We must take a clear-headed look at the status of women and children in our Pakistani community.

Most immigrants are from the Punjab in Pakistan, which is an agricultural economy. In the countryside, women work at home as well as in the fields. As for cities, like Karachi and Lahore, women from all ethnic groups have been entering the workforce in exponential numbers since the 1980s.

Despite these social facts, as well as the Koranic injunctions of equality between men and women, a majority of Pakistani women in families in Pakistan as well as in those living in the West suffer from unequal pay and domestic violence.

According to a UNICEF study, the highest incidence of domestic violence in the world is in South Asian societies. In Pakistan, domestic violence is not even considered a crime. The preface to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s Report of 1997 says there is a strong tendency in contemporary Pakistani society to associate masculinity with bullying women. This tendency cuts across class and ethnic lines.

There is a time in recent Pakistani history when we can pinpoint the rise of anti-woman bias. In the 1980s, under the military dictatorship of General Zia ul Haq, the infamous anti-women laws were instituted. One of them set a very high standard of proof for rape, another made adultery a punishable offense. This means that women victims of rape (almost always poor women) were prosecuted for adultery.

Pakistani immigrants in the United States tend to have a poor understanding of domestic violence, especially the psychological scars it leaves on woman and children. As immigrants with a strong understanding of our identity and cultural values, we must acknowledge the anti-woman bias that is part of our history. If we don’t recognize it in ourselves as a social group, we will not be able to do anything about it.