they are often harassed by the police and their families; about 33% of women were a victim of physical abuse and did not make any reports. When it comes to marital abuse, pregnant women are even victims. In order to cope, some women enter religious communities or religious events to avoid being home and further altercations. Some ask for help from their friends and family, but most are reluctant to make formal complaints because they feel as if they would not be understood


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Police in Pakistan often refuse to record the complaint of women when an officer may have been involved. In 2006, President Pervez Musharraf passed the Protection of Women Act. The purpose of it was for women to be provided with relief and to be able to have protection under the Hudood Ordinance and back into the prosecution under the Pakistani Criminal code. The act recognized rape under five circumstances, against [a woman's] will, without [a women's] consent, with [a woman's] consent, when the consent has been obtained by putting a woman in fear or of hurt, with her consent, when the man knows that he is not married to her and that the consent is given because she believes that the man is another person to whom she is or believes herself to be married; or with or without her consent when she is under sixteen years of age. Because of the act, a person in Pakistan was punishable by either death or imprisoned up to 10 to 25 years. Although the act was passed, there were no significant effects in which investigations were done on rape victims.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: On 17 April 2002, a woman by the name Zafran Bibi, who was 26 at the time, was sentenced to death by stoning in Pakistan. Zafran Bibi stepped forward as a rape victim in Pakistan. Bibi was recast as guilty for having sexual intercourse outside of valid marriage and was sentenced to death because of this incident. Bibi stated that she was tortured and raped by her brother-in-law, Jamal Khan. Her husband was in jail when the incident occurred. Human rights groups saw that Zafran Bibi sentence was bizarre and the actions that were taken towards her case were not taken in the matter that it should have been. The pressure of the Human Rights group ultimately led the court to overturn her sentence.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: A majority of the victims of honour killings are women and the punishments meted out to the murderers are very lenient.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: The practice of summary killing of a person suspected of an illicit liaison is known as "karo kari" in Sindh and Balochistan. In December 2004, the Government passed a bill that made "karo kari" punishable under the same penal provisions as murder. In 2016, Pakistan repealed the loophole which allowed the perpetrators of honour killings to avoid punishment by seeking forgiveness for the crime from another family member, and thus be legally pardoned. Many cases of honour killings have been reported against women who marry against their family's wishes, who seek divorce or who have been raped. In addition, women of lower classes are more prone to being victims of honour killings or rape.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Acid attacks occur within the public sphere. Acid and kerosene are thrown at women, mostly in the direction of their faces, as a form of permanent punishment. Many women do not report these attacks out of fear of getting attacked again or to protect the groups of people committing the attacks. Hundreds of women are victims of these attacks and some die from their injuries. When these attacks are reported they are written off as mistakes or suicides at times. In order to help with these attacks, the Depilex Smileagain Foundation provides victims of acid attacks with the opportunity to undergo surgery to heal their faces with the help of experienced doctors, while receiving the medical services they need to recover.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Under the Qisas (eye-for-an-eye) law of Pakistan, the perpetrator could suffer the same fate as the victim, if the victim or the victim's guardian chooses. The perpetrator may be punished by having drops of acid placed in their eyes. Section 336B of Pakistan Penal Code states: "Whoever causes hurt by corrosive substance shall be punished with imprisonment for life or imprisonment of either description which shall not be less than fourteen years and a minimum fine of one million rupees." Additionally, section 299 defines "Qisas" and states: ""Qisas" means punishment by causing similar hurt at the same part of the body of the convict as he has caused to the victim or by causing his death if he has committed qatl-iamd (intentional manslaughter) in exercise of the right of the victim or a Wali (the guardian of the victim)."


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In Pakistan, abortion and infanticide is illegal and so is adultery. Premarital relations are strictly prohibited in the country and are frowned upon by society. According to media reports, the ratio of female infanticides is higher than male. People give more value to a baby boy than a baby girl. People are worried and scared about the finances required for her marriage because of the dowry practice. This whole scenario leads them to commit the hideous crime of infanticide. Three different research studies, according to Klausen and Wink, note that Pakistan had the world's highest percentage of missing girls, relative to its total pre-adult female population.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Being married to the Quran, traditionally called 'Haq Bakshish', is a practice in which a girl or young woman is either persuaded or compelled to forfeit her right to marry and instead devote her life to studying and memorizing the Quran. The practice is controversial throughout Pakistan, and the Council of Islamic Ideology has declared it to be "un-Islamic".


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In some parts of Sindh, the practice of marrying a woman to the Quran is prevalent among landlords; it requires that the woman live without a husband throughout her life. Although it is without roots in Islamic tradition, the practice is often used by men to claim the land that would otherwise be inherited by their sisters and daughters upon marriage. The cultural logic of "Quran marriage" is not unique to the limited world of Muslims in South Asia. Similar arrangements, such as the "wedding" celebrated between a Catholic novice and Jesus Christ, are known from other regions and religions. Whereas marriage to the Quran is disapproved by "textual Islam," the regionally "practiced Islam" may even add a religious coverage.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has unanimously approved a draft bill aimed at eliminating the inhuman customs of marrying a woman to the Quran and "Haq Bakhshwan" The council in its 157th meeting recommended to the government to award life imprisonment to those who married their sisters and daughters to the Quran. The draft bill, to be called Pakistan Penal Code (Amendment Act) 2005, seeks to abolish the un-Islamic custom of such marriages. Marriage to the holy book is a common custom in Sindh, especially among the feudal lords to avoid transfer of property out of family hands at the time of marriage of their daughter or sister. The council has declared that this practice amounts to defiling the Quran, desecrating the Islamic institution of marriage and denying a woman of inheritance as well as her right to choose a life partner.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: According to Prof Huma Arshad Cheema (HOD Department of Pediatric Gastroenterology of the Children's Hospital, Lahore), 50 per cent of infant mortality in Pakistan is attributed to Inherited Metabolic Disorders besides inherited or genetic diseases affecting liver, heart, kidney and brain in children. As per Dr Areeba Farrukh, a Pediatric Resident at National Institute of Child Health (NICH), Karachi, cousin marriages are also an important reason for diseases like thalassemia and faulty haemoglobin build-up, which can eventually lead to iron deficiency and anemia.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: According to joint research study conducted in 2016–2017 by scholars of Department of Biological Science Gomal University, and Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering University of Agriculture Peshawar; high rate of consanguinity in Pakistan does contribute to hereditary hearing loss and to minimize such risks genetic counseling is required. Many girls groomed and pressured to accept cousin marriages to keep familial feudal properties and relations intact, in process kids do suffer various kind of genetic disabilities on account of traditions of cousin marriages. According to Sadia Saeed deformed 'A DCY3' mutations lead to slow learning and from mild to moderate intellectual disabilities, loss of sense of smell to gaining obesity with more likelihood of diabetes in here in life. 'MARK3' mutation may leads to progressive Phthisis bulbi (shrinkage of the eyeball). Mutation "IQSEC1 can be a cause of intellectual disability, developmental delays, short stature, speech loss, low muscle tone and, in some cases, seizures and aggressive behavior."


title: Women in Pakistan

text: The purdah for muslim upper- and middle class women in India and later Pakistan, both in the form of gender segregation as well as the veil, fell out of fashion due to women's active mobilisation in the anticolonial struggle for independence. The anti colonial independence movement in the Muslim world was dominated by secular modernists, who considered women's liberation as a natural part of a modernized and revitalized Muslim world, and by the 1930s, muslim upper class women had started to appear unveiled.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: During the Islamization policy of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977-1988, women were encouraged to veil, and although no law of general compulsory veiling was introduced, women who appeared on state Television as well as women employed by the Federal Government were forced to veil. These regulations were repealed after the fall of Zia-ul-Haq.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: The most common female dress is the shalwar kameez with a shawl called dupatta. The shawl is draped over the shoulders and sometimes over the head, usually for prayer. Most women wear very baggy trousers however more westernised girls have made it less baggy and tight. Upper and middle class women in towns wear burqas over their normal clothes in public.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: The burqa is the most visible dress in Pakistan. It is typically a tent-like garment worn over the ordinary clothes and is made of white cotton. Many upper class women wear a two-piece burqa which is usually black in colour but sometimes navy blue or dark red. It consists of a long cloak and a separate headpiece with a drop-down face veil. Some educated urban women no longer wear the burqa. The burqa is also not worn by rural peasant women who work in the fields. In rural areas only elite women wear burqas.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In Pakistan, the women's access to property, education, employment etc. remains considerably lower compared to men's. The social and cultural context of Pakistani society has historically been predominantly patriarchal. Women have a low percentage of participation in society outside of the family. As per research study of Khurshid, Gillani, Hashmi; Pakistani school textbooks are discreminatory towards female representation in quantity and status. History taught in Pakistani school text books is mostly male oriented, in Urdu school books women religious role too is less depicted, women get depicted in inferior position compared to men.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Despite the improvement in Pakistan's literacy rate since its independence, the educational status of Pakistani women is among the lowest in the world. The literacy rate for urban women is more than five times the rate for rural women. The literacy rate is still lower for women compared to men: the literacy rate is 45.8% for females, while for males it is 69.5% (aged 15 or older, data from 2015).


