Claim: A picture shows a woman holding a placard featuring an obscene message during Aurat March, held in Karachi on 10 May 2026.
Fact: The image is a doctored version of an old one from Aurat March 2023. The original placard read, “Why half the pay for full work?”
On 11 May 2026, Facebook user ‘Zuhaa Shamshad’ shared an image of a woman holding a placard with an obscene message at Aurat March, or Women’s March, which was held a day prior to the said post.
The placard reads:
“ڈالنا پورا تو اجرت آدھی کیوں؟
[Why half the pay for full sex?]”
The caption accompanying the post includes mentions of sexual assault and includes derogatory language.
What is the Aurat March?
Organised by local feminist collectives and activists since May 2018, the Aurat March is an annual protest held in multiple Pakistani cities, drawing thousands of people to rally for the bodily, democratic, economic, and social rights of women and gender diverse people, as well as to call out patriarchal norms.
It is a grassroots, crowdfunded effort but frequently faces backlash and conspiracy theories, many of which have been debunked in the past by Soch Fact Check.
Aurat March is a leaderless movement, not a registered organisation that receives any formal funding. Its organisers and supporters have also consistently rejected claims of foreign funding, terming them as baseless and false.
This year, the rally was organised at Karachi’s Sea View on 10 May to commemorate Mother’s Day — compared to how it is usually held on 8 March in line with the International Women’s Day — with “Good Girls” as its theme, focusing on “issues such as domestic violence, marital rape, and the societal expectations imposed on women”.
It was held after the Sindh government issued a no-objection certificate (NOC) after days of no response, listing more than two dozen conditions that attempted to enforce stringent rules about participants’ clothing, slogans and chants, and which causes to support.
The march’s organisers were detained briefly — and released later — on 5 May when they tried to hold a press conference to call out the Sindh government for not issuing an NOC initially. They also rejected “speculation” that they had signed on to the administration’s conditional permission.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the image and found it to be old and doctored.
The woman holding the placard is Pakistani actress and activist Iffat Omar, who participated in the 2023 Aurat March held in Lahore.
Omar’s original message was: “کام پورا تو اجرت آدھی کیوں؟ [Why half the pay for full work?].” It was aimed at demanding fair and equal pay for women.
However, the viral image we’re investigating shows the word “کام” replaced with “ڈالنا”, turning it into an obscene message.
Comparison visual showing the doctored poster (left) and the original one (right)
Moreover, this can be corroborated from Omar’s Instagram posts from 2023 about her participation in the Aurat March in Lahore that year.
According to a 22 July 2025 press release by the International Labour Organization (ILO) about the launch of Pakistan’s Gender Pay Gap Report, “women in wage employment earn significantly less than men – by approximately 25 to 30 per cent, depending on the wage metric”.
“The disparity is especially stark in the informal economy, where the gap widens to 40% due to limited enforcement of labour laws and lack of protections,” the ILO statement said.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the viral image is doctored.
Virality
We found the post circulating on Facebook and Instagram, garnering over 400 reactions across the two platforms.
Conclusion: The image is a doctored version of an old one from Aurat March 2023. The original placard read, “Why half the pay for full work?”
Background image in cover photo: auratmarch
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