The divorce rate in Pakistan is increasing day by day. Talaq (divorce) is a Socio-Economic and Socio-Cultural problem especially in Pakistan and South Asian Countries. According to research conducted in 2019, by Gallup and Gilani Pakistan, 58% of Pakistanis believe that divorce is becoming more prevalent in the country. The consequence that this result points us to is that Talaq not only harms the lives of the couples but it badly affects the lives of children and the divorcee women. Divorce is usually preceded by either emotional or psychological separation and ends with legal divorce, but the majority of a couple’s relationship begins and persists in an emotional divorce.
According to BBC future, one recent study in France points to a potential answer coldness and lack of emotion appear to play a far more central role in women’s psychopathy than it does in men. In other words, women emotionally suffer much more than men. It mentally and psychologically affects the widow (divorcee woman).
Since divorce is considered taboo in Pakistan, so in Pakistan divorcee women suffer more than men. Mostly, because it is perceived that after divorce a woman’s life gets hard as men do not marry a divorced woman because of sociocultural and religious structures which support men -be they single, married, or divorcee- more than women. Divorce women are stigmatized as undesired women who do not know how to run households or take care of their husbands.
In the same survey, 2 in 5 believe that the main reason for divorce is the couple’s in-laws, especially from the husband’s side, who expect a lot from a woman in marriage and hold the woman responsible if the marriage does not work out. According to the police reports, in the first quarter of 2020, 3800 divorce cases were filed in Karachi. Most recently between January to November 2021, the District Judiciary of Rawalpindi also reported 10,312 cases of divorce, khula, guardianship, and maintenance. Additionally, more than 13,000 cases are awaiting adjudication in the family courts of Rawalpindi district. Moreover, this separation of families has triggered children’s lives; almost 60,000 children would suffer due to the divorce of their parents.
Some of the other major reasons for divorce are extramarital affairs, financial differences, lack of communication, arguing, gain in women’s weight, improbable expectations, sexual abuse, lack of intimacy, inequality, and not being prepared for the marriage (force marriage). The experts say career-oriented women are more prone to taking divorce than housewives, but once again, the experts are mostly men., Though, in this 21st century, women are relatively educated, are aware of their rights, and independent enough to live on their own but still, they are surrounded by cultural, societal, and religious norms to follow and therefore, for a woman the common reasons for broken homes in Pakistan include desertion, alcohol addiction, physical abuse, emotional abuse, personal differences, interference of in-laws and parents, lack of maturity, religious conversion, cultural and lifestyle differences, sexual incompatibility, lack of patience, and much more.
There is a need to balance things in Pakistani society. The Parents do not groom their children for marriage or they do not educate them about marriage. Parents need to educate their children when they have achieved their age of majority. It is important that before marriage both the woman and man should be mentally and physically prepared. Also, the parent should teach the men that the wife must not be treated as mere property that must be controlled, it is the formation of the family. As narrated by Javid Ahmad Ghamidi, a Pakistani religious scholar “Marriage is not just for physical attraction it is an institution and formation of the family”.