title: Women in Pakistan

text: At the end of the 20th century, the school drop-out rate among girls was very high (almost 50 percent), even though the educational achievements of female students were higher than male students at different levels of education. Since then, education for women has improved rapidly. In Lahore there are 46 public colleges out of which 26 are female colleges and some of the others are co-educational. Similarly the public universities of Pakistan have female enrollment than male.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: UNESCO and the Orascom subsidiary of Pakistan telco, Mobilink have been using mobile phones to educate women and improve their literacy skills since 4 July 2010. The local BUNYAD Foundation of Lahore and the UN's work via the Dakar Framework of Action for EFA are also helping with this issue.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: As of 2010, the literacy rate of females in Pakistan was at 39.6 percent compared to that of males at 67.7 percent. More recent statistics provided by the UNICEF – shows that female education amongst 15- to 24-year-olds has increased substantially to 61.5% – an increase of 45%. Male education is at a steady rate of 71.2%.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: The objectives of education policies in Pakistan aim to achieve equality in education between girls and boys and to reduce the gender gap in the educational system. However, the policy also encourages girls, mainly in rural areas of Pakistan, to acquire basic home management skills, which are preferred over full-scale primary education. The attitudes towards women in Pakistani culture make the fight for educational equality more difficult. The lack of democracy and feudal practices of Pakistan also contribute to the gender gap in the educational system.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Girls of rural areas are facing many problems regarding their studies. There are several issues and causes of education problems for girls in rural areas of Pakistan.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Inaccessibility of education in Pakistan, especially in backward areas is a result of distance, child labour, scarcity of teachers, local leaders, frequent policy changes and fear of losing power.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In Rural KPK and Balochistan women are severely bound by cultural constraints and prejudices. They are involved in reproductive and productive and community work for 14 to 18 hours. Women, which are 51% on the country's population, have been forced to just bear children for their husband and remain within their houses. In Balochistan, female literacy rate stands between 15 and 25%.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In backward areas, girls schools are far away from their homes, many families cannot afford travelling expenses for their children. Separate schools for girls are not available. Girls live in fear due to extremist policy. In KPK militant groups have blasted thousands of schools because they are against women education, they have given threats to several governments and private girls school for stopping girls education.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: This feudal system leaves the underpowered, women in particular, in a very vulnerable position. The long-lived socio-cultural belief that women play a reproductive role within the confines of the home leads to the belief that educating women holds no value. Although the government declared that all children of the ages 5–16 can go to school, there are 7.261 million children out of school at the primary level in Pakistan, and 58% are female (UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2011). Although girls have the right to get an education legally, in many rural regions of Pakistan girls are strongly discouraged from going to school and discriminated against, as there are violent acts such as acid throwing which many girls fall victim to for attending school.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Females are educated equally like Males in urban areas such as Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi. However, in rural areas, the education rate is substantially lower. This has begun to change with the issuance of government policy, in which 70% of new schools are built for girls, and also plans to increase the size of women's school so that the infrastructure matches those of men's schools and more female colleges have also been established in order to provide women with higher education.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Women in elite urban districts of Pakistan enjoy a far more privileged lifestyle than those living in rural tribal areas. Women in urbanized districts typically lead more elite lifestyles and have more opportunities for education. Rural and tribal areas of Pakistan have an increasingly high rate of poverty and alarmingly low literacy rates. In 2002 it was recorded that 81.5 percent of 15- to 19-year-old girls from high-income families had attended school while 22.3 percent of girls from low-income families had ever attended school.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In comparison, it was recorded that 96.6 percent of Pakistani boys ages 15–19 coming from high-income families had attended schooling while 66.1 percent of 15- to 19-year-old boys from low-income families had attended school. Girls living in rural areas are encouraged not to go to school because they are needed in the home to do work at a young age. In most rural villages, secondary schooling simply does not exist for girls, leaving them no choice but to prepare for marriage and do household tasks. These rural areas often have inadequate funding and schooling for girls is at the bottom of their priorities.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Pakistan is a largely rural society (almost two-thirds of the population lives in rural areas) and women are rarely formally employed. This does not mean that women do not participate in the economy: quite on the contrary, women usually work on the farm of the household, practise subsistence agriculture, or otherwise work within the household economic unit. However, women are often prevented from advancing economically, due to social restrictions on women's movement and gender mixing, as well as due to low education.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Although women play an active role in Pakistan's economy, their contribution has been grossly underreported in some censuses and surveys. Part of the understimation of women's economic role is that Pakistan, like many other countries, has a very large informal sector. The 1991–92 Labour Force Survey revealed that only about 16% of women aged 10 years and over were in the labour force. According to World Bank, in 2014, women made up 22.3% of the labour force in Pakistan.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: According to the 1999 report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, only two percent of Pakistani women participate in the formal sector of employment. However, the 1980 agricultural census stated that the women's participation rate in agriculture was 73%. The 1990–1991 Pakistan Integrated Household Survey indicated that the female labour force participation rate was 45% in rural areas and 17% the urban areas. Pakistani women play a major role in agricultural production, livestock raising and cottage industries.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In 2008, it was recorded that 21.8 percent of females were participating in the labour force in Pakistan while 82.7 percent of men were involved in labour. The rate of women in the labour force has an annual growth rate of 6.5 percent. Out of the 47 million employed peoples in Pakistan in 2008, only 9 million were women and of those 9 million, 70 percent worked in the agricultural sector. The income of Pakistani women in the labour force is generally lower than that of men, due in part to a lack of formal education.In Pakistan, women are not accepted if they earn more than their husbands - development organization CARE found 76% of respondents felt that people, particularly family members, will disapprove if female entrepreneurs’ earnings usurp their partners’.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Due to the religious and cultural values in Pakistan, women who do try to enter the workforce are often pushed into the lower of the three employment structures. This structure level, unorganized services sector, has low pay, low job security and low productivity. In order to improve this situation, governmental organizations and political parties need to push for the entrance of women into the organized services sector. Conservative interpretations of Islam have not promoted women's rights in the workforce, since they value women as keepers of the family honour, support gender segregation, and institutionalization of gender disparities.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Furthermore, women who do work are often paid less than minimum wage, because they are seen as lesser beings in comparison to men, and "their working conditions vis-à-vis females are often hazardous; having long working hours, no medical benefits, no job security, subjected to job discrimination, verbal abuse and sexual harassment and no support from male-oriented labor unions" (An In-Depth Analysis of Women's Labor Force Participation in Pakistan).


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Although these religious and cultural barriers exist keeping women away from the workforce, studies have shown that women-only entrepreneurial training that allows participants to develop capital and competences, can break these down. Programs such as this can go a long way in an Islamic socio-cultural context to develop tolerance and understanding.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Women can serve in the Pakistan Armed Forces. In 2006, the first women fighter pilot batch joined the combat aerial mission command of PAF.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: The Pakistan Navy prohibits women from serving in the combat branch. Rather they are appointed and serve in operations involving military logistics, staff and senior administrative offices, particularly in the regional and central headquarters. About 4,000 women have served the armed forces till 2017.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Around 90% of the Pakistani households are headed by men and most female-headed households belong to the poor strata of the society


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Women lack ownership of productive resources. Despite women's legal rights to own and inherit property from their families, in 2000 there were very few women who had access and control over these resources.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In Pakistan, Hindu and Christian girls in Pakistan are kidnapped, raped, forcibly converted to Islam and married to Muslim men. These girls are generally 12 to 18 years old. According to the Aurat Foundation, about 1,000 non-Muslim girls are forcibly converted to Islam in Pakistan every year.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Pakistan is a patriarchal society where men are the primary authority figures and women are subordinate. Gender is one of the organizing principles of Pakistani society. Patriarchal values embedded in local traditions, religion and culture predetermine the social value of gender. Islam heavily influences gender roles in particular. An artificial divide between production and reproduction, made by the ideology of sexual division of labour, has placed women in reproductive roles as mothers and wives in the private arena of home and men in a productive role as breadwinners in the public arena.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Pakistani women lack social value and status because of negation of their roles as producers and providers in all social roles. The preference for sons due to their productive role often dictates the allocation of household resources in their favor. Traditionally, male members of the family are given better education and are equipped with skills to compete for resources in the public arena, while female members are imparted domestic skills to be good mothers and wives. Lack of skills, limited opportunities in the job market, and social, religious and cultural restrictions limit women's chances to compete for resources in the public arena.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: This situation has led to the social and economic dependency of women that becomes the basis for male power over women in all social relationships. However, the spread of patriarchy is not even. The nature and degree of women's subordination vary across classes, regions, and the rural/urban divide. Patriarchal structures are relatively stronger in the rural and tribal setting where local customs establish male authority and power over women's lives. On the other hand, women belonging to the upper and middle classes have increasingly greater access to education and employment opportunities and can assume greater control over their lives.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: According to Pakistani standards, 'good women' could be either educated or uneducated and are expected to be unselfish, calm, tolerant, empathetic, reliable, able to organize, compromise, coordinate and maintain hospitality within the house and in keeping good relationships. They are also expected to do household chores, care for her children, husband and in-laws and, when needed, provide the home with external income. Women are also expected to marry a man of their parent's choice, follow Islam's code of dress and sacrifice their own dreams.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In a study carried out by Gallup Pakistan, the Pakistani affiliate of Gallup International, majority of the Pakistanis believe that both males and females have different roles to play in the society. In Pakistan, for married women it is predominantly the husband’s mother and his sisters who load pressure onto women to be at home taking care of the children and the household, and for the man to be the main breadwinner. Although women's role has broadened beyond being a housewife over time, many people still give priority to men in politics, education, employment, and related walks of life. When the respondents were asked to give their opinion on a number of statements about gender roles 63% of the respondents agreed with the statement that "Boys' education is more important than girls'"; 37% disagreed with it. The percentage of people agreeing with this statement was higher among rurallites (67%) as compared to the urbanites (53%). However, more than 90% believe that female children should be educated, nearly half of them believing that, should opportunity be available, they should rise to college education and beyond.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Fifty five percent (55%) of the respondents believe that "Both husband and wife should work"; while 45% said it is wrong for both husband and the wife to work. More than 50% of men including those from rural areas agree that both husband and wife should work for a better living. When the respondents were asked whether "Men are better politicians as compared to women or not"; 67% agree men are better politicians while 33% think otherwise. More women agree with this statement as compared to men. In response to the following statement "If jobs are in shortage should men be given priority for employment"; 72% of the respondents believe they should be given priority while 28% disagree. Eighty three percent (83%) of the respondents think that "To live a happy life women need children"; while only 17% think they do not. A vast majority of all respondents including 82% of women respondents believe that "prosperous women should raise their voice to support the rights of poor women."


