The acid war on women

There are crimes that wound the body, and there are crimes that attempt to erase a human being altogether. An acid attack belongs to the latter category. It is not merely an assault; it is an act of social execution. The perpetrator does not simply seek to injure a woman. He seeks to destroy her face, her confidence, her social standing, her future, and, if possible, her very sense of self. It is violence elevated into symbolism, cruelty transformed into a message.

The recent acid attack on a female doctor in Balochistan has once again forced Pakistan to confront a truth it has spent decades trying to avoid. The acid that burns a woman’s skin is merely the visible form of a deeper corrosive substance. That substance is patriarchy.

Every society reveals its moral character not by how it treats the powerful but by how it treats those whom power can easily silence. The condition of women in Pakistan remains one of the most revealing measures of our national conscience. We celebrate female doctors, judges, parliamentarians, professors, entrepreneurs, and athletes, yet we continue to produce headlines in which women are burned, beaten, murdered, and silenced for daring to exercise the freedoms that men take for granted.

The tragedy in Balochistan is not an isolated crime. It belongs to a larger pattern. Across Pakistan, women have been attacked with acid for rejecting marriage proposals, seeking divorce, pursuing education, asserting property rights, or simply refusing to submit to male authority. In each case, the motive may appear different, but the underlying message remains the same that a woman who exercises autonomy must be punished.

According to data compiled by organizations working with survivors, thousands of acid attacks have been reported in Pakistan over the past few decades. Women constitute a significant proportion of the victims. Researchers and advocacy groups estimate that more than 3,800 reported acid attack cases were documented between 1999 and 2022, with over 2,000 female survivors. Even these figures may understate reality because many incidents remain hidden behind walls of fear, family pressure, and social stigma.

Yet statistics often conceal more than they reveal.

A number can tell us how many women were attacked. It cannot tell us what it means for a young woman to stand before a mirror and discover that her reflection no longer resembles the person she remembers. It cannot calculate the silence that settles over a household after such an attack. It cannot measure abandoned ambitions, broken engagements, interrupted careers, or the loneliness imposed by a society that often subjects victims to a second punishment—blame.

The particular horror of acid violence lies in its symbolism. It targets the face, the feature through which society recognizes individuality. The attacker attempts to communicate a chilling message, “If I cannot control your choices, I will destroy the identity through which you express them.”

This logic does not emerge overnight. It is cultivated over generations.

From childhood, many boys are taught ownership disguised as protection. They learn that the women around them embody family honour. They are encouraged to view themselves as guardians rather than equals. A daughter becomes a responsibility, a sister a reputation, a wife a possession. Honour becomes a social currency. Women become its containers.

The consequences are visible everywhere.

When a woman chooses her spouse, she may be killed in the name of honour.

When she seeks divorce, she may be threatened.

When she pursues education, she may be discouraged.

When she enters public life, she is scrutinized more intensely than her male counterparts.

When she says “no,” violence often follows.

The acid bottle and the honour killing emerge from the same intellectual source which inculcates the belief that women are property.

History demonstrates that wherever women have been treated as property, violence inevitably follows. Ancient legal systems transferred women between male guardians as though they were assets. Medieval customs restricted their movement and independence. The nineteenth century praised female obedience as a virtue while denying women political and economic rights. Across centuries and civilizations, patriarchy has changed its vocabulary without changing its purpose.

Pakistan inherited some of these attitudes and developed new versions of its own.

We frequently congratulate ourselves on progress, and not without reason. Women today occupy positions that would have been unimaginable a century ago. They serve as judges, surgeons, academics, diplomats, military officers, and business leaders. Yet this progress coexists with a parallel reality in which countless women continue to navigate harassment, forced marriages, domestic violence, workplace discrimination, economic dependency, and physical insecurity.

Modernity has reached our cities faster than our minds.

We have smartphones in our hands and medieval assumptions in our hearts.

A woman may become a doctor, yet someone still believes he possesses the authority to punish her choices. A woman may earn a law degree, yet her decisions remain subject to family approval. A woman may teach at a university, yet she is expected to remain silent in matters concerning her own future.

This contradiction lies at the heart of Pakistan’s gender crisis.

Our laws have improved. Legislative reforms addressing acid crimes and violence against women represent important achievements secured through years of activism by lawyers, journalists, survivors, and civil society organizations. Acid attacks have reportedly declined compared to earlier decades, suggesting that awareness campaigns and legal reforms have produced measurable effects.

Yet legislation alone cannot defeat a culture.

A society may criminalize violence while continuing to normalize the attitudes that produce it.

Consider the language used in everyday conversations. A successful woman is described as “too independent.” An assertive woman becomes “disobedient.” A divorced woman is considered “problematic.” A woman who rejects a proposal is accused of arrogance. Such words appear harmless, but they are not. They prepare the ideological ground upon which violence later flourishes.

Every acid attack begins long before acid is thrown.

It begins in a joke that demeans women.

It begins in a sermon that denies equality.

It begins in a household where sons are privileged and daughters are controlled.

It begins in a classroom where girls are taught obedience while boys are excused for aggression.

It begins in a culture that values female submission more than female freedom.

The world’s greatest thinkers and writers warned repeatedly about the dangers of power exercised without accountability. The Greek tragedians understood how domination ultimately destroys both victim and oppressor. Renaissance dramatists portrayed men whose obsession with control led to catastrophe. Enlightenment thinkers exposed the irrationality of denying women equal rights while claiming to uphold justice. Modern feminist scholars demonstrated how societies manufacture female subordination by treating women as secondary beings whose existence derives meaning only through men.

