Even education not able to end wife beating, Pakistan needs a cultural shift.

In Pakistan, according to a survey 80% of the women suffer from violence of the different levels at their homes. The matter is unable to solve as society defends it either directly or indirectly.

Domestic violence – a truly horrifying term, to which only its victims can truly narrate, is another one of the many epidemics Pakistan suffers from. 

Frankly, I had never thought much about it. I knew what it meant and I knew it existed but that was the limit of my thoughts on the topic, maybe because I have never experienced or witnessed it and so I could not share it. Or certainly because, like so many of us, the bubble of my honored social setup never gave me a window into this scary reality that engulf many women.

But the major myth that I supposed up until recently was that domestic violence is something that is born out of poverty and illiteracy and therefore only exists in isolated villages or towns and illiterate families where people don’t know any healthier. This myth was devastated when I spoke to a certain someone – a girl of about my age, highly educated, quite well-off, belonging to the same community class as myself, and yet often beaten up by her spouse.

It was a shock for me, after all it brought into question the inexperienced understanding I had of this practice. And that’s when the obvious hit me.

How could domestic violence and education have any relation?

It’s not alike as our schools teachers teach us that how to deal with any rough treatment. Now I believe in that it’s a set of social and educational permission in Pakistan that lead to domestic violence. A typical mindset is passed down generations by both the transgressors as well as the victims. It is a learned action in Pakistani society, immersed into our lifestyle through generations following the same way.

Girls in their early age watch their mothers going through the same behavior and unintentionally adapt to the system. This does not entail that why they approve of it but they accept it as something that is not open to debate or change. Girls come to identify their mothers as the victims of assaulting and expect similar fates for themselves when they grow up.

Domestic violence is being settled within the families via two major forces:  which are the elders of families. Very less number of victims went to courts for this matter.

Pakistani society is a under influenced by male, where power and control is central to men and where women have a standard and traditional duty to obey their men at all costs. Education often does little to break this conservative way of thinking that still running in many families.

Usually women in our society start bearing insults and beating violation with acceptance and tolerance, as understanding it as their fate. And women have no right to ask any question to anyone. Women remain under domination throughout their lives by men only the relation alter as fathers or  uncles and brothers later must transform into blind subjugation to the commands of the husband.

In order to more strengthen this patriarchal system, women were taught to be obedient, passive and docile whereas men are equated with dictatorship and allow control and violence. Through this violence and physical torture against wives is established and women are shaped into the character-description of domestic violence. Women come to accept beatings inflicted on them as just another man ‘gender trait’ imposed on them by ‘destiny’. Often, women try to explicate their position by claiming that,

‘It is in the nature of men to empower violence and women should be accepting it with patience’.

Moreover women who attempt to stand up against this system are labeled and stigmatized — called ‘loose’, ‘rebellious’, ‘disrespectful’ — this hamper their struggle. Even their own parents and the police estimate them as they are wrong and it’s a sin to complain about their husbands: the apparently hardworking who maintain the house hold budget and resort to violence either due to stress of work or lake of income, even due to incapability of their women to fulfill their household tasks. In the end, even women who resist gradually start to accept that complaining against domestic violence is an awful or useless act to commit.

The cultural understanding of the marriage may also be mainly to blame for the acceptance of this social evil. It is a common belief that marriage is for whole life and must be preserved at any costs. That’s how it becomes culturally impracticable to escape a marriage through divorce and one should let to start a new life.

But our society again leads as obstacle by considering divorce or separation a big sin, especially if it is initiated by a woman. It consequently becomes highly critical to uphold the family and the marriage and this left no option for women than suffering. They must stay silent about their trials and accept them as a casual part of life. As they absorb the idea into their marriages, they tacitly consent to beatings and violence.

Religious implications are also applied to justify wife beating. A particular verse is widely misconstrued to believe that Islam has allowed husbands to beat up their wives if they do not obey orders. But our religious scholars are not able to clarifying the positioning and intensity of such orders. Besides Islamic teaching as patience, peace and love for humanity the woman beating is still consider as Islamic freedom for men. 

 A lot of men as well as women believe that it is against to Islamic preaching to rebel against a husband and his will as it mean the disobedience of the principle of female modesty. Speaking or acting against the husband or going to the police is extensively labeled to be anti-religion.

Many still argue that with better education, socio-economic progress and understanding, these women would be able to wake up to their condition and change may come. While this does stand probable more often than not, the fact remains that even education and greater assets cannot stop family expectations and age-old male-centered beliefs.

Without changing of mentor of our society, the custom of wife beating will remain continue. In order to bring change and to set free our women from the malevolent convention of wife beating, it is very important to bring about a shift in trendy opinions, social norms and the cultural beliefs.