title: Women in Pakistan

text: According to 1998 figures, the female infant mortality rate was higher than that of male children. The maternal mortality rate was also high, as only 20 percent of women were assisted by a trained provider during delivery. Only 9 percent of women used contraceptives in 1985, but by 2000 this figure had increased substantially, and as of 2012/13, the contraceptive prevalence rate was 35.4%. The total fertility rate is 2.75 children born/woman (2015 est.).


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Pakistan has taken certain initiatives in the health sector to redress gender imbalances. The SAP was launched in 1992–1993 to accelerate improvement in the social indicators. Closing the gender gap is the foremost objective of the SAP. The other major initiative is the Prime Minister's program of lady health workers (LHWs). Under this community-based program, 26,584 LHWs in rural areas and 11,967 LHWs in urban areas have been recruited to provide basic health care including family planning to women at the grassroots level. Other initiatives include the village-based family planning workers and extended immunisation programs, nutritional and child survival, cancer treatment, and increased involvement of media in health education.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: The average age of women for marriage increased from 16.9 years in 1951 to 22.5 years in 2005. A majority of women are married to their close relatives, i.e., first and second cousins. Only 37 percent of married women are not related to their spouses before marriage. A study published in 2000 recorded that the divorce rate in Pakistan was extremely low due to the social stigma attached to it.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Many girls are still married off into a child marriage, and many complications with this can occur as childbirth from a child can cause complications with the baby and mother. A common system in place with marriage is the Dowry system in which a low or no status is assigned to a girl right from the prenatal stage. There are issues around the dowry system such as dowry related violence, in which the wife is abused by her husband. Before the marriage, the groom will make heavy financial demands on the bride's family as a condition of marrying their daughter.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In order for many parents' daughters to get married, they start "obtaining loans from people, getting interest based loans from banks, utilising their life savings and even sell their homes" (JAHEZ (Dowry Conditions Set by the Groom for Marriage)). Within the dowry system, abuse is likely to occur after the marriage has taken place. Prior to the marriage, if certain conditions that the groom and his family have put in place are not met, they will threaten to break off the marriage, which would be devastating for the bride and her family because of the lengths the bride's family already had to go through to pay her dowry and because traditionally it is a great dishonour to the family.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Pakistan has many immensely talented women who have played a vital role in changing the social standards and norms of the country. These women come from all walks of life and have played their role in all sorts of sectors. Women in Pakistan have progressed in various fields of life such as politics, education, economy, services, health and many more.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In 2000, women's presence in political parties as well as in the political structure at the local, provincial, and national levels was insignificant due to cultural and structural barriers. The situation gradually improved, and by 2014, 20.7% of elected representatives were female, a statistic well ahead of the United States and less than 2% behind the United Kingdom. According to Foqia Sadiq Khan while Pakistan is in one of seventy countries where at least one woman President or Prime Minister had been there; lately Pakistan also provides for certain electoral reservations for women at local and parliamentary level like five percent of candidates need to be women, but still Pakistan lags behind in gender equality, and satisfactory political inclusion.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Foqia says while the highest number of women contested the 2018 general elections, still fewer, i.e. just eight, got elected compared to previous years. Foqia says that while electoral reservations provide for minimum level assurance, Pakistani familial, societal and institutional structure do little to give women a fair chance to thrive in competitive political environments. According to Foqia, though local level elections give more opportunities at entry level, being non-political in character means that political exposure remains limited; political parties do allot five percent of their parliamentary seats, but mostly where chances of winning are bleak; and the parliamentary reserved seats for women are awarded based on clientelism. This results in no benefit of exposure in a competitive political environment and the patriarchal hegemony continues to stifle meaningful political inclusion of women in Pakistan's political power structures. Prominent actress Sarah Khan states that Allah provides for equal gender rank for women and that instead of women's day's Aurat March activism, women need to focus on their children's education.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Miss Fatima Jinnah, sister of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, was an instrumental figure in the Pakistan movement. In 1947, she formed the Women's Relief Committee, which later formed the nucleus for the All Pakistan Women's Association (APWA). She was the first Muslim woman to contest the presidency in 1965, as a candidate of the Combined Opposition Party.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Begum Mahmooda Salim Khan was Pakistan's first woman minister and member of the Cabinet of President General Ayub Khan.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Begum Ra'ana Liaquat Ali Khan (1905–1990) was a women's rights activists. She was the founder of the All Pakistan Women's Association. Begum Nusrat Bhutto wife of Prime Minister Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto, led the Pakistani delegation to the United Nations' first women's conference in 1975.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Benazir Bhutto was the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988)(1991) and the first woman elected to head a Muslim country. She was elected twice to the office of Prime Minister.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Fehmida Mirza is the first female speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan. Other prominent female Pakistani politicians include Begum Nasim Wali Khan, Syeda Abida Hussain, Sherry Rehman and Tehmina Daultana.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani, prominent human rights lawyers and founders of the first all woman law firm in Pakistan, AGHS.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Malala Yousafzai, as a teenage education activist, was shot in the face in her hometown Mingora at the age of 15. After her hospitalisation and recovery she went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in conjunction with Kailash Satyarthi for their work for children's rights. At 17, Yousafzai became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the first Nobel Peace Prize winner from Pakistan.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Sania Nishtar, the first female cardiologist and the only woman Interim Cabinet Member 2013, is globally recognized for her work and accomplishments in health policy advocacy.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Nigar Ahmad, women's rights activist, co-founder of Aurat (women's) Foundation, one of the oldest women's organisation in the country.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Kanwal Ahmed is the founder of Soul Sisters Pakistan (SSP), a forum for those who identify as women and have roots in Pakistan. SSP, founded in 2013, was one of the few forums exclusively created for women to speak freely about issues particular to their identities. Ahmed also launched a flagship YouTube show called ""Conversations with Kanwal". The show has brought different guests and it covers subjects like dwarfism, diabetes, postpartum depression, single fatherhood, bereavement, women in sports, chai trolley culture or colorism. Ahmed has garnered international recognition through her work on SSP and has become a figure in advocating for the need of women only spaces.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Naela Chohan is a Pakistani diplomat and feminist artist. She is currently serving as the Ambassador of Pakistan to Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Ecuador. She has been a vocal proponent of stronger ties between Pakistan and Latin America.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Farida Shaheed and Khawar Mumtaz, human rights activists and authors, associated with Shirkat Gah, a woman's organisation.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Shahla Zia, human rights activist and lawyer, co-founder of AGHS with Asma Jahngir and Hina Jilani, and also co-founder of Aurat Foundation with Nigar Ahmad. Also the plaintiff in Shahla Zia v. WAPDA, the leading case on environmental law in Pakistan.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Tahira Abdullah, prominent human rights activist, associated with Women's Action Forum (WAF) and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and was a prominent member of the Lawyers Movement.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Riffat Arif, also known as Sister Zeph, is a teacher, women's activist and philanthropist from Gujranwala.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Syeda Tahira Safdar, is the first woman chief justice of any high court in Pakistan. In 2018, she was sworn in as the 18th chief justice of the Balochistan High Court (BHC). Previously in 1982, she was also first woman to be appointed as civil judge in Quetta, Balochistan.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Ayesha Malik, is the senior judge from Lahore High Court (LHC). In 2021, she was also nominated for the post of Chief Justice of Pakistan.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Aurat March is International Women's Day women's procession walk organized in various cities of Pakistan including Lahore, Hyderabad, Karachi and Islamabad. The first Aurat March was held in Pakistan on 8 March 2018 (in the city of Karachi). In 2019, it was organised in Lahore and Karachi by a women's collective called "Hum Auratein" (We the Women), and in other parts of the country, including Islamabad, Hyderabad, Quetta, Mardan, and Faisalabad, by Women democratic front (WDF), Women Action Forum (WAF), and others. The march was endorsed by the Lady Health Workers Association, and included representatives from multiple women's-rights organizations. The march called for more accountability for violence against women, and to support for women who experience violence and harassment at the hands of security forces, in public spaces, at home, and at the workplace. Reports suggest that more and more women rushed to join the march until the crowd was scattered. Women (as well as men) carried posters bearing phrases such as 'Ghar ka Kaam, Sab ka Kaam', and 'Women are humans, not honour' became a rallying cry.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Pakistani civil society and Pakistani feminists have produced a significant number of big and small, courageous NGOs and proactive activism including that of Me Too Movement and annual Aurat March which work towards improve Pakistani women's global situation and particularly to prevent violence against women, for instance:


