The culture of silencing women in Pakistan

In strict patriarchal societies like Pakistan, a certain mindset is firmly embedded. Poor and illiterate women must fight every day for basic rights, acknowledgment, and respect. They must live in a culture that defines them through the male figures in their lives, even though these women are frequently the primary breadwinner for their households. Silence takes place for a range of factors; most of us have our sea of unaddressed statements. Being unable to tell your story is a sort of death, often metaphorical. If no one chooses to believe you when you say your former husband is actively trying to torture and kill you if nobody understands you when you say you are in distress if no one hears you when you say help if you do not dare to say help if you have been taught not to trouble people by saying help.

If you are considered out of line when you speak up in a meeting, are refused access to a position of authority, and are subjected to irrelevant criticism with the subtext that women should not be prevalent or heard. One’s life is safeguarded by stories. And one’s life is made up of stories. We are our stories; stories that can be both a prison and a crowbar used to smash open that jail’s door. We share tales to save ourselves or others, to lift us, or to smash us against the stone wall of our boundaries and fears. Liberation always involves a storytelling process: breaking stories, breaking silences, and forming new ones. A free individual tells her own story. A valued person lives in a society where her story is heard.

Violence against women frequently targets our perspectives and narratives. It is a rejection of our voices and of what a voice means: the right to self-determination, inclusion, consent, or disagreement; to survive and engage, analyze and describe. Patriarchy, described as a male-centered, male-identified, and male-dominated social system, has indeed been recognized as the cause of ongoing disparity among both men and women. The first and most important step we can take is to pause for a moment and take a glance at the big image, which is the patriarchal social framework. Although both men and women are encouraged to adopt patriarchal values and perspectives in Pakistani society. Females are often told to stay quiet elders if they want to live peacefully. in a patriarchal society like ours, Women demonstrate to men that they are real men by deferring to them, allowing them to set the agenda and do the majority of the communication, and fondling their egos in several other ways.

Men consider themselves to be independent, self-sufficient, powerful, and successful in the eyes of women. In Pakistan harassment has become a norm, and it has been normalized by people to an extent that it no longer seems to be a real ‘problem ‘In Pakistan, there is a taboo regarding sexual harassment and the muting of women’s voices. Women suffer quietly and are conditioned to normalize abuse due to the fright of “log kya kahein gay” (what will people say). Divorce is strongly stigmatized in Pakistani culture. Many women remain in toxic, extremely unhappy, and abusive marriages out of fear of becoming outcasts. They suffer silently within the confines of their homes for fear of what others will say.

A complicated ironic thing for women in Pakistan is that if they speak openly about physical or sexual abuse, they are perceived as having lost their and their families integrity. Many rapes go unreported because the victim is afraid of losing her value in Pakistani society. Women frequently turn to their employers and families they can rely on. It is a type of charity that often goes unnoticed, but it can be critical to their continued existence. For decades, activists have struggled to understand the causes of such extreme gender discrimination. Numerous factors contribute to Pakistan’s violent and male-dominated culture. There are two common and plausible explanations at the systemic level. The first source of inequality is a lack of educational opportunities for women. Although education for women has been accepted as a legal right in Pakistan since 1976, the gender gap in education remains enormous.

Pakistan was outlined as being one of the “worst performing nations in the world for education” at the 2015 Oslo summit. Gender discrimination has its roots in Pakistan’s patriarchal system. This is a clear and instantly recognizable statement. Political instability, poverty, ethnic tensions, violence, and corruption have all contributed to Pakistan’s successive governments’ inability to sufficiently educate their women. Diverting reserves to certain other sectors (particularly defense, owing to skewed civil-military ties) has kept generations of girls out of school and into the arms of poverty and a men’s society.

A woman’s role is limited to household work in a country where men are more educated and have better access to opportunities and wealth. Victims, particularly those from lower-income families, can spend decades fighting for their rights in Pakistan’s infamous legal system, but cases seem to drag on indefinitely, with no outcome. It took decades for the country to close a loophole that enabled culprits of “honor killings” to beg for forgiveness from the victim’s family members and escape prosecution – a simple condition to meet given that many survivors and perpetrators are related.

The law was changed in response to the murder of social media star Qandeel Baloch by her brother under the guise of defending the family’s “honor.” The imminent discharge of Shah Hussain, who stabbed Khadija Siddiqui 23 times in 2016, demonstrates Pakistan’s judicial system’s inability to provide fair trials to the country’s women. Hussain was sentenced to only five years behind bars for his heinous crime, but he was released after only 3.5 years. “Thus every day that a victim does not receive justice or that a perpetrator walks free after having to add to the haunting toll of women killed or violated in this country should be a watershed moment” for Pakistan, says the UN. Patriarchal societies place a massive strain on women to satisfy traditional roles, such as bringing up children and conducting household tasks. This tends to leave them with little time to concentrate on their mental health.

Women are frequently socially conditioned to suppress their emotions and be submissive to men. By projecting unfair gender roles that often restrict how far women can go, patriarchy reinforces structural violence against women. Excluding women from collective resources promotes male dominance. Male dominance implies that men have a level of power superiority over women. Voices can be muted including both formal and informal areas for a broad range of reasons and by a range of factors. There may be a fear of speaking openly or an experience of speaking up only to be drowned out by hostile echoes. We may lack the space to speak openly within ourselves, or we may be afraid of the consequences of how a story rests. The silencing of women is contributed to many factors in our society, it is embedded in our nation that women should keep their voices muted if they want to save their dignity and morality in society.