ATTITUDES ABOUT HONOUR KILLING AMONG MEN AND WOMEN —PERSPECTIVE FROM ISLAMABAD
Abstract
Background: The concept of honour has cultural, social and moral underpinnings that determine itsexpression and perseveration. Women are viewed as the bearers of family honour with chastity equatedwith abstinence from premarital or extramarital relationships and obeying norms determined anddictated by traditions and societies. The objective of this study was to determine the opinions of menand women pertaining to killing in the name of and saving one’s honour. Methods: A cross-sectionalsurvey with convenience sampling was conducted among the 18 years and older (range 18–71) menand women. Respondents were approached in markets, bus-stops, hospitals, and various other publicplaces in Islamabad from April 12th to June 27th 2006. A structured, interviewer-administered, and pretested questionnaire was used with both open and close-ended questions on demographics and attitudesabout honour killing based on a vignette that was slowly read out in Urdu, in a neutral and judgmentfree tone of voice to potential respondents. Responses to close-ended questions based on the vignetteprovided, and pattern among men and women were compared using Pearson Chi-square test todetermine associations between the dichotomous variables and gender, while responses to one openended question were summarised based on the observed similarities and bivariate associations withgender were determined. Results: We approached 630 conveniently selected individuals at variouspublic places in the city of Islamabad. Six hundred and one agreed to participate and completed thequestionnaire, i.e., the response rate was 95.4%. Three hundred and seven respondents were male(51.1%), and 294 (48.9%) were females. Three hundred forty-three 343 (57.1%) respondents believedthat the man in the vignette did the right thing by killing his wife upon finding her in bed with anotherman. Divorcing one’s wife rather than resorting to killings, after having found her with another manwas approved by 220 (36.6%) respondents, while the rest answered as ‘don’t know’. Conclusion:Majority of men as well as women considered it justifiable and acceptable to kill one’s wife as a meanto save one’s honour. The most significant finding was the fact that overwhelming number of men andwomen did not believe in either forgiveness or divorcing one’s wife who has engaged in extramaritalsexual relationship.Keywords: Honour killing, Women, OpinionReferences
de Bruyn M. Violence, pregnancy and abortion. Issues of
women’s rights and public health, 2nd edition. Chapel Hill NC:
Ipas; 2003.
Human Rights Watch. World Report 2006. New York, NY:
Human Rights Watch; 2006.
United Nations Population Fund. The State of World Population
– Lives together, worlds apart. New York, NY: United
Nations Population Fund; 2000.
United Nations. Ending violence against women: from words to
action–Study of the Secretary-General. New York, NY: United
Nations; 2006.
World Health Organization. World report on violence and health.
Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2002.
Rice-Oxley M. Britain examines ‘honor killings’.
http://www.csmonotor.com/2004/0707/p06s02-woeu.html
(Accessed on June 21, 2007).
J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad 2010;22(3)
http://www.ayubmed.edu.pk/JAMC/PAST/22-3/Masood.pdf 41
Amnesty International. Stop “honor killings” in Iraq.
http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/svaw-060607-action-eng
(Accessed on June 21, 2007).
Verma R. Honour killings on the rise in India: Women’s group.
http://www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org/archives/04_0112_in_wri
ghts.htm (Accessed on June 21, 2007).
Amnesty International. Pakistan - Honor killings of girls and
women. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engASA330181999
(Accessed on June 21, 2007).
Kulwicki AD. The practice of honor killings: a glimpse of
domestic violence in the Arab world. Issues Ment Health Nurs
;23(1):77–87.
Gadit AA, Patel S. Karo-Kari. Disturbed psyche or wild ego? J
Pak Med Assoc 2007;57:112–3.
Women pilots for PAF fighters. http://www.dawn.com/2006/03/
/top1.htm. (Accessed March 31, 2006).
Published
Issue
Section
License
Journal of Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad is an OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL which means that all content is FREELY available without charge to all users whether registered with the journal or not. The work published by J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad is licensed and distributed under the creative commons License CC BY ND Attribution-NoDerivs. Material printed in this journal is OPEN to access, and are FREE for use in academic and research work with proper citation. J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad accepts only original material for publication with the understanding that except for abstracts, no part of the data has been published or will be submitted for publication elsewhere before appearing in J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad. The Editorial Board of J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad makes every effort to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of material printed in J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad. However, conclusions and statements expressed are views of the authors and do not reflect the opinion/policy of J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad or the Editorial Board.
USERS are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
AUTHORS retain the rights of free downloading/unlimited e-print of full text and sharing/disseminating the article without any restriction, by any means including twitter, scholarly collaboration networks such as ResearchGate, Academia.eu, and social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar and any other professional or academic networking site.
