Author: Anila Yousuf

Women all over the world have had to make many sacrifices in their journey – from butterflies, flowers, fragrances, colors, fun to women, life and freedom. From getting education, being allowed to work, inheritance rights, divorce, custody of children to our body, our will and the decision to wear hijab or not, from breathing to death, women had to fight and protest for their basic rights from men and male dominant society.

Like all other nations, the patriarchal system is so dominant in our Baluch society that no woman can escape from it. From women in domestic work to economically independent women, all seem helpless in front of this system which is slowly killing them from inside.

Mostly, the killers of the murdered women are their own family members. Those who live on the earnings of their wives or sisters also want to dominate and subjugate them and mold them into their own pattern, sometimes in the name of love, sometimes in the name of social values. And sometimes they keep threatening her with not granting the custody of the children, and if all these tactics fail, the woman is given death sentence in the name of honour.

A woman is neither a metaphor for the fragrance and flowers in poetry, nor is she a sacred character in any author’s novel. She is just an ordinary human being. She should have the right and freedom to choose what to wear, to wear a hijab or not. She should have agency over her life choices, and who her companion is. The women’s liberation movement in Pakistan, the protests against the closure of girls’ education in Afghanistan and the resistance against the hijab law and freedom to choose in Iran, all these are the proof that the women will no longer be subjugated, she will not remain silent. This rebellion will turn more fierce until “woman, life, freedom”, the slogan is fulfilled.