Laws have to be made which give equal rights to women generally, but particularly when it involves violence.
NIDDERAU, GERMANY: This is with reference to your editorial “Trauma and violence against women” (September 2). The subject touched upon in the editorial is a very serious one. There are many interrelated aspects to the issue — domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment, hate crimes across lines of gender, sexuality and race. But in Pakistan, one can say that the gender bias, against women and children, results from society’s attitudes toward women and efforts to ‘keep women in their place’.
Laws have to be made which give equal rights to women generally, but particularly when it involves violence. The tragedy of the matter is that often it is the close relatives of the women who are the culprits. To say that violence against women is a global problem would be ignoring the fact that women in the West, who fight against brutal men, are protected by law and know that the accused will be forced to support them financially and that the women would not lose their status, unlike in Pakistan where even the parents of the abused encourage their daughters to put up with evil husbands.
Sharif Lone
Published in The Express Tribune, September 4th, 2013.
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