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Number of Pakistani women in 'STEM' is low due to one of the highest gender gaps in STEM fields. However, over the time, some Pakistani women have emerged as scientists in fields like Physics, Biology and computer sciences.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Since 2006, Pakistan Air Force allowed women to take part in combat roles. Previously, women only took part in non-combat roles in Pakistan Air Force.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Sportswomen of Pakistan have always been plagued by the patriarchal society and many have come forward to claim that coaches, selectors and others who are in position of power demand sexual favours. Sexual abuse of this kind has led some athletes to commit suicide due to inaction of authorities in pursuing the suspects. In some cases the female athletes who register the cases of sexual abuse and harassment are banned or put on probation.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: In 1996, when sisters Shaiza and Sharmeen Khan first tried to introduce women's cricket in Pakistan, they were met with court cases and even death threats. The government refused them permission to play India in 1997, and ruled that women were forbidden from playing sports in public. However, later they were granted permission, and the Pakistani women's cricket team played its first recorded match on 28 January 1997 against New Zealand in Christchurch.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Shazia Hidayat was the sole woman Olympian on the Pakistan team at the 2000 Summer Olympic Games and the second woman to represent Pakistan in an Olympic event.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Sidra Sadaf, a woman cyclist won a silver medal at the 11th South Asian Games in Dhaka, Bangladesh in January 2010. Naseem Hameed achieved the fastest woman sprinter record in South Asia following the 2010 South Asian games; she gained widespread popularity for the remarkable feat.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Sana Mir is captain of the Pakistan women's cricket team. Won two gold medals at Asian Games in 2010 and 2014. Started playing street cricket at the age of five. Studying engineering before becoming a cricketer by profession.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Hajra Khan is the captain of Pakistan's women's football team. She is the only player to have scored more than 100 goals in her club career. 21-year-old made history when she was invited to play in Germany for top clubs SGS Essen, FSV Gütersloh and VfL Sindelfingen. Hajra has chosen a very tough path for herself.


title: Women in Pakistan

text: Ismat Chughtai, who was part of the Progressive Writers Association, is regarded as an important feminist writer of Urdu. Parveen Shakir, Kishwar Naheed and Fehmida Riaz are also renowned for their feminist poetry in Urdu. Modern fiction writers such as Rizwana Syed Ali and Bano Qudisa have also highlighted gender issues. Bapsi Sidhwa is one of Pakistan's most prominent English fiction writers. In 1991, she received "Sitara-i-Imtiaz", Pakistan's highest honour in arts. Sana Munir is another well known writer. Munir's early schooling was done in Nigeria and she then studied English Literature, Psychology and Mass Communication. Her love for books is influenced by her father, who ensured that they were surrounded by quality books. Her writing style is very gripping, creating a very clear visual image of the characters and their physical settings.


title: Reactive programming

text: In computing, reactive programming is a declarative programming paradigm concerned with data streams and the propagation of change. With this paradigm, it's possible to express static (e.g., arrays) or dynamic (e.g., event emitters) data streams with ease, and also communicate that an inferred dependency within the associated execution model exists, which facilitates the automatic propagation of the changed data flow.


title: Reactive programming

text: For example, in an "imperative" programming setting, codice_1 would mean that codice_2 is being assigned the result of codice_3 in the instant the expression is evaluated, and later, the values of codice_4 and codice_5 can be changed with no effect on the value of codice_2. On the other hand, in "reactive" programming, the value of codice_2 is automatically updated whenever the values of codice_4 or codice_5 change, without the program having to explicitly re-execute the statement codice_1 to determine the presently assigned value of codice_2.


title: Reactive programming

text: Another example is a hardware description language such as Verilog, where reactive programming enables changes to be modeled as they propagate through circuits.


title: Reactive programming

text: Reactive programming has been proposed as a way to simplify the creation of interactive user interfaces and near-real-time system animation.


title: Reactive programming

text: For example, in a model–view–controller (MVC) architecture, reactive programming can facilitate changes in an underlying "model" that are reflected automatically in an associated "view".


title: Reactive programming

text: Several popular approaches are employed in the creation of reactive programming languages. Specification of "dedicated" languages that are specific to various "domain constraints". Such constraints usually are characterized by real-time, embedded computing or hardware description. Another approach involves the specification of "general-purpose" languages that include support for reactivity. Other approaches are articulated in the definition, and use of programming "libraries", or "embedded domain-specific languages", that enable reactivity alongside or on top of the programming language. Specification and use of these different approaches results in language "capability trade-offs". In general, the more restricted a language is, the more its associated compilers and analysis tools are able to inform developers (e.g., in performing analysis for whether programs are able to execute in actual real time). Functional trade-offs in specificity may result in deterioration of the general applicability of a language.


title: Reactive programming

text: A variety of models and semantics govern reactive programming. We can loosely split them along the following dimensions:


title: Reactive programming

text: Reactive programming language runtimes are represented by a graph that identifies the dependencies among the involved reactive values. In such a graph, "nodes" represent the act of computing and "edges" model dependency relationships. Such a runtime employs said graph, to help it keep track of the various computations, which must be executed anew, once an involved input changes value.


title: Reactive programming

text: At the implementation level, "event reaction" consists of the propagation across a graph's information, which characterizes the existence of change. Consequently, computations that are affected by such change then become outdated and must be flagged for re-execution. Such computations are then usually characterized by the transitive closure of the change in its associated source. "Change propagation" may then lead to an update in the value of the graph's "sinks".


title: Reactive programming

text: Graph propagated information can consist of a node's complete state, i.e., the computation result of the involved node. In such cases, the node's previous output is then ignored. Another method involves "delta propagation" i.e. "incremental change propagation". In this case, information is proliferated along a graph's "edges," which consist only of "delta"s describing how the previous node was changed. This approach is especially important when "nodes" hold large amounts of "state data", which would otherwise be expensive to recompute from scratch.


title: Reactive programming

text: "Delta propagation" is essentially an optimization that has been extensively studied via the discipline of incremental computing, whose approach requires runtime satisfaction involving the view-update problem. This problem is infamously characterized by the use of database entities, which are responsible for the maintenance of changing data views.


title: Reactive programming

text: Another common optimization is employment of "unary change accumulation" and "batch propagation". Such a solution can be faster because it reduces communication among involved nodes. Optimization strategies can then be employed that reason about the nature of the changes contained within, and make alterations accordingly. e.g. two changes in the batch can cancel each other, and thus, simply be ignored. Yet another available approach, is described as "invalidity notification propagation". This approach causes nodes with invalid input to pull updates, thus resulting in the update of their own outputs.


title: Reactive programming

text: When propagating changes, it is possible to pick propagation orders such that the value of an expression is not a natural consequence of the source program. We can illustrate this easily with an example. Suppose codice_12 is a reactive value that changes every second to represent the current time (in seconds). Consider this expression:


title: Reactive programming

text: Because codice_13 should always be greater than codice_12, this expression should always evaluate to a true value. Unfortunately, this can depend on the order of evaluation. When codice_12 changes, two expressions have to update: codice_16 and the conditional. If the first evaluates before the second, then this invariant will hold. If, however, the conditional updates first, using the old value of codice_13 and the new value of codice_12, then the expression will evaluate to a false value. This is called a "glitch".


title: Reactive programming

text: Some reactive languages are glitch-free, and prove this property. This is usually achieved by topologically sorting expressions and updating values in topological order. This can, however, have performance implications, such as delaying the delivery of values (due to the order of propagation). In some cases, therefore, reactive languages permit glitches, and developers must be aware of the possibility that values may temporarily fail to correspond to the program source, and that some expressions may evaluate multiple times (for instance, codice_19 may evaluate twice: once when the new value of codice_12 arrives, and once more when codice_13 updates).


title: Reactive programming

text: Topological sorting of dependencies depends on the dependency graph being a directed acyclic graph (DAG). In practice, a program may define a dependency graph that has cycles. Usually, reactive programming languages expect such cycles to be "broken" by placing some element along a "back edge" to permit reactive updating to terminate. Typically, languages provide an operator like codice_22 that is used by the update mechanism for this purpose, since a codice_22 implies that what follows must be evaluated in the "next time step" (allowing the current evaluation to terminate).


title: Reactive programming

text: Reactive languages typically assume that their expressions are purely functional. This allows an update mechanism to choose different orders in which to perform updates, and leave the specific order unspecified (thereby enabling optimizations). When a reactive language is embedded in a programming language with state, however, it may be possible for programmers to perform mutable operations. How to make this interaction smooth remains an open problem.


title: Reactive programming

text: In some reactive languages, the graph of dependencies is "static", i.e., the graph is fixed throughout the program's execution. In other languages, the graph can be "dynamic", i.e., it can change as the program executes. For a simple example, consider this illustrative example (where codice_12 is a reactive value):


title: Reactive programming

text: Every second, the value of this expression changes to a different reactive expression, which codice_25 then depends on. Therefore, the graph of dependencies updates every second.


title: Reactive programming

text: Permitting dynamic updating of dependencies provides significant expressive power (for instance, dynamic dependencies routinely occur in graphical user interface (GUI) programs). However, the reactive update engine must decide whether to reconstruct expressions each time, or to keep an expression's node constructed but inactive; in the latter case, ensure that they do not participate in the computation when they are not supposed to be active.


