Continuity and Change: Cracks in Traditional Family and Gender Systems in Punjab, Pakistan

Pakistani families today are different than the families of 1990s. While there is much known about the structural changes in families in Pakistan, far less is known about the transformations in the power structures based on gender and age. Utilising 69 semi-structured interviews conducted with two generations of women (young women, their mothers, and mothers-in-laws) and six men from Sargodha (Punjab, Pakistan), this paper broadly focuses on the changes in Pakistani social and familial life. The paper aims to describe the continuity and change in the traditional family and gender systems that define the ideologies of womanhood and the power relationships within families. It shows that young women, like their mothers and mothers-in-law, continue to be socialised into becoming good daughters, wives and daughters-in-law by being a homemaker; maintaining the honour of the family; being obedient to men and older women in the household. I argue that although these broader roles remained the same for both generations, with varying levels of importance in natal and affinal homes, the Punjabi families were transforming in subtle ways. The transformations, which I call ‘cracks’, could be observed in the expansion of the boundaries of what constituted acceptable/unacceptable behaviour for women within these three roles and in the various forms of agency exercised by the young women in challenging the existing norms, particularly as a result of increasing female schooling and employment opportunities.