According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, it will take approximately 123 years to achieve global gender parity at the current pace of progress. In Pakistan, where dowry remains socially celebrated, economically incentivised, and politically protected, dismantling the patriarchal structures that sustain this practice may take far longer, unless the state chooses to intervene decisively.
I write this not as a distant observer, but as a survivor-advocate and researcher who has spent more than three decades working to expose dowry not as a cultural tradition, but as a form of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) and Gender-Based Violence (GBV). On 26 December 2025, I watched an interview with MNA Dr Sharmila Farooqi on Geo Morning, shortly after reports emerged that the National Assembly’s standing committee had rejected her bill to ban dowry demand and display. The news evoked despondency, but not disbelief. For those of us, still too few in Pakistan, who have spent decades challenging dowry as violence, this moment felt painfully familiar.
The fight against dowry is not new. Since my childhood, I have seen dowry conflicts reflected in films, theatre, and everyday life. What is new and deeply troubling is the continued refusal of the state and elite society to acknowledge that dowry is not merely a “social custom”, but a systemic form of violence sustained by power, privilege, and profit.
After more than thirty years of non-funded, non-elite advocacy, I can state with confidence that dowry violence has been institutionalised. Dowry survives not because its damage is unknown, but because an elitist consensus actively protects and patronises it. This consensus is nurtured by corporate interests, political convenience, and social aspiration.
Lavish weddings, designer dowries, and curated social media spectacles are not innocent displays of joy. They create a powerful demonstration effect that fuels anxiety, debt, humiliation, and coercion for millions of families who cannot afford to “keep up”. Entire family systems, including men and boys, alongside mothers and daughters, absorb the psychological burden of performing respectability under relentless social pressure.
When a bill seeking to curb dowry is rejected, it is not merely a legislative failure. It is a reminder of how violence becomes normalised when power, privilege, and silence align
This normalisation is not accidental. The wedding industry, media houses, designers, event planners, jewellers, and even political families benefit from glamorising excess. Dowry thus becomes economically rewarded and socially shielded.
When a bill seeking to curb dowry is rejected, it is not merely a legislative failure. It is a reminder of how violence becomes normalised when power, privilege, and silence align.
In 1994, after exiting an abusive marriage marked by multiple forms of violence, including dowry-related abuse, I consciously named myself a survivor-advocate. At a time when survivors’ experiences were largely silenced, I transformed personal trauma into collective resistance by founding the Fight Against Dowry Advocacy Network (FADAN).
FADAN was established as a non-funded, volunteer-based civil society initiative, intentionally operating outside donor-driven agendas. It was among Pakistan’s earliest survivor-led efforts against dowry violence, foregrounding lived experience as a legitimate source of knowledge and leadership.
In 2002, I contributed to and conceptualised the television series Fight Against Dowry – FAD/Jahez ke Khilaf Jang, one of the earliest media interventions in Pakistan to address dowry violence directly. The series played a crucial role in bringing dowry abuse into mainstream media, challenging its normalisation as a private or cultural matter, and humanising survivor experiences for wider audiences.
In 2003, I designed and led Pakistan’s first national-level consultation on dowry law reform. The consultation brought together legal experts, women’s rights advocates, policymakers, and civil society actors to critically review the Dowry and Bridal Gifts (Restriction) Act, 1976. It identified outdated monetary limits, enforcement failures, and structural gaps, and produced a draft reform framework aimed at strengthening protections against dowry-related abuse. These recommendations were formally submitted and remain archived on the website of the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan, a record of early reform efforts that remain relevant today.
In 2011, I led Pakistan’s first-ever national research study on dowry-related violence, titled Forgotten (partially supported by UNIFEM/UN Women Pakistan for the non-profit I co-founded and was heading at that time). The study documented dowry violence as systemic and widespread, highlighted serious gaps in legal protection and state response, centred survivor narratives often excluded from policy debates, and provided an evidence base for advocacy, academic research, and reform efforts. More than a decade later, Forgotten remains a foundational reference in the field. Yet its findings have not translated into meaningful legislative or enforcement action. The research was available. The evidence was clear. What remained absent was political will.
Whenever anti-dowry legislation is proposed, a familiar argument resurfaces: that laws cannot change mindsets. This claim is deceptive and dangerous.
Yes, social attitudes evolve slowly, sometimes over generations. That is precisely why legislative advocacy is urgent, essential, and non-negotiable. Every major advance in women’s rights, from laws against child marriage to workplace harassment, was initially resisted with the claim that society was “not ready”. In reality, society is rarely ready without the law forcing moral clarity.
A strong and enforceable law against dowry demand, display, and dowry-related violence, including verbal abuse, threats, injury, and death, is inevitable if Pakistan is serious about its constitutional obligations and international commitments.
Without clear caveats, elite participation in dowry culture risks undermining the very legislation being proposed
Laws do not merely punish; they signal values, reshape norms, and empower women to resist coercion. Without legal consequences, appeals to conscience remain hollow.
It is also worth reflecting on why legislation aimed at curbing dowry emerged as a private member’s bill, rather than as a declared party position. This distinction matters. Structural violence against women requires collective political ownership, not individual courage alone.
At the same time, it is important to acknowledge Dr Sharmila Farooqi’s willingness to bring dowry back into legislative debate. Public engagement on this issue matters, and many of her arguments echo those made by activists and scholars over decades, including my own efforts to challenge dowry within elite development discourse since the 1990s.
Honesty, however, requires reflection. When elite voices suggest that dowry is acceptable because “the rich can afford it”, or frame it as something done “for the public”, a contradiction emerges. Elite behaviour sets social norms. What the wealthy normalise, the middle class imitates, and the poor struggle, often at great psychological and economic cost, to emulate.
Intentions do not cancel impact. Leadership requires not only advocating reform in Parliament, but modelling ethical restraint in personal and public life. Without clear caveats, elite participation in dowry culture risks undermining the very legislation being proposed.
Three decades of advocacy have also meant confronting resistance and marginalisation, including being sidelined within elite feminist and donor-driven spaces. Survivor-led, critically independent work often challenges dominant narratives and entrenched power structures within the women’s movement itself.
In 2018, when UN Women Pakistan launched the “Jahez Khori” campaign, I publicly noted that the initiative drew upon decades of existing discourse, research, and advocacy on dowry violence without due acknowledgement of earlier, grassroots, and survivor-originated contributions. This experience, one that personally hurt me, reflects a broader structural pattern in which institutional feminism absorbs knowledge while erasing its origins.
Such tensions between institutional frameworks and survivor-led movements, particularly in the Global South, continue to weaken collective efforts against dowry by privileging visibility over accountability.
I have spent more than thirty years documenting dowry as violence, not tradition. The rejection of yet another bill reinforces what many women already know: patriarchy adapts, even within progressive rhetoric.
But this cannot be the end. Dowry must be named unequivocally as violence. The law must be uncompromising. And elites, especially those who claim feminist credentials, must be held to higher standards, not exempted by wealth. If Pakistan is serious about women’s dignity, it cannot criminalise violence in private while celebrating it in banquet halls.
Quietness is neither neutrality nor civility. It is complicity. There must be visible zero tolerance for this criminal complicity. I hope and expect that Pakistan’s commissions on the status of women and on human rights will take urgent and collective note, moving beyond statements towards coordinated action on dowry as a form of violence not only against women and girls, but against men and boys, and against the image of the state and society itself.