he recent acid attack on Dr Mahnoor Nasir, attacked at her workplace—Quetta’s Civil Hospital, is a chilling reminder that gendered violence is not confined to private spaces. The attack is not an isolated criminal act but a reflection of a social reality: where a woman’s professional presence or autonomy is perceived as disruption of some established hierarchy, violence becomes a tool of control. Acid attacks, in particular, are designed not only to cause injury but to permanently alter the target’s identity and deny them dignity. This makes them one of the most extreme expressions of misogyny. In that sense, such an incident is an indictment of the social conditions that make such acts imaginable.

In our society, gendered violence is often treated as a legal issue; a moral failure; or a series of individual crimes. Yet, at its core, it is a sociological phenomenon produced and sustained by longstanding systems of power, inheritance, culture and institutional design. To understand why women continue to face disproportionate violence in South Asia, we must examine how unequal gender hierarchies became socially normal in the first place and why they continue to persist in rapidly modernising societies.

Gender inequality is not an inevitable feature of human civilisation. Anthropological evidence suggests that early hunter-gatherer societies were relatively egalitarian, with gendered divisions of labour but not rigid hierarchies of value. A major shift occurred with the rise of settled agriculture nearly 10,000 years ago. As land became the primary source of wealth, inheritance systems became central to social organisation. In this context, controlling women’s sexuality and mobility became tied to ensuring legitimate lineage and securing transfer of property. Gradually, patriarchal authority became embedded in family systems, religious interpretations, legal frameworks and cultural norms.

Over time, women were repositioned from independent social actors to relational identities— daughters, wives and mothers—whose worth was measured through family honour rather than individual autonomy. What began as an economic arrangement hardened into a moral ideology. Control over women was justified not only through inheritance or property concerns but also through ideas of modesty, obedience and cultural respectability.

South Asian history reflects a particularly layered evolution of these structures. Ancient social hierarchies, feudal landholding systems, colonial administrative practices and tightly knit kinship networks reinforced patriarchal authority in overlapping ways. Extended family systems often concentrated power in senior male figures. Women were expected to prioritise collective family stability over personal agency.

In many such societies, rather than being linked to individual achievement, the concept of honour, has been linked to control over women’s behaviours. Women become symbolic carriers of family reputation. As a result, restrictions on mobility, education, marriage and employment are often framed as protective rather than restrictive. When women are treated less as autonomous individuals and more as repositories of collective identity, the threshold for coercion—and at times, violence—becomes dangerously low.

Women’s increasing participation in education and the workforce has transformed expectations but social norms in families and communities have not evolved at the same pace. 

History can explain how these patterns evolved but not why they still persist. For that we have to focus on the contemporary culture.

The cultural norms today carry a key contradiction between structural change and cultural lag. Women’s increasing participation in education and the workforce has transformed expectations but social norms—within families and communities—have not evolved at the same pace. As women gain autonomy, some men see this development not as progress but as loss of traditional authority. Gendered violence, in this context, becomes a reactionary attempt to reassert control over rapidly shifting social relations.

Economic insecurity deepens these tensions. Where financial stress is widespread and opportunity uneven, household power relations become more fragile. Violence is more likely to emerge where dependence is high and where leaving abusive environments is economically or socially difficult.

Technology has added another layer. Social media has expanded visibility and access for women but it has also enabled new forms of harassment, surveillance and public shaming. Rather than dismantling hierarchies, digital spaces frequently reproduce them in new forms.

Institutional weakness compounds the problem. Where legal systems are slow, inconsistent or socially influenced, accountability weakens. Impunity then becomes part of the environment in which violence persists.

Gendered violence and the patriarchal control that fuels it as a viable social mechanism are archaic relics of a bygone era where property outweighed personhood and survival was measured by subjugation. In a modern, connected society, such regressive frameworks serve absolutely no purpose. Instead, they are a severe drag on human progress, fracturing families, depleting economic potential and stalling collective development.

To build a resilient and prosperous future, we have to completely do away with these obsolete notions of dominance. The making of misogyny was not accidental. It was constructed over centuries through economic systems, cultural narratives and institutional arrangements.

However, what has been constructed can also be dismantled.

Addressing the issue requires more than meting out legal punishments. Justice is essential but a long-lasting and effective solution requires reshaping the conditions that produce misogyny. Education must challenge gender hierarchies rather than reproduce them. Economic systems must strengthen women’s independence through access to employment, property rights and financial security. Media, particularly TV, must normalise women’s autonomy rather than treating it as an exception or threat. Institutions must ensure swift and consistent justice. Critically, men must be engaged as participants in reshaping norms that also restrict emotional and social development.

Pakistan’s demographic reality offers both urgency and possibility in this regard. We have a large youth population, increasingly connected to global ideas and debates on identity, justice and rights. The youth are often less willing to accept inherited hierarchies as fixed truths.

Ultimately, the measure of progress is not how faithfully a society preserves tradition but how far it expands dignity. The question facing Pakistan is whether it will continue to see women’s autonomy as a disruption—or finally recognise it as the foundation of a more equal, stable and just society.

The writer, a published anthropologist, has taught at the International Islamic University, Islamabad, and the National University of Medical Sciences. She is also a Red Cross/ Red Crescent Youths as Agents of Behavioural Change trainer.