title: Reactive programming

text: Reactive programming languages can range from very explicit ones where data flows are set up by using arrows, to implicit where the data flows are derived from language constructs that look similar to those of imperative or functional programming. For example, in implicitly lifted functional reactive programming (FRP) a function call might implicitly cause a node in a data flow graph to be constructed. Reactive programming libraries for dynamic languages (such as the Lisp "Cells" and Python "Trellis" libraries) can construct a dependency graph from runtime analysis of the values read during a function's execution, allowing data flow specifications to be both implicit and dynamic.


title: Reactive programming

text: Sometimes the term "reactive programming" refers to the architectural level of software engineering, where individual nodes in the data flow graph are ordinary programs that communicate with each other.


title: Reactive programming

text: Reactive programming can be purely static where the data flows are set up statically, or be dynamic where the data flows can change during the execution of a program.


title: Reactive programming

text: The use of data switches in the data flow graph could to some extent make a static data flow graph appear as dynamic, and blur the distinction slightly. True dynamic reactive programming however could use imperative programming to reconstruct the data flow graph.


title: Reactive programming

text: Reactive programming could be said to be of higher order if it supports the idea that data flows could be used to construct other data flows. That is, the resulting value out of a data flow is another data flow graph that is executed using the same evaluation model as the first.


title: Reactive programming

text: Ideally all data changes are propagated instantly, but this cannot be assured in practice. Instead it might be necessary to give different parts of the data flow graph different evaluation priorities. This can be called differentiated reactive programming.


title: Reactive programming

text: For example, in a word processor the marking of spelling errors need not be totally in sync with the inserting of characters. Here differentiated reactive programming could potentially be used to give the spell checker lower priority, allowing it to be delayed while keeping other data-flows instantaneous.


title: Reactive programming

text: However, such differentiation introduces additional design complexity. For example, deciding how to define the different data flow areas, and how to handle event passing between different data flow areas.


title: Reactive programming

text: Evaluation of reactive programs is not necessarily based on how stack based programming languages are evaluated. Instead, when some data is changed, the change is propagated to all data that is derived partially or completely from the data that was changed. This change propagation could be achieved in a number of ways, where perhaps the most natural way is an invalidate/lazy-revalidate scheme.


title: Reactive programming

text: It could be problematic simply to naively propagate a change using a stack, because of potential exponential update complexity if the data structure has a certain shape. One such shape can be described as "repeated diamonds shape", and has the following structure:


title: Reactive programming

text: A→B→A, A→C→A, where n=1,2... This problem could be overcome by propagating invalidation only when some data is not already invalidated, and later re-validate the data when needed using lazy evaluation.


title: Reactive programming

text: One inherent problem for reactive programming is that most computations that would be evaluated and forgotten in a normal programming language, needs to be represented in the memory as data-structures. This could potentially make reactive programming highly memory consuming. However, research on what is called "lowering" could potentially overcome this problem.


title: Reactive programming

text: On the other side, reactive programming is a form of what could be described as "explicit parallelism", and could therefore be beneficial for utilizing the power of parallel hardware.


title: Reactive programming

text: Reactive programming has principal similarities with the observer pattern commonly used in object-oriented programming. However, integrating the data flow concepts into the programming language would make it easier to express them and could therefore increase the granularity of the data flow graph. For example, the observer pattern commonly describes data-flows between whole objects/classes, whereas object-oriented reactive programming could target the members of objects/classes.


title: Reactive programming

text: It is possible to fuse reactive programming with ordinary imperative programming. In such a paradigm, imperative programs operate upon reactive data structures. Such a set-up is analogous to imperative constraint programming; however, while imperative constraint programming manages bidirectional data-flow constraints, imperative reactive programming manages one-way data-flow constraints.


title: Reactive programming

text: Object-oriented reactive programming (OORP) is a combination of object oriented programming and reactive programming. Perhaps the most natural way to make such a combination is as follows: instead of methods and fields, objects have "reactions" that automatically re-evaluate when the other reactions they depend on have been modified.


title: Reactive programming

text: If an OORP language maintains its imperative methods, it would also fall under the category of imperative reactive programming.


title: Reactive programming

text: Functional reactive programming (FRP) is a programming paradigm for reactive programming on functional programming.


title: Reactive programming

text: Actors have been proposed to design reactive systems, often in combination with Functional reactive programming (FRP) to develop distributed reactive systems.


title: Reactive programming

text: A relatively new category of programming languages uses constraints (rules) as main programming concept. It consists of reactions to events, which keep all constraints satisfied. Not only does this facilitate event-based reactions, but it makes reactive programs instrumental to the correctness of software. An example of a rule based reactive programming language is Ampersand, which is founded in relation algebra.


title: Nordea

text: Nordea Bank Abp, commonly referred to as Nordea, is a European financial services group operating in northern Europe and based in Helsinki, Finland. The name is a blend of the words "Nordic" and "idea". The bank is the result of the successive mergers and acquisitions of the Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian banks of Merita Bank, Nordbanken, Unidanmark, and Christiania Bank og Kreditkasse that took place between 1997 and 2001. The Nordic countries are considered Nordea's home market, having finalised the sales of their Baltic operations in 2019. Nordea is listed on Nasdaq Nordic exchanges in Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Stockholm and Nordea ADR is listed in the US.


title: Nordea

text: Nordea serves 9.3 million private and 530,000 active corporate customers, including 2,650 large corporates and institutions. Nordea's credit portfolio is distributed across Finland (21%), Denmark (26%), Norway (21%), and Sweden (30%). There are four Business Areas (BAs) at Nordea, Personal Banking, Business Banking, Large Corporates & Institutions, and Asset & Wealth Management. Assets under Management (AUM) were €411 billion in December 2021.


title: Nordea

text: Nordea's roots date to 1820 and Sparekassen for Kjøbenhavn og Omegn in Denmark, and a complete family tree of around 300 banks including some of the oldest banks in the Nordic region. This includes Wermlandsbanken of Sweden (founded 1832), Christiania Kreditkasse of Norway (founded 1848) and Union Bank of Finland (UBF) of Finland (founded 1862). Between 1997 and 2001, the Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian banks of Merita Bank, Nordbanken, Unidanmark, and Christiania Bank og Kreditkasse merged into the present day Nordea.


title: Nordea

text: Merita Group was formed in 1995, when UBF and Kansallis-Osake-Pankki (KOP) merged. UBF was established, in 1862, at a time when there were no Limited Liability Companies Act or banking laws in Finland. Therefore, it was modelled after banking standards in other countries. UBF eventually merged with rivals Nordiska Aktiebanken in 1919 and Helsingin Osakepankki (HOP) in 1986. KOP was originally founded in 1890 with its first branch at Aleksanterinkatu 17, in Helsinki. By 1913, KOP had become the second largest commercial bank in Finland. The two banks, KOP and UBF, competed for the title of the largest bank in Finland for decades. KOP suffered large credit losses as a result of the Finnish banking crisis in the early 1990s. On 1 April 1995 it became a subsidiary (51%) of Merita Group in a direct share issue.


title: Nordea

text: Nordbanken was formed in 1986 by a merger of two smaller private local banks, Uplandsbanken and Sundsvallsbanken, though it was the product of numerous original institutions. The oldest of the original Nordbanken constituent banks was Wermlandsbanken, which was founded in 1832. Nordbanken came under Swedish government control in 1992, following the Swedish banking crisis in the early 1990s, with the sale of its non-performing loans to the Swedish government and significant reduction in personnel. Bad debts were transferred to the asset-management company Securum, which sold off the assets. At the time, the approach of establishing "good" and "bad" banks composed of corresponding assets was a novel resolution approach.


title: Nordea

text: Merita Group merged with Nordbanken in 1997 forming MeritaNordbanken. The Solo internet-based banking operation of MeritaNordbanken was a global pioneer and leader providing mobile and internet banking access in 1999. The bank reached 1 million internet banking customers during 1999 with 3 million log-ins and 3.7 million payments per month. Housing loans via Solo were introduced in 1999. MeritaNordbanken agreed to buy Unidanmark, Denmark's second-largest bank, in early 2000 creating the Nordic region's biggest financial institution with €186 billion in assets. The merged group had a banking market share of 20% in Sweden, 25% in Denmark and 40% in Finland and a combined workforce of 28,050. By end 2000, MeritaNordbanken had further merged with Christiania Bank og Kreditkasse of Norway, a process started in 1999 and changed its name to Nordea. Christiania Bank had also been impacted severely during the banking crisis in the early 1990s, with Nordea acquiring the bank from the Norwegian Government Bank Investment Fund with a 35% share.


title: Nordea

text: Nordea expanded into Poland, the Baltics and Russia in the early 2000s, with 2% of total revenues from the Poland and Baltics region. Nordea divested of Polish operations in 2013, with the sale to PKO Bank Polski for €694 million. By end 2014, lending in the Baltics was €8.2 billion and in Russia €4.5 billion. During the period 2013-2017 exposure to the Russian market was reduced by 63%. In 2016, Luminor was formed by a merger of Nordea's and DNB's operations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania creating the third largest Baltic regional bank with assets of €15 billion and a market share of 16.4%. Luminor was sold to Blackstone, with Nordea and DNB retaining each initially a 20% share. However, the full divestment was completed in 2019. Exit from the Russian, Baltic and Polish markets were part of Nordea's de-risking strategy, which also included reduced exposures to some sectors (e.g. Shipping, Oil & Offshore and Agriculture in Denmark). Nordea was one of the Nordic banks, including Danske Bank, SEB and Swedbank, allegedly involved in the money laundering scandal, involving ex-Soviet states, that emerged in 2017.


