Why is Pakistani Culture obsessed with Policing Female Virginity?

Perhaps I should have clarified that I meant Pakistan and North India.

You just have to go back to our folk literature to understand that the house belongs to the son and to the son’s wife. When a woman gets married, she belongs to her husband’s family and not to her father’s family. There is a whole ritual in Pakistani weddings called the “rukhsati” (“rukhsat” means “departure” in Urdu). I believe this comes from the Hindu ritual of “bidaai”.

In one famous Punjabi folk song “Sada chiriyan da chamba”, the departing bride literally hands the keys of the house back to her mother. The understanding is that she will now be a guest any time she returns. A married woman is by default part of her husband’s family and not her father’s.

Of course, financial independence makes a big difference.

But I have seen enough examples in even upper-class Pakistani families of divorced women being made to feel that they were a burden on their brothers and sisters-in-law.

To give you one small personal anecdote: My mother’s younger sister (Khala) was conventionally beautiful (typical Kashmiri-Punjabi features, fair skin etc). She was married off at a relatively young age to an older Pakistani-American cardiologist living in the US. It was not a happy marriage and she remained childless. When he passed away (ironically of a heart attack), she returned to Pakistan. Even as a widow (who had plenty of dollars of her own and was an American citizen to boot), she was made to feel that she was a burden on her natal family.

In contrast, my mother–being considered “dark” and thus not as beautiful– was told from a very young age that she had to become a medical doctor and thus have a way to support herself if she couldn’t get a “suitable boy” to marry her. Ironically, she met my father (a “love match) and had two sons. But of course, the medical career provided her with a certain amount of security should her marriage ever have become untenable.

These are women raised in the 1960s.

Yes. My aunt has passed away now (from lung cancer). But she didn’t have a happy life. Partly because her one ambition in life was to be a mother and that was something that her destiny didn’t have in store for her.

I just wanted to add that she wasn’t an uneducated woman. Before marriage, she had obtained a Masters degree in English Literature.

At least in Pakistan, a woman’s status is still largely determined through marriage and by becoming the mother of sons.

Yes, son preference is a big deal. The idea is that a son is an asset. He will be economically productive and will take care of you in your old age (or rather his wife will).

A daughter is a liability. She will have to be married off and then will belong to her husband’s family. She will provide him with sons and will not be economically productive for her own natal family.

When you ask people in Pakistan “How many children do you have?”, they normally tell you the number of sons they have. Daughters are considered irrelevant. Of course this doesn’t happen among the more modern and liberalized classes.

Son preference is a pretty mainstream concept in anthropology.

There’s also the question of dowry (which strictly speaking is not an Islamic thing but a South Asian thing). Having to pay for your daughter’s wedding and provide the groom with a dowry is a significant expense for many people.

Of course the idea that your sons and their wives will take care of you in your old age doesn’t always work out. My mother took care of my maternal grandmother far more than her brothers or their wives did.

Even in Pakistan, women are very close to their sisters.

I was reading a Substack recently where someone had mentioned that “phuppos” (father’s sister) have this reputation for creating trouble, being resentful etc. “Khalas” (mother’s sister) don’t have this reputation. This is obviously stereotyped but that’s the reputation.

I have no doubt people are emotionally closer to their mother’s families. Children are generally closer to their mother then they are to their father. Even I was closer to my maternal grandmother than to my paternal one.

But the idea remains that your real family is your paternal one. A married woman legally belongs to her husband’s family and not her father’s. Perhaps this is a South Asian concept.

I’ve seen Indian soap operas where mothers say to their married daughters “You left this house on the wedding palanquin, you can only return on the funeral bier”.

Yes. India has an issue with sex-selective abortions.

A research by Pew Research Center based on Union government data indicates foeticide of at least 9 million females in the years 2000–2019. The research found that 86.7% of these foeticides were by Hindus (80% of the population), followed by Sikhs (1.7% of the population) with 4.9%, and Muslims (14% of the population) with 6.6%. The research also indicated an overall decline in preference for sons in the time period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-selective_abortion

It’s a lot harder to get an abortion in Pakistan, given that it is an Islamic Republic.

I think it’s generally harder to get an abortion in Pakistan since I believe Islam frowns on it.

The Wiki article on sex-selective abortion notes that in Pakistan female infants are often killed at birth. The Edhi Foundation has noted cases of this in Karachi.

I’m not defending son preference but there is an economic logic to it. Sons are economic assets while daughters are liabilities– you raise them and then they benefit someone else’s family not your own.

Even in fairly upper middle-class families, son preference exists. My mother tells many stories of how her mother essentially trained her daughters to serve their brothers (and later their wives). My mother and her sister were both educated women. My grandmother took great pride in how smart my mother was. But the patriarchy was still real and the boys came first.