As Crime against women reaches alarming proportions, society seems to have become immune to it. What will it take for you to sit up and take notice and do something about it? Asks Bina Shah

For those of you reading this right now who are women, you will all recall a time in your life when you wanted to go somewhere or do something and you were told by your elders, “You can’t do that – it’s not safe”. However your brother was allowed to do the exact same thing and when you protested, you were told, “It’s different, he’s a boy”.
      Like you, I protested and shouted at this when it was told to me, saying that it was a lame excuse and that there was no danger to me that didn’t present the same risk to a boy. But given the extreme violence that is being orchestrated upon Pakistan’s women on a daily basis, one can’t help but wonder if our elders were right after all.
      Open the newspaper on any day of the week and you will see a spate of columns and news items about horrific crimes enacted upon women and girls all over the country. It seems to make no difference which province, city, or village, or the age of the woman or girl, and with the emergence of some cases, it doesn’t even seem to matter whether the woman comes from a rich or poor background; the only common denominator is that the victim in question is a Pakistani female. Except for that other common denominator, the fact that the perpetrators of the violence are almost without fail their brothers, their co-citizens, and their compatriots in religion: Pakistani men. Next>