title: Nordea

text: Nordea announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from Stockholm, Sweden to Helsinki, Finland in September 2017. The re-domicilation of Nordea to Finland put it within the supervision of the European Central Bank and within the European Union's banking union. In October 2018, Nordea completed the move of its corporate headquarters to Helsinki, Finland.


title: Nordea

text: Market capitalisation of Nordea was €29.3 billion at year end 2019, making it the seventh largest Nordic company and among the 10 largest European financial groups. Since the merger of MeritaNordbanken and Unidanmark in 2000, the share price of Nordea has appreciated 79% with a clear outperformance to the STOXX Europe 600 Banks Index (-57.4%). With approximately 580,000 registered shareholders at the end of 2019, Nordea has one of the largest shareholding bases of any Nordic company. The largest shareholding group is institutions, with approximately 22.2% Non-Nordic shareholders are 31% as of end 2019. Nordea's 10 largest shareholders are:


title: Nordea

text: There are four Business Areas (BAs) at Nordea, Personal Banking, Business Banking, Large Corporates & Institutions, and Asset & Wealth Management.


title: Nordea

text: Nordea was the subject of an online phishing scam in 2007. The company estimated 8 million kr ($1.1 million) was stolen. Customers were targeted over a period of 15 months with phishing emails containing a trojan horse. Nordea refunded affected customers.


title: Nordea

text: The largest financial group in the Nordic region, Nordea was, despite warnings from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) active in using offshore companies in tax havens according to the Panama papers. Other Swedish banks were mentioned in the documents, but mention of Nordea occurred 10,902 times and the second-most mentioned bank has 764 matches. In 2012, Nordea asked Mossack Fonseca to change documents retroactively so that three Danish customers power of attorney documents had been in force since 2010. Nordea bank loaned billions of euros to shipping companies that own vessels in secrecy jurisdictions such as Bermuda, Cyprus, Panama, BVI, the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man. In the Paradise Papers, Nordea was shown to have lent a significant amount of money to customers based in tax havens. As a consequence of the leaked documents, the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) stated on 4 April 2016 that it had started an investigation into the conduct of Nordea.


title: Nordea

text: The Nordea section in Luxembourg, between the years 2004 and 2014, founded nearly 400 offshore companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands for its customers. The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) pointed out that there are "serious deficiencies" in how Nordea monitors money laundering, and gave the bank two warnings. In 2015, Nordea paid the largest possible fine - over 5 million EUR. Stefan Löfven, Prime Minister of Sweden, said in 2016 that he was very critical of the conduct of Nordea and its role, and said: "They are on the list of shame too". The Swedish minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson characterized the conduct of Nordea as "a crime" and "totally unacceptable". The director for Nordea Private banking Thorben Sanders admits that before 2009 they did not screen for customers that tried to evade tax. "At the end of 2009 we decided that our bank should not be a means of tax evasion" says Thorben Sanders. Nordea CEO Casper von Koskull stated that he was disappointed with the shortcomings within Nordea's operating principles, saying that "this cannot be tolerated".


title: Nordea

text: In March 2019, public service broadcasting company, Yle, aired a program that revealed money laundering allegations against Nordea. The company was the biggest Nordic lender allegedly involved in the multi-million-dollar money laundering scheme, according to Bloomberg.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: Enterobacter cloacae is a clinically significant Gram-negative, facultatively-anaerobic, rod-shaped bacterium.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: In microbiology labs, "E. cloacae" is frequently grown at 30 °C on nutrient agar or at 35 °C in tryptic soy broth. It is a rod-shaped, Gram-negative bacterium, is facultatively anaerobic, and bears peritrichous flagella. It is oxidase-negative and catalase-positive.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter cloacae" has been used in a bioreactor-based method for the biodegradation of explosives and in the biological control of plant diseases. "Enterobacter cloacae" strain MBB8 isolated from the Gulf of Mannar, India was reported to degrade poly vinyl alcohol (PVA). This was the first report of a PVA degrader from the Enterobacter genus. "E. cloacae" was also reported to produce exopolysaccharide (EPS) as high as 18.3g/L. GC-MS analysis of "E. cloacae" EPS showed the presence of glucose and mannose in the molar ratio of 1: 1.5e.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter cloacae" is considered a biosafety level 1 organism in the United States and level 2 in Canada.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: A draft genome sequence of "Enterobacter cloacae" subsp. "cloacae" was announced in 2012. The bacteria used in the study were isolated from giant panda feces.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter cloacae" is a member of the normal gut flora of many humans and is not usually a primary pathogen. Some strains have been associated with urinary tract and respiratory tract infections in immunocompromised individuals. Treatment with cefepime and gentamicin has been reported.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: A 2012 study in which Enterobacter cloacae transplanted into previously germ-free mice resulted in increased obesity when compared with germ-free mice fed an identical diet, suggesting a link between obesity and the presence of Enterobacter gut flora.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter cloacae" was described for the first time in 1890 by Jordan[201] as "Bacillus cloacae", and then underwent numerous taxonomical changes, becoming 'Bacterium cloacae' in 1896 (Lehmann and Neumann), "Cloaca cloacae" in 1919 (Castellani and Chalmers), it was identified as 'Aerobacter cloacae' in 1923 (Bergey et al.), "Aerobacter cloacae" in 1958 (Hormaeche and Edwards) and "E. cloacae" in 1960 (Hormaeche and Edwards), by which it is still known today.[7] "E. cloacae" is ubiquitous in terrestrial and aquatic environments (water, sewage, soil and food). These strains occur as commensal microflora in the intestinal tracts of humans and animals[1] and play an important role as pathogens in plants and insects. This diversity of habitats is mirrored by the genetic variety of the nomenspecies "E. cloacae".[6] "E. cloacae" is also an important nosocomial pathogen responsible for bacteremia and lower respiratory tract, urinary tract and intra-abdominal infections, as well as endocarditis, septic arthritis, osteomyelitis and skin and soft tissue infections. The skin and the GI tract are the most common sites through which "E. cloacae" can be contracted.[1,29]


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter cloacae" tends to contaminate various medical, intravenous and other hospital devices. Nosocomial outbreaks have also been associated with colonization of certain surgical equipment and operative cleaning solutions. Another potential reservoir for nosocomial bacteremia is the heparin solution used to irrigate certain intravascular devices continually. This fluid had been implicated as a reservoir for outbreaks of device-associated bacteremia in several instances.[30]


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: In recent years, "E. cloacae" has emerged as one of the most commonly found nosocomial pathogen in neonatal units, with several outbreaks of infection being reported.[31] In 1998, van Nierop et al. reported an outbreak in a neonatal intensive care unit with nine deaths,[32] and in 2003, Kuboyama et al. reported three outbreaks with 42 systemic infections and a mortality of 34%.[33] This microorganism may be transmitted to neonates through contaminated intravenous fluids, total parenteral nutrition solutions and medical equipment. Many single-clone outbreaks, probably caused by cross-transmission via healthcare workers, have been described, suggesting that inpatients can also act as a reservoir.[31] The type strains of the species are E. cloacae ATCC 49162 and 13047. This latter strain is the first complete genome sequence of the "E. cloacae" species and the type strain is "E. cloacae" subsp. "cloacae".


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: The complete "E. cloacae" subsp. "cloacae" ATCC 13047 genome contains a single circular chromosome of 5,314,588 bp and two circular plasmids, pECL_A and pECL_B, of 200,370 and 85,650 bp (GenBank accession numbers CP001918, CP001919 and CP001920, respectively).[34]


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: The other genomes of "E. cloacae" that have been sequenced are deposited in GenBank under accession numbers CP002272, CP002886, FP929040 and AGSY00000000.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter asburiae" is named after Mary Alyce Fife-Asbury, an American bacteriologist who made many important contributions to the classification of Enterobacteriaceae, particularly in describing new "Klebsiella" and "Salmonella" serotypes,[35–37] new genera and new species.[38–42] "E. asburiae" sp. nov. was described in 1986 based on the enteric group 17.[43] This group was defined in 1978 as a group of biochemically similar strains isolated from different human specimens[44] and sent to the CDC. Before the designation of 'enteric group 17', these strains had been reported as unidentified or atypical Citrobacter or Enterobacter strains.[44] After several studies, it was shown that these strains represent a single new species in the genus "Enterobacter", which was named "E. asburiae".


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter asburiae" strains have been isolated from the soil and implicated in the mobilization of phosphate for plant nutrition from calcium phosphate, but most E. asburiae species have been isolated from human sources. The type strain of the species "E. asburiae" is ATCC 35953 and was isolated from lochia exudates of a 22-year-old woman in the USA.[43] The only sequenced strain of "E. asburiae" is LF7a, which contains a circular DNA (4,812,833 bp) and two circular plasmids, pENTAS01 (166,725 bp) and pENTAS02 (32,574 bp), which were submitted by Lucas et al. in 2011 to the US DOE Joint Genome Institute (CA, USA; GenBank accession numbers CP003026.1, CP003027.1 and CP003028.1, respectively).


