The recent events surrounding the Aurat March in Pakistan had me wondering whether I am, in fact, a feminist. It is a question I may never have examined so deeply had ‘feminism’ itself not become such a loaded and weaponised word in our society. Feminism today is used almost as a curse word, not only among men but among many women too, who have internalised narrow ideas of what goodness and femininity should look like. Feminism is rarely treated as an ideology or political position; instead, it becomes shorthand for immorality, rebellion or a rejection of culture and faith.

The recent manhandling of women associated with the Aurat March, including activist Sheema Kermani, once again revealed how deeply unsettled society remains by women who refuse silence. But perhaps this discomfort begins much earlier than protests or slogans. It begins in childhood itself.

Little girls are raised on stories that reward obedience, softness, sacrifice, and waiting. From fairy tales to family structures, the ideal woman is often presented as a Cinderella figure: patient, selfless, beautiful in suffering, and ultimately rewarded not for changing her circumstances, but for surviving them quietly until ‘rescue’ arrives in the form of Prince Charming. Her goodness lies not in courage or intellect, but in how much injustice she can bear without retaliation.

Perhaps that’s why feminism unsettles so many people. Because feminism disrupts the fantasy. It tells women they are not required to remain helpless in order to remain worthy. It questions why women must continuously shrink themselves to fit society’s definition of virtue. The reaction surrounding the Aurat March, the ridicule, performative outrage and branding of feminists as ‘Western’, ‘immoral’, or ‘shaitani’, reflects more than ideological disagreement. It reveals a society deeply uncomfortable with women who refuse prescribed roles.

Societies don’t progress through silence.

What unsettles society is not merely the slogan or placard. It is the sight of women occupying public and intellectual space unapologetically. A woman who thinks critically, questions inherited structures, or demands equality disrupts generations of conditioning about what a ‘good woman’ should look like: agreeable but not assertive, educated but not opinionated, resilient but never resistant. And the moment she questions the structures producing that suffering, she becomes dangerous.

What’s even more tragic is that many women themselves participate in sustaining these expectations. But this is not because women fail to understand agency. Rather, generations of social conditioning have taught them that conformity ensures survival. The familiar cage begins to feel safer than freedom itself. Freedom, after all, carries consequences for women that men are rarely forced to consider: social isolation, moral scrutiny, damaged reputations and constant pressure to prove respectability. As the verse goes: ‘Itnay ma’anoos sayyaad se ho gaye, ab rehai milleygi tu marr jayen gey’ [We have become so accustomed to the hunter (or captor) that if we are set free now, we will die].

Yet societies don’t progress through silence. They progress because, at some point, someone becomes willing to question what everyone else has learned to accept. Pakistan’s own history offers us these women. Asma Jahangir, one of the world’s foremost human rights voices, was called a traitor. Parveen Rehman was killed for asking inconvenient questions. Sabeen Mahmud was murdered for creating space for difficult conversations. Each of them was considered too loud, too disruptive, too unwilling to stay silent. Society does not always recognise the women it needs until after it has silenced them.

Yet this fight is larger than any single woman: it’s about every woman in Pakistan, the girl in a village school who is told her education matters less than her brother’s, the woman in a courtroom who is not believed. It is about the right to have a voice and the right to use it. The right to choose and the right to be taken seriously when you do. This is not the struggle of exceptional women alone. It is the unfinished work of an entire nation.

This is why movements like the Aurat March matter, not because every slogan is flawless, but because they force society to confront questions it has long avoided. Who benefits from women’s silence? Why is obedience considered a feminine virtue? And why does a thinking woman continue to frighten us so deeply? At its core, feminism is not the rejection of culture, family, or faith, as it is often portrayed. It is the insistence that women are complete human beings and are capable of thought, deserving of agency and entitled to dignity without needing rescue first. Perhaps the real tragedy is not that women are demanding too much. It is that for generations, they were taught to ask for so little.

Lalarukh Ejaz is an academic and director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development at IBA, Karachi. The article was first published in Dawn on June 2, 2026.

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