Women in Pakistan

KARACHI: Three recent news items in your newspaper prove that as far as women are concerned, we’re still living in the Stone Age. The first, about a woman being gang-raped, should not shock us anymore. This is the kind of incident that happens regularly, so much so that it would be shocking if it didn’t occur on any given day and was duly reported in the media.

The second item describes how a pregnant mother of six was first shot and then thrown into a canal by her brother because he suspected her of having an illicit affair with a relative. It wouldn’t make any sense to tell these primitive men that there is a legal way to deal with a woman who is suspected of having an affair. In any case, who gave the man the right to kill his sister for any reason at all? Clearly, it is unlikely that anyone is going to ask him this question.

The third news item is heart-breaking. A fifty-year-old woman, mother of eight, was gang-raped by five men and then filed a complaint with the police. Instead of giving comfort and sympathy to the woman, her son-in-law (whom she had brought up as her own son) killed her because “he could not stand peoples’ taunts”. So this is the kind of treatment our women get in the Land of the Pure. No wonder then that we have such a negative image on this and related rights issues in the eyes of the world.

And some Pakistanis I know have the gall to say that women have more rights than men in our country.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 25^th, 2010.