Women’s Rights Or Ontological Erasure? A Feminist Insight Into Women Protection Bill (2015)

The schism created between man and woman in recent times of some past centuries has generated critical debates in different social frameworks. In Pakistan’s context, the recently passed bill for women’s protection has garnered a debate about certain structured gender roles that need be addressed to alleviate the sexual polarization that has ensued. While some religious factions have their apparently patriarchal concerns to resolve the perpetration of anti-patriarchal discourse that this bill seemingly initiates, this paper explores the manifestations of very pertinent anti-feminist concerns that this bill ensconces in its text, the discussion of which is mandatory for the peace and stability of this society. Drawing interstitially from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of the subaltern in a postcolonial context, the questioning of the parochial double-bound concept of post-coloniality and womanhood by Sara Suleri, and the legacy of Islamic feminism are three possible modes of addressing these relevant trepidations in the Pakistani context. Using this multi-pronged approach as a theoretical framework, this exploratory paper impresses an imperative of deconstructing the textual implications initiated by such issues as raised in this bill. Validating the common grounds of the three adopted approaches, this study is an attempt at revealing a multiplicity of meanings for objective cognizance.