The uproar created by the hardline Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) party, in response to a bill regarding women’s rights, clearly highlights the fact that gender bias is alive and well in Pakistan. The bill, introduced in November 2006, sought to give greater inheritance rights to women, create a path for legal action against spurious divorces, and to criminalize widespread cultural practices that discriminate against women. Some of the current practices that the MMA wishes to uphold include the following.

1. INHERITANCE LAWS

According to the Qur’an, women receive half the property that men do in inheritance law. In Pakistan, most women are expected to give up even their half share of property to their brothers out of “respect,” but in rural society it means that basically gets NO share of the inheritance. Many people will argue that getting a half-share of property is better than getting no share of property, which may have been the common practice regarding women in pre-Islamic times.

2. VANI

Vani is usually a child marriage to pay off a family member’s debts or crimes. If my father were to murder a man, he could marry me off (at the age of 12 or 10 or maybe even 7) to pay for the crime. I would then be married off to a family that would be engaged in a continual blood feud with my family and I would likely be treated as a slave in their house.

3. FORCED MARRIAGES

This is a difficult one, because usually the girl or boy will not even stand up to the parents to say that they do not want to go through with the marriage. Most children, in rural or lower class families, do not even dream that they would have a choice when it comes to marriage. They are obliged to respect their parents wishes and marry whomever the parents choose. In some cases, young good looking girls are married off to better off old men looking for a second or third wife. The girls are pressured into the marriage because their families are poor and will take advantage of the money they will get for the bride.

4. EASY DIVORCE

In Islam men can legally divorce their wives by saying “I divorce you” three times. The Pak government is trying to make this illegal so that men will not divorce their wives so easily or in a fit of rage. Divorce is a big deal for women because after being divorced a women is considered as “used goods” and may not be able to marry again. As women move out and move in with the in-laws when they get married, a divorced women is kicked out of her in laws house and may or may not be accepted back at her family’s house. She will be seen as someone bringing shame on the family and may even be killed by her OWN parents in order to cover up that shame.

5. MARRIAGE TO THE QUR’AN

In some parts of the country, particularly interior Sindh, women are married off with the Qur’an. The motivation for this does not seem to be religious fervor, but rather a desire to keep the family property and not divide it. As this is an agricultural society, when daughters are married off it is tradition to give some land to the groom’s family. If the daughter is married to the Qur’an (legally!), she can not marry any man and therefore the family lands stay intact. The girl becomes a spinster.

6. WATTA SATTA

This is the custom of bridal exchange or bartering. For example, if my parents wanted to marry me off, they would seek a family that also had a daughter of a proper age to marry my brother. Basically it means that one girl is exchanged for another girl (in the groom’s family) at the time of the marriage. If you want to marry off your daugther, you need to be willing to allow your son to marry the proposed groom’s sister.

CONCLUSION

Aside from these practices, which are the current topic of the women’s rights law, there are the problems of karo-kari (honor killing), swara (similar to vani), pait likkhi (arranged marriage before birth or when children are very young) and many other similar practices.

The MMA opposes a lot of bills presented in the national assembly, but apparently women’s rights was something that was too much to bear. They threatened to officially resign from their seats if the proposed bill was passed. Gender bias is something Pakistani women deal with every day. Inevitably men are paid more as they as seen as the bread winners, while women are only thought to be earning their pocket money. I have listened to countless stories of heartache, divorce, abandonment, forced and failed marriages, competition with second wives and mistresses, and overall hopelessness when it comes to the situation of most women in Pakistan. These six practices may not affect all women in Pakistan, but the widespread misogynistic views and practices of society certainly take their toll.