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter hormaechei" is named after Estenio Hormaeche, a Uruguayan microbiologist who (with PR Edwards) proposed and defined the genus "Enterobacter".[7] The name "E. hormaechei" was formerly called enteric group 75, which contained 11 strains that were sent to the CDC for identification between 1973 and 1984. Twelve additional strains were received from 1985 to 1987, three of which were blood isolates. "E. hormaechei" was first described on the basis of 23 isolates sent to the CDC for identification. At that time, they could not be assigned to a species since they were negative in the D-sorbitol and melibiose tests and did not fit the biochemical profile of any established Enterobacter species. The species "E. hormaechei" was proposed to be lactose-, D-sorbitol-, raffinose-, melibiose- and esculin-negative and 87% dulcitol-positive. These species were originally defined by O'Hara et al. when a large hybridization group of enteric organisms was isolated and found to be associated with bloodstream infections.[10]


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: The type strain of "E. hormaechei" is ATCC 49162 and was isolated from the sputum of a man in California in 1977.[10] The whole-genome shotgun sequencing project was submitted in 2011 to the Human Genome Sequencing Center (TX, USA; GenBank accession number AFHR00000000).


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter hormaechei" consists of three different subspecies: "E. hormaechei" subsp. "oharae", "E. hormaechei" subsp. "hormaechei" and "E. hormaechei" subsp. "steigerwaltii", which corresponds to genetic clusters VI, VII and VIII, respectively.[8] The differentiation of these subspecies is based on their particular properties and biochemical tests.[11]


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter hormaechei" is commonly isolated as a nosocomial pathogen of clinical significance;[45,46] it has been reported in several outbreaks of sepsis in neonatal intensive care units in the USA[47] and in Brazil, where the outbreak originated from contaminated parenteral nutrition.[48]


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter kobei" is named after Kobe City (Japan), where the type strain of this species was isolated. "E. kobei" was first described by Kosako et al. based on a collection of 23 strains with the general traits of "E. cloacae" and the common phenotypic difference of being Voges–Proskauer-negative.[49] The name "E. kobei" is proposed for a group of organisms referred to as NIH group 21 at the NIH, Tokyo. It was later found that NIH group 21 also resembled the CDC enteric group 69,[50] and "E. kobei" was compared with the latter. On the basis of DNA relatedness, both organisms could be included in a single taxon. However, the CDC enteric group 69 was described as positive in Voges–Proskauer and yellow pigmentation,[50] whereas all strains of E. kobei were Voges–Proskauer- and pigmentation-negative. These findings suggest that the relationship of both organisms is at the subspecies or biogroup level. The type strain of E. kobei is NIH 1485–1479 and was isolated by blood culture of a diabetic patient.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacte ludwigii", named after Wolfgang Ludwig, a microbiologist working in bacterial systematics[51] and who developed the ARB databases as well as making them public.[52] This description is based on the phylogenetic analyses of partial hsp60 sequence data collected in a population genetic study,[6] as well as on DNA–DNA hybridization assays and phenotypic characterizations.


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: The type strain EN-119T was isolated from midstream urine of an 18-year-old male patient with a nosocomial urinary tract infection while he was hospitalized at the Grosshadern University-Hospital Munich, Germany. The GenBank accession number of the 16S rDNA of strain EN-119T is AJ853891.[12]


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter nimipressuralis" The species "E. nimipressuralis" was originally defined by Brenner et al. and was formerly called "Erwinia nimipressuralis", which was isolated from nonclinical sources (e.g., elm trees with a disease called wet wood).[43] "Erwinia nimipressuralis" was inserted in the Approved Lists of Bacterial Names in 1980. This microorganism is biochemically similar to "E. cloacae", but it is different for acid production from sucrose and raffinose, whereas "E. cloacae" is positive in these tests. The type strain of "E. nimipressuralis" is ATCC 9912 and isolated from the elm Ulmus spp. in the USA (GenBank accession number AJ567900).


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: "Enterobacter cloacae subsp.cloacae strain PR-4 was isolated and identified by 16S rDNA gene sequence with phylogenetic tree view from explosive laden soil by P Ravikumar (GenBank accession number KP261383).


title: Enterobacter cloacae

text: E. cloacae SG208 identified as a predominant microorganism in mixed culture isolated from petrochemical sludge, IOCL, Guwahati is responsible for degradation of benzene was reported by Padhi and Gokhale (2016)[137].


title: Auld Alliance

text: The Auld Alliance (Scots for "Old Alliance"; ; ) is an alliance made in 1295 between the kingdoms of Scotland and France against England. The Scots word "auld", meaning "old", has become a partly affectionate term for the long-lasting association between the two countries. Although the alliance was never formally revoked, it is considered by some to have ended with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh in 1560.


title: Auld Alliance

text: The alliance played a significant role in the relations among Scotland, France and England. The alliance was renewed by all the French and Scottish monarchs of that period except Louis XI. By the late 14th century, the renewal occurred regardless of whether either kingdom was at war with England at the time.


title: Auld Alliance

text: The alliance began with the treaty signed by John Balliol and Philip IV of France in 1295 against Edward I of England. The terms of the treaty stipulated that if either country were attacked by England, the other country would invade English territory. The 1513 Battle of Flodden, where the Scots invaded England in response to the English campaign against France, was one such occasion. Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, negotiated the renewal of the alliance in 1326. The alliance played an important role in the Wars of Scottish Independence, the Hundred Years' War, the War of the League of Cambrai, and the Rough Wooing.


title: Auld Alliance

text: The dynastic turmoil caused by the death in 1290 of Scotland's seven-year-old queen, Margaret, the Maid of Norway, left the covetous Edward I of England with an opportunity to assert his authority over Scotland. In response, the Council of Twelve, which had taken over the government of Scotland temporarily, sought alliances wherever they could be found. Phillip IV declared England's possession of Gascony forfeit in 1294, bringing France and England close to war. Alliance with France was a clear course for Scotland to take. In October 1295, a Scottish embassy to Philip agreed to the Treaty of Paris, which was signed on 23 October.


title: Auld Alliance

text: As with all subsequent renewals of what became the Auld Alliance, the treaty favoured France. The French were required to do no more than continue their struggle against the English in Gascony. The cost of any war between Scotland and England was to be borne entirely by the Scots. Nevertheless, Scotland, as remote and impoverished as it was, was now aligned to a major European power. Even if they were more symbolic than actual, the benefits of the alliance mattered greatly to Scotland.


title: Auld Alliance

text: In the short term, however, the treaty proved to be no protection against Edward, whose swift and devastating invasion of Scotland in 1296 all but eradicated its independence. Furthermore, the cessation of hostilities between England and France in 1299, followed by the treaty of "perpetual peace and friendship," allowed Edward to devote all of his attention and forces to attacking the Scots. In the end, Scotland owed its eventual survival to the military acumen and inspiration of Robert the Bruce and the mistakes of Edward II, rather than to its bond with France. In 1326, Robert the Bruce renewed the alliance with the Treaty of Corbeil. The motive for this renewal was precautionary: neither realm seemed to have much to fear from England at the time.


title: Auld Alliance

text: However, this changed after 1330, when Edward III set out to complete his conquest of Scotland and to reassert his power in France. For the first time, the Franco-Scottish alliance acquired a sense of emergency. In 1346, Edward overwhelmed French forces at the Battle of Crécy. Two months later, David II of Scotland was captured at the Battle of Neville's Cross, during an invasion of Northern England. His 11-year absence as Edward's prisoner only increased the internal turmoil and power struggles of Scotland. David II was forced to make a deal with Edward III to gain his freedom. After his release in 1357, David successfully consolidated royal power in Scotland and cut down the power of the barons who opposed him with the help of Archibald Douglas, 3rd Earl of Douglas.


title: Auld Alliance

text: The accession of pro-French Robert II led to immediate renewal in 1371, with the embassy of the Bishop of Glasgow and the Lord of Galloway to France. The treaty was signed by Charles V at the Château de Vincennes on 30 June, and at Edinburgh Castle by Robert II on 28 October. The benefits to Scotland were mixed. In 1385, plans were drawn up for a Franco-Scottish invasion of England. This included dispatching a small French force to Scotland, for the first time. These plans were never acted on: The French invasion failed to materialise. The deteriorating relations between France and Scotland were summed up by the French chronicler Jean Froissart when he "wished the King of France would make a truce with the English for two or three years and then march to Scotland and utterly destroy it".


title: Auld Alliance

text: However, necessity had driven the two kingdoms together and the need to resist aggressive new Lancastrian kings kept the alliance together in the 15th century. In 1418, with France on the brink of surrendering to the forces of Henry V, the Dauphin, Charles VII, called on his Scottish allies for help. Between 1419 and 1424, as many as 15,000 Scottish troops were sent to France.


title: Auld Alliance

text: French and Scottish forces together won against the English at the Battle of Baugé in 1421. It marked the turning point of the Hundred Years War, but the victory was short-lived for Scotland. The Scots army was defeated at Verneuil in 1424. Despite this defeat, the Scots had given France a valuable breathing space, effectively ensuring the continued power of the French state.


title: Auld Alliance

text: In 1429, Scots came to the aid of Joan of Arc in her famous relief of Orléans. Scottish soldiers also served in the Garde Écossaise, the loyal bodyguard of the French crown. Many members of the Scottish expeditions to France chose to settle there. Some officers were granted lands and titles in France. In the 15th and 16th centuries, they became naturalised French subjects. Through the rest of the 15th century, the alliance was formally renewed four times, until the eventual victory of France in the Hundred Years War.


