Disappearing Daughters: The Issue of Son Preference in Pakistan by Zainab Khan

What could possibly drive a mother to throw her own daughter off a roof? 

My mom’s cousin had three daughters before her son was born. The first was doomed from the start: female and too dark. The second child was born within a year of the first—another daughter, this one more resented than the first and still too dark. The third child offered a sort of reprieve from the disappointment; at least this one had lighter skin. Despite her three healthy children, she still longed for a son and this desperation pushed her to do the unthinkable. Nobody but her knows what really happened the day her firstborn “fell” off the roof, surviving but having to live with permanent brain damage. She says that the devil possessed her, forcing her to push the child, but my mom tells me otherwise. She’d always resented her daughters and as callous as it may sound, the opportunity to get rid of one was too good to pass up. 

Stories like this are all too common in Pakistan. Throughout pregnancies, families pray for sons, and are bitterly disappointed when they’re stuck with daughters. In the eyes of her parents, a daughter is nothing but a burden—a mouth to feed until she can be handed off to her husband, and she doesn’t need to be treated with any semblance of respect to do this. A son on the other hand is an investment in the future of the family. Ultimately, he will be the one to carry the family name, manage the estate, and take care of his parents in their old age. Pakistan’s patriarchal society incentivizes male birth and creates a situation where male children are treated better than their sisters. 

In every aspect of life, daughters are neglected while sons are indulged. 

Son preference in Pakistan is highly multifaceted, affecting almost every aspect of a woman’s life. A girl’s life is at risk the moment she is identified as female. Female foeticide and infanticide rates in Pakistan are some of the highest in the world. In 2019, the Edhi Foundation uncovered 375 dead newborns buried around Karachi—the vast majority of these babies were girls. If a girl is “lucky” enough to survive into adolescence, she will never be able to live the same kind of life she could've had if she was born a boy. If a family can only afford to educate one child, it’s the son. If they cook a big meal, the son eats first (despite the fact that the daughter is the one who worked to cook it.)

The issue is that this is a cycle. Women are neglected as girls and when they grow up and become mothers they’re trapped in a society where they end up treating their daughters in the same way. Pakistan’s birth interval rate is alarmingly low. Oftentimes women are forced to get pregnant and give birth over and over and over again until they produce a son. Sometimes a woman isn’t even given a week until her husband forces himself on her so she can try again. Her family tells her that maybe this time she’ll be less of a dissapointment—wrecked both physically and psychologically, she has no choice but to comply. 

The biggest problem a woman faces in Pakistan is her existence itself. Of course not everyone thinks this way, but enough do as to where it’s a tragic issue ingrained in the culture of the country. For most families, especially in rural areas, daughters will never be as valued as sons and because they know of nothing better, they end up just like their mothers—trapped. 

The best way to solve this problem is to let Pakistani women know that they have another choice. The first step in this process is ensuring that women and girls have the same access to education as their male counterparts. An educated woman is an empowered woman, and an empowered woman is someone who’s able to make choices about her life and her body. What also needs to be changed is the mindset of Pakistani society itself—if the idea that daughters bring no value to a family disappears, eventually the issue of son preference will do the same. 

Can we blame my mother’s cousin for how she treated her daughters? Or is the real guilty party the societal structure that told her she had no other choice?