SOME quarters are relentless when it comes to shaming women for simply existing. Blood-curdling misogyny moves heaven and earth to keep women on the periphery of society. Recently, a senior zoology teacher of a degree college was coerced by clerics in Bannu to “denounce Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution and mixed gender gatherings, and declare that women are inferior to men”. The matter took an uglier turn when the academic was forced to provide an extensive undertaking whereby he yielded to the mediaeval notion of “women’s inferiority to men in terms of wisdom”, and even absolved the celebrants of Domel in Bannu district of all responsibility if any harm was to happen to him. Thisincident not only testifies to a base commitment towards the apartheid of women, it also highlights a dangerous mindset that abhors all civilised norms.

The fact that primitive recesses that employ religion as a weapon of absolute control over females still exist in a country that elected a young woman prime minister twice, is exasperating. What more will it take to secure a woman’s place in the public sphere? Our society should know better than any other that this version of misogyny is more than just relegating women to the status of lesser mortals. It is an outright rejection of their presence. In such a trenchant patriarchal matrix, the idea of consent is a far cry. In truth, exercising authority is a hazard. Their survival lies in surrendering to misinterpreted ideologies that make them unequal, voiceless underlings. It does not help thatPakistan’s feminist movement is as polarised as society: one side upholds women’s rights according to its own opinion of religious belief, while the other advocates a secular stance that stresses on detaching faith from sociopolitical discourse. Finally, for ‘imprisoned’ women to breathe easy, enlightened voices — including men, the clergy, activists and human rights groups — must break their vow of shocking silence.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2023