title: Auld Alliance

text: The aftermath of the Hundred Years War in England that led to the Wars of the Roses meant that the English threat was greatly reduced, thus rendering the alliance almost obsolete. Scotland and France at first saw England's turmoil as an opportunity to carry out raids without opposition. But Scotland went further by seeing this as its chance of retaking Roxburgh and Berwick in 1460. Despite their victory of capturing Roxburgh, it unfortunately cost King James II's life. While the regents reigned Scotland until King James III was old enough to rule, Margaret of Anjou made a compromise by giving Berwick to Scotland in 1461 in exchange that they would aid the Lancastrian cause in the war. Scotland agreed and together they gained their victory in the Battle of Wakefield with the death of Richard of York. Margaret of Anjou made a similar compromise the same year with Scotland's ally, France by giving them Jersey in exchange for support for the Lancastrian cause and thus, the Auld Alliance in a way was engaging in a war that they've caused by their own victory in the Hundred Years War.


title: Auld Alliance

text: The true reasoning for the alliance's existence is to fight against the English, not end up aiding one side in their enemy's own civil war. Their reason being was that the Yorkist had sided with the Burgundian State, and with the Yorkists on the throne meant that the English would return to fight France through Burgundy. Neither France nor Scotland had the stomach to fight after the Hundred Years War that the former was recovering from. To prevent England from becoming strong enough to fight against them, the allies created a proxy war out of it by siding with their former enemy in the last phases of the Hundred Years War, and Yorkists enemy, the Lancastrians. Not wanting a repeat of Wakefield when Henry VI and Margret fled to Scotland in 1464, Edward IV made a peace with Scotland with the Treaty of York. That peace however was short lived because once the Yorkists won the war and exterminated the Lancastrians, the Yorkists managed to regain England's lost possessions of Jersey from France in 1468 and Berwick from Scotland in 1482. Around the same time, with the Treaty of Arras, the Burgundy threat to France was subdued. After the Lancastrians became extinct, Henry Tudor had since been in exile in Brittany, he made attempts to take the throne but failed. But when he went to exile in France to escape pro-Yorkists supporters, Henry was able to gain French and Scottish support from King Charles VII of France. Together, they landed in Wales and with Welsh allies defeated the Yorkist King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. When Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, it ended England's turmoiled war and began its gradual recovery with the Tudor Dynasty. To maintain peace with the Franco-Scottish alliance as the sixteenth century began, Henry VII gave to marriage his eldest daughter, Margaret Tudor to James IV of Scotland and his younger daughter, Mary Tudor to Louis XII of France. The former's lineage would inevitably give rise to the joint ruler of both Scotland and England in 1603, King James VI & I, 43 years after the Auld Alliance was abolished.


title: Auld Alliance

text: It underwent a dramatic revival when it was formally reviewed in 1512 and again in 1517 and 1548. Scotland still suffered badly following the death of James IV and most of his nobles at Flodden in 1513. Periodic Anglo-French and Anglo-Scottish conflict throughout the sixteenth century continued, but the certainties that had driven the Auld Alliance were disappearing. As Protestantism gained ground in Scotland, more and more people favoured closer links with England than with France.


title: Auld Alliance

text: In 1558, the alliance between the two kingdoms was revived with the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots to the future Francis II of France, but it lasted only until 1560 when Francis died prematurely. At the same year of the marriage, the French successfully retook their last position of Calais and driven the English off the continent once and for all from ever retaking it in 1563. In order to make England recognise France's claim over Calais, they gave Queen Elizabeth I 120,000 crowns as a barter. After Mary's exile to England in 1568, Scotland was transformed into a Protestant nation by its new king, James VI, who was also heir to the English throne. His desire to form close ties with England and with them completely ridded from France's mainland after Calais, meant that the alliance had outlived its usefulness. In the 1560s, after more than 250 years, formal treaties between Scotland and France were officially ended by the Treaty of Edinburgh. With the Scottish Reformation, Scotland was declared Protestant, and allied itself with Protestant England instead. During the Reformation, the Protestant Lords of the Congregation rejected the Auld Alliance and brokered English military support with their treaty of Berwick, aimed against the French Regent Mary of Guise. Two hundred Scottish soldiers were sent to Normandy in 1562 to aid the French Huguenots in their struggle against royal authority during the French Wars of Religion.


title: Auld Alliance

text: Although abolished, the Auld Alliance still lived on with the Catholic Scots. Throughout the seventeenth century since the House of Stuart acquired the English throne, aside from the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and Oliver Cromwell's short-lived Commonwealth, relations between England and Scotland, including France for the most part, was neutral. That all changed in the Williamite War when the Stuart Catholic King James VII and II was deposed in favour of the Protestant William of Orange, husband to James's eldest daughter, Mary II. After losing in Ireland, and Scotland before the century came to a close, James went into exile in France, and through his lineage there would try to retake the crown with their Catholic Scots and French backed allies in the Jacobite Wars throughout the early and mid eighteenth century, with the closest from Bonnie Prince Charlie getting as far south as Swarkestone Bridge near Derby before retreating back to Scotland. After Culloden in 1746 and the Highland Clearances soon after, some of the exiled Jacobites in the New World aided their French ally in the Seven Years' War, even on the side of the Patriots in the American War of Independence, an echo to when the Auld Alliance started almost 500 years ago. The Garde Écossaise, since their founding in 1418 continued to protect the kings of France until 412 years later in 1830, when Charles X of France abdicated. In 1848, France abolished the monarchy after restoring it in 1815 after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic War, and once more became a Republic under Napoleon III.


title: Auld Alliance

text: The Auld Alliance extended into the lives of the Scottish population in a number of ways, affecting architecture, law, the Scots language, and cuisine, among other things. Scottish soldiers served within the French army; there were reciprocal dual nationality agreements; and France granted privileges to Scottish vintners. Many Scots studied at French universities, something which continued up until the Napoleonic Wars. David de Moravia, the 14th-century Bishop of Moray, helped found the Scots College of the University of Paris in 1333. Among those who studied or taught at French Universities were: the poets John Barbour and George Buchanan; the historian Hector Boece; the founder of St Andrews University, Henry Wardlaw; the founder of Aberdeen University, William Elphinstone; the founder of the Advocates Library, George Mackenzie, and the noted translator of Rabelais, Sir Thomas Urquhart. Scottish castles built with French construction in mind include Bothwell and Kildrummy.


title: Auld Alliance

text: In a speech which he delivered in Edinburgh in June 1942, Charles de Gaulle described the alliance between Scotland and France as "the oldest alliance in the world". He also declared that:


title: Auld Alliance

text: In every combat where for five centuries the destiny of France was at stake, there were always men of Scotland to fight side by side with men of France, and what Frenchmen feel is that no people has ever been more generous than yours with its friendship.


title: Auld Alliance

text: In 1995, celebrations were held in both countries marking the 700th anniversary of the beginning of the alliance.


title: Auld Alliance

text: After extensive research, British historian Siobhan Talbott concluded that the Auld Alliance had never been formally revoked and that it endured and thrived long after the Acts of Union in 1707 and the Entente Cordiale of 1904.


title: Humongous Entertainment

text: Humongous Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Bothell, Washington. Founded in 1992, the company is best known for developing multiple edutainment franchises, most prominently "Putt-Putt", "Freddi Fish", "Pajama Sam" and "Spy Fox", which, combined, sold over 15 million copies and earned more than 400 awards of excellence.


title: Humongous Entertainment

text: Humongous Entertainment was acquired by GT Interactive (later renamed Infogrames, Inc., then Atari, Inc.) in July 1996. By October 2000, sales of Humongous games had surpassed 16 million copies. GT sold Humongous to its parent company, Infogrames (later renamed Atari SA), in August 2005, as a result of which the company was shut down a few months after. Infogrames transitioned the label to a new company, Humongous, Inc., which continued publishing games under the Humongous label until 2013, when it faced bankruptcy. As part of the bankruptcy agreement of the Atari SA subsidiary Atari, Inc., Humongous, Inc. and Atari Interactive, Tommo acquired the Humongous brand and all of its assets, and went on to re-release some of its games into digital distribution channels in conjunction with Night Dive Studios.


title: Humongous Entertainment

text: Humongous Entertainment was formed by Shelley Day and Ron Gilbert in 1992, then based in Woodinville, Washington. The name Humongous Entertainment was suggested by Gilbert's ex-LucasArts colleague, Tim Schafer. It became known for creating four point-and-click adventure game series intended for young children, branded collectively as "Junior Adventures", with the four series being the "Putt-Putt" series, the "Freddi Fish" series, the "Pajama Sam" series and the "Spy Fox" series. Despite all four series being developed and released in parallel, characters from one series do not cross over with ones in another (except for Putt-Putt and Fatty Bear's Activity Pack, where Putt-Putt and Fatty Bear combined their Fun Packs) and instead appear as cameos or Easter eggs in any of the three other series. The company became the third largest children's educational-software company.


title: Humongous Entertainment

text: In 1995, Gilbert and Day established a company division, Cavedog Entertainment, in Seattle, set to develop games of alternative genres, and released "Total Annihilation", a real-time strategy (RTS) game, in 1997. This was followed by two expansion packs in 1998, as well as a variation called "" plus an expansion pack in 1999.