Educated people's perceptions regarding causes of persisting crime against women in Pakistani society

Abstract

This paper aims to explore educated people's perception regarding different social, legal and institutional causes of long persistence of crime against women in Pakistan. It further intends to explore the association between the perceptions regarding patriarchy (defined as domination of men over women in all aspects of life) with perceptions regarding other identified causes of crime against women in Pakistan. The research is based on data collected through a questionnaire based survey. The collected data was statistically analyzed and the results were shown in the form of tables. The causes of persisting crime against women explored in this research for investigating the patterns of perceptions among educated people include patriarchy (male domination), anti women social practices, women's segregation in home, unfavourable attitude of police towards women victims, practice of not reporting the crime committed against women to police, insufficient laws, marginal number of women in parliament, and lack of education and awareness among women. Majority of the respondents agree that these all factors are responsible for long persistence of crime against women in Pakistan. It was found that educated people's perception regarding patriarchy (as a source of crime against women) is significantly associated with their perception regarding all other reasons of the crime against women identified here.