Their warnings remain painfully relevant.

Patriarchy survives because it disguises itself as tradition.

Question it, and one is accused of attacking culture.

Challenge it, and one is accused of importing foreign ideas.

Demand equality, and one is instructed to respect customs.

Yet no custom that permits violence deserves respect.

No tradition that justifies cruelty deserves preservation.

No culture that fears women’s freedom deserves celebration.

The acid attack in Balochistan should therefore be understood not merely as a criminal act but as a political and cultural event. It reveals the ongoing struggle between constitutional citizenship and patriarchal authority. On one side stands the principle that women are equal human beings entitled to dignity, liberty, and security. On the other stands the belief that women remain subordinate to male control.

Pakistan cannot embrace both principles simultaneously.

A choice must be made.

The economic consequences of gender-based violence are equally severe. Survivors often require multiple surgeries, long-term medical treatment, psychological counselling, rehabilitation, and financial support. Many are forced out of education and employment. Families experience economic devastation. Communities lose talented individuals whose contributions might otherwise enrich society.

The female doctor attacked in Balochistan was not merely an individual pursuing a profession. She represented years of education, public investment, sacrifice, and human potential. An attack against such a woman is not only a crime against her; it is a crime against society itself.

There are moments when a nation collectively decides that certain crimes have crossed every boundary of tolerance. Pakistan witnessed such moments after the brutal murder of Noor Mukadam and the horrific rape and murder of young Zainab Ansari. Public outrage in those cases transcended class, ethnicity, language, and political affiliation. Citizens demanded that the law speak with clarity and moral authority.

The courts responded with the severest punishments available under the law, signalling that some crimes are so grotesque that they constitute an assault not only upon individuals but upon society itself.

Yet a troubling inconsistency remains.

Why should the deliberate disfigurement of a woman through acid, or the calculated murder of a daughter in the name of honour, be regarded with any less seriousness?

If the state can demonstrate uncompromising resolve against rape and femicide in high-profile cases, it must display the same resolve against acid attacks and honour killings. The woman whose face is melted by acid is not merely injured; she is subjected to a form of lifelong torture. The daughter murdered for choosing her spouse is not merely a casualty of tradition; she is the victim of premeditated femicide.

For too long, honour killings have hidden behind the vocabulary of culture, while acid attacks have been dismissed as individual disputes gone tragically wrong. Such euphemisms are moral evasions. A woman killed for exercising autonomy is murdered. A woman scarred with acid is tortured. The law must call these crimes by their proper names and punish them with a severity that leaves no room for ambiguity.

A state that wishes to protect women cannot afford selective outrage.

Justice must be consistent.

The message must be unmistakable, whether the crime occurs in an affluent neighbourhood of Islamabad, a village in Punjab, a town in Sindh, the mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, or the rugged landscapes of Balochistan, violence against women will meet the full force of the law.

Anything less risks sending a dangerous message that some women matter more than others.

The response, however, cannot end with punishment alone.

Justice must be swift and visible.

Acid sales must be regulated more rigorously.

Educational institutions must incorporate gender equality into their curricula.

Police officers must receive specialized training for handling violence against women.

Survivors must have access to medical treatment, psychological support, legal assistance, and economic rehabilitation.

Religious leaders should use their platforms to affirm women’s dignity rather than reinforce restrictive social norms.

Media organizations must report such crimes responsibly and consistently.

Above all, men must become active participants in dismantling patriarchal attitudes.

Too often discussions about women’s rights are treated as women’s issues. They are not. They are human issues. A society that denies equality to half its population ultimately impoverishes itself intellectually, morally, politically, and economically.

The question before Pakistan is larger than one attack in Balochistan.

It concerns the kind of nation we aspire to become.

Do we want a country where women move through public spaces calculating risks at every turn? A country where ambition invites hostility and independence provokes violence? A country where daughters inherit fear alongside opportunity?

Or do we want a country where a girl can pursue education, employment, marriage, divorce, public service, and personal happiness without fearing that her freedom may provoke retaliation?

The answer appears obvious.

Yet obvious answers require courageous action.

There is a tendency after every shocking incident to express outrage for a few days before returning to routine. Newspapers publish editorials. Politicians issue statements. Television channels organize debates. Social media erupts with indignation.

Then attention moves elsewhere.

The victims remain.

Their scars remain.

Their struggles remain.

Their memories remain.

A civilized society is measured not by the height of its buildings, the size of its economy, or the strength of its military, but by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, every acid attack represents a national failure.

The woman attacked in Balochistan deserves justice.

But justice alone is insufficient.

She deserves a society that recognizes her humanity before tragedy compels sympathy.

Perhaps that is the deeper lesson.

The true opposite of violence is not punishment. It is equality.

Until every woman is regarded as a full and autonomous citizen rather than an extension of male honour, the threat of violence will persist in one form or another. Acid may burn flesh in seconds, but the ideas that enable it have been burning through generations.

Those ideas must finally be extinguished. Not with outrage alone. Not with hashtags alone. But with law, education, moral courage, and an unwavering commitment to a principle that should never have been controversial in the first place. The patriarchy, the toxic masculine mindset, and the entire society must recognize that a woman’s life belongs to her—and to no one else.

The writer is a PhD scholar in English Literature, a Lawyer, and an International Relations analyst.