When the five sisters from Mailsi attempted to kill themselves by jumping into the Sutlej River, the majority of media as well as our collective social response understood the tragedy as brought about by poverty - yet again. In the official report given by SHO Anwar Baloch, it was stated the sisters hailed from the Himbalwala area of Mailsi district. They arrived at the Mailsi siphon and leapt into the river together. One out of the five siblings survived, as people nearby came to rescue her. The remaining became morsels of death, the search for their bodies is still underway.
While being the daughters of a laborer did indeed exacerbate their dilemma, the five women – ages between 30 to 45 – were more than just victims of monetary abjection; their desperation was contributed by a rigid status quo that gauges a woman’s worth depending on how suitably she is married off and how heavy her dowry is. This gauge is applied only to women, not to men. Whether situated in a rural or urban setting, the conventional method of scrutinizing woman’s worthiness is cruelly limited to her market value. For this reason, the five sisters – among countless other women – suffered more than just poverty; they finally succumbed to society’s unrelenting expectations of them.
Suicides committed by women in Pakistan is nothing new: Women from different segments of society have ended their lives for a plethora of distressing reasons often caused by outdated ideas of honor, but the most common and perhaps least questioned form of abuse is the demand that underprivileged women must find a spouse within a certain time limit, while simultaneously proving their financial worth. The usual trajectory of our community’s response to this predicament is to set up funds that help these women marry, but such a solution is far too narrow. Assistance for their mental health as well as questioning a stringent status quo can broaden the horizons of many women who, out of no choice, leap to their own demise.