Rethinking Liberalism, Spirito-Constitutional Morality: A Case Of Multitudinal Vulnerability Of Women In Pakistan

Abstract

The domain of liberal political theory has aptly dealt the question of liberty in its negative and positive formulations. However, the vulnerability to violence cannot merely be reduced to the concept of negative liberty as ‘absence of restrain or opportunity’. Moreover, the multitudinal vulnerability of women in Pakistan to violence cannot be merely understood within the framework of Liberalism specially Berlin’s two concepts of freedom. The status of women in Pakistan is very complex due to historical, religious, cultural, social, economic, and political influences.

(Bhattacharya 2020) “The practices such as ‘dowry deaths, honour killings, acid attacks, exchanging women in marriage with no consideration for their consent, forced marriages, forced religious conversions’ etc. are rampant.” (1)

On the other hand, educational disparities due to cultural norms and economic constraints in rural areas, wage disparities, unequal job opportunities, under-representation in decision making bodies stand additional forms of violence against women of Pakistan. In short, women in Pakistan are not only deprived of both negative and positive liberties but vulnerable to all sorts of violence that requires rethinking of the theoretical frame of freedom and liberty in the discipline of political theory. This paper endeavours to explore conceptual and theoretical analysis of freedom through multiple sites of vulnerability of women in Pakistan. The historical and comparative political theory is the methodological framework of this paper.