In Pakistan, shame doesn’t live in the act—it lives in the woman.
She walks through life carrying centuries of expectation: don’t speak too loudly, don’t sit too casually, don’t laugh too freely. Because if she missteps, it’s not just her who will fall—it’s the entire family’s so-called honor.
This is the quiet tyranny of being one of Pakistan’s shame carriers.
It is a role thrust upon girls before they even learn to write their names. They are taught to lower their gaze, shorten their sentences, and shrink their dreams—because anything else might embarrass someone else.
The consequences of this logic aren’t abstract. They are bloody, final, and all too familiar.
In 2023, more than 380 women were killed in “honour” crimes across Pakistan. They were not criminals. They were students, wives, daughters—guilty only of asserting autonomy. And while their deaths sparked momentary outrage, they failed to ignite sustained reform. Because shame, like smoke, disperses fast. Grief is swallowed. Impunity remains.
And so, the machinery grinds on. Police file cases without urgency. Courts defer justice indefinitely. Communities whisper and rationalize. And families, in many cases, forgive the very killers they protected. In this system, the woman carries the shame, and the man walks away with the narrative.
This is not about religion. It’s not about tradition. It’s about power.
Let us stop pretending that women are bringing shame by existing. Shame belongs to those who raise sons like executioners and daughters like liabilities. Shame belongs to lawmakers who offer paper protections but not practical ones. Shame belongs to those who shrug after each killing and ask, “What else could the family do?”
We cannot continue like this.
It’s time we stopped treating female agency as moral threat. It's time we reimagined womanhood as something other than a burden, a scandal, or a test of restraint. It's time we placed the weight of shame exactly where it belongs—not on the girl who dared to live, but on the society that chose to silence her.
No daughter should have to die to protect someone else’s pride.
No woman should carry a shame she did not create.
