DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN PAKISTAN: SOCIAL NORMS, ECONOMIC DEPENDENCY AND BARRIERS TO JUSTICE

Abstract

Domestic violence (DV) against women remains a persistent and under-addressed social problem in Pakistan, sustained by the interaction of restrictive social norms, women's economic dependency, and structural barriers within both formal and informal justice systems. This paper synthesizes recent Pakistani-focused literature (2024–2026) to examine how fatalistic and patriarchal social norms shape women's acceptance of violence, how economic dependency limits women's ability to exit abusive relationships, and how legal, procedural, and socio-cultural obstacles restrict access to justice. Twenty-four studies spanning survey research, discourse and legal analysis, comparative policy evaluation, and media/literary critique are organized into a thematic literature review and summarized in a structured comparison table. The review finds that while social-norms research and legal-doctrinal analysis are well developed, there remains a shortage of integrated, quantitative studies that model the joint effect of social norms and economic dependency on justice-seeking behavior, and a shortage of large-scale primary data linking these three dimensions within a single analytic framework. The paper concludes by identifying this integration gap as a priority for future empirical research and by proposing a conceptual framework linking social norms, economic dependency, and access to justice as sequential and reinforcing barriers.