“If a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact, it will have an impact on the men, unless they’re robots. I mean it’s common sense.” These are the words of the Pakistani premier, while discussing the viral epidemic of sexual violence in Pakistan. The prime minister argued that men, especially Pakistani men, will feel something when glancing at women wearing “very few clothes.” Because “we don’t have discos here, we don’t have nightclubs, so it is a completely different society, way of life here, so if you raise temptation in society to the point and all these young guys have nowhere to go, it has consequences in the society.”
Many women and men across the country are aggrieved over the statement. Women feel attacked because their clothing is being presented as the cause for rising rape cases in the country. Men are angry over the comparison with western men: people in the west are used to “very less clothing” so it is easier for western men to control their temptations in front of such women, while Pakistani men are not capable of the same.
The prime minister’s argument has multiple fallacies, and these need to be discussed before putting the blame of all rape/sexual assault cases in Pakistan on Pakistani women and their dressing, and declaring Pakistani men as “non-robotic” beasts with uncontrollable lust (a stereotype that already exists in the West with regards to Muslim men). And not just the misrepresentation of Pakistani men and women in the statement, but the impact this statement could have on Pakistan’s international image and progress with regards to gender and sexual violence.
The first problem with the statement was of “very less clothes.” There are no bikini beaches in Pakistan. There are no discos and nightclubs in Pakistan, as the premier himself mentioned, where women might go wearing “very less clothes.” Pakistan is a conservative society: while some urban women might wear some western outfits such as trousers and jeans etc., most Pakistani women only prefer the local shalwar kameez and/or a fully covering abaya/hijab. Women with “very less clothing” simply do not exist in Pakistan. So how, one might ask, are women with very less clothing causing sexual crimes in Pakistan when they do not even exist here?
Cases of harassment/rape in Pakistan never involve women wearing any skimpy outfits, they are always covered from head to toe. Cases of child rape have been on the rise for almost a decade now, and there have also been rare cases of sexual abuse of animals and corpses even. None of these cases involved women in “very less clothing,” most of them didn’t involve a woman at all. And in most cases of sexual assault in the country, the perpetrator is a close family member/relative of the victim. So how can all of this be justified by women wearing “very less clothing” in Pakistan? It simply cannot.
The premier also mentioned that Hollywood, Bollywood and pornography etc. are cause for sexual frustration among young people in Pakistan, eventually resulting in sex crimes. Almost all men consumed these sources of entertainment at one stage or another in Pakistan. But all Pakistani men are not rapists or harassers. The reasons for the few who in fact commit sexual violence are not solely sexual frustration, they are about power over the victim and the law.
The prime minister himself admitted that 90–99% of rape/sexual violence cases never get reported in Pakistan. Of the very few cases that do actually get reported, less than three percent result in convictions. This essentially means that only 2–3 rapists get punished for every thousand cases of sexual violence that occur in the country. This means that the chances of an attacker committing a sex crime and going unpunished are overwhelmingly large. It becomes easy to imagine why rapists and harassers are becoming more confident in their crimes, and why eventually are the cases increasing in Pakistan.
As the prime minister of the country, and the supreme commander of all its law enforcement agencies, it is Imran Khan’s job to change these numbers. It is up to Imran Khan’s government to remove all the legal loopholes from laws regarding sexual crimes that bring down conviction rates. It is his responsibility to develop a well-trained and funded police force that is more than capable of tracking down and convicting all sex criminals in the country.
Pakistan consistently ranks among the worst countries in the world when it comes to gender. Its global image with regards to women empowerment and gender equality is already far from satisfactory. The country’s top representative making such problematic statement at global forums is making matters even worse. The premier needs to rethink his words and policy towards gender, if he hopes to make Pakistan a safe country for victims of sexual assault, and maybe improve Pakistan’s standing in the global community.