Within the last few days, we have read news of an elderly man killing his wife for refusing to be intimate with him, a brother selling and then killing his newlywed sister, and a man and his brother setting his wife of 15 years and daughter on fire. And these are only the cases that made it to the news and went viral.
The latest in this horrifying but unsurprising cycle of news is a man who threw acid on a female doctor, Dr Mahnoor Nasir, for saying no to him. Balochistan Health Minister Bakht Muhammad Kakar spoke to the media and shared that the man had been harassing Dr Nasir for months. He also expressed surprise that she had not reported the matter to hospital authorities nor her family.
But as women, we know it’s not surprising at all.
What makes women stay silent? Why don’t women always tell their families or the authorities when men harass, abuse, or blackmail them?
The answer is simple. It’s because both men in the family and men outside of the family exist within the same social structure that was founded on intentional or unintentional collusion between these men. It’s also because, more often than not, the men who commit violence against women are men within their families. So how do we understand family both as a perpetrator and protector in violence against women?
