Essay by Zuha Haider

I was sitting with my grandmother one afternoon, not too long ago. Her words weren’t prompted, and  her cadence and manner of speaking were almost that of talking about the weather when she told me,  laughing slightly, “tumharey paida honey se pehle ham aik baita honey ki dua kar rahey thay”.  

Before you were born, we were praying for a son. 

The identity of “womanhood”, this ‘otherness’, is inflicted upon us the moment we are born. My  grandmother’s words didn’t affect me as much as I think they ought to have, but they did make me  think. Is the world so intent on sustaining its outdated values and systems, that having a daughter was  still given secondary importance to having a son? Did pride in relation to a woman only matter when  that pride was tarnished? Why couldn’t I call the driver when he was need? Why could my brother?  Playground fights about girls being better or worse than boys suddenly felt like they meant something  more real than we understood at the time – that our gender, our genitals, inherently defined our roles  in society, and said something about our place in the world. 

There were many similar questions after that. Often they gave way to anger, especially during those  times I’ve has to hesitate before entering a store alone or simply stepping out of the car because I’ve felt  like I was not allowed to exist outside of certain boundaries, untold danger lurking for me beyond them.  Better safe than sorry, the mantra goes.  

I’ve heard many stories since then too – of trapped women, 12-year old brides and teenage mothers,  income disparities, workplace harassment… In the best cases these stories lead to over-protectiveness  on the part of fathers, husbands, or brothers, that deprive women of life’s experiences. In the worst  cases, horrifying incidents of honor killing serve to remind us that a woman cannot be afforded the right  to make her own choices. Asking me to rate which form of suffering appears worst, is assuming one type  of pain is comparable to the other.  

There is one thing however, that I can pin down as the root of all that suffering, and all those harmful  narratives and discriminatory rules of behavior, passed on from generation to generation: the  patriarchal social system we’re so protective of. 

Theories about the origins of patriarchal society range from biological explanations to the division of  duties during the earliest years of farming. I don’t, however, think that this is relevant when  acknowledging that the exploitation of the rules and roles set by patriarchal society has led to the  objectification and oppression of women worldwide. In Pakistan, for example, women are deprived of  education and inheritance to keep them submissive, treated either as possessions of the men in their  life, or temptations that “lead men astray”. At the root of this are power-hungry men, posing as  religious, political, or familial leaders, claiming that their word must be considered the very word of God.  

Even when people try to push back, organizing march after march in the fight for women’s rights, the  messages of these marches (“mera jisam meri marzi” - My body, my choice) are twisted to the point  where they lose their original meaning. Demand for freedom and equality is denigrated as the demand  for licentious or immoral behavior. So-called righteous women, trapped in these harmful narratives, feel  obligated to condemn such demands, perpetuating internalized misogyny. 

So, when I say womanhood feels like it’s been inflicted upon me, I mean that since the moment it’s  established that you are female, to yourself and those around you, you automatically inherit the  subhuman status that comes along with it. 

The biggest challenge for women in my country I think, is to overcome the oppressive power structures  that seek to silence them and educate themselves about their rights and the rights of their fellow  women. We must actively seek change, so future generations do not have to.