Religion, Society and Gender Identity: Women’s Online Activism in Search of Public Space in Pakistan

COMPOSE Working Paper No. 002

Author: Qamar Abbas Jafri
December 2023

This working paper analyses discourses on identity and space of women in Pakistani society. These discourses are drawn from the contentious activism of Pakistani traditionalists and non-traditionalists on social media and beyond. The non-traditionalists include women’s rights groups, civil society, media outlets, and secular political factions which support the Western ‘feminist foreign policy’ agenda, while the traditionalists consist of local religious groups, media outlets, and supporters of religious patriarchy and the status quo. By employing group threat theory, the paper takes data from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and offers analysis of group threats in relation to the traditionalists and non-traditionalists, specifically on how the traditionalists push for religious patriarchy in relation to women’s identity construction and how the non-traditionalists counter this patriarchy through activism. This paper discovers that as non-traditionalists fear women’s freedom is under threat and therefore push for greater political and social space for women in Pakistani society, they are met with reactive and aggressive counter narratives and actions from traditionalists, who fear loss of control over power, politics, and resources. This intergroup threat has become a point of political contention between traditionalists and non-traditionalists in Pakistani society and beyond.

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