Patriarchy and Pakistani Society

The patriarchal mindset bars females from coming forth and indicating to their families if they have preferences for their mates, and if they do, this is seen as rebellion on the part of the female and she is severely reprimanded for this. “‘Love’ marriages, by contrast, in effect constitute a public defiance of parental plans” (Shaw 2001). This therefore, leads to conditions in which a female is married off to a different individual whom she resents due to her forsaken love. This leads to many problems in the marriage, and that marriage ends with either a divorce at best, or the death of the female in suspicious fires.
The most relevant perspective in regards to this particular phenomenon is the conflict perspective in my opinion. The theory states that women are disadvantaged by power inequalities that are built into our social structure. This is supported by Karl Marx. According to him, the men have a means of production and thus the women are exploited because they are dependent on men. Capitalism also plays a large part in maintaining this ‘glass ceiling effect’, whereby the women can in certain societies opt to, and have the potential for, great achievement but due to a biased system, always feel suppressed. “The capitalist economy that generates the money machine is centred on the image of the patriarchal man” (Moghe 2003). According to capitalism, a woman should take care of the man so that he could be a better worker, she should produce children in order to provide the country with a steady work force, and this leads to son preference because sons are regarded as better workers than daughters.
In reply to this, I believe the socialist feminism also known as Marxist feminism holds promise, that is to say, that firstly the notion of male supremacy in Pakistani society needs to be handled. And second, the new capitalist tendency within Pakistani society, which is a by-product of our imperial-colonial heritage, needs to be reassessed. “We see capitalism as...