Maham Khan

ISLAMABAD: The debate over how to write &quot;strong female characters&quot; has consumed Hollywood for years. But in the folklore of Pakistan, etched into tombs, preserved in 17th-century manuscripts, and sung across five distinct regions, women have been swimming rivers, crossing deserts, debating clerics and slaying demons for half a millennium. Consider Sohni, from Sindh&#39;s Shahdadpur, where her tomb still stands. Every night, she navigates the treacherous Chenab River on an unbaked clay pot to reach Mahiwal, who waits passively on the opposite bank. She is the risk-taker, the boundary-crosser, the agent of her own desire. When the pot dissolves and she drowns, it is her conscious choice to enter the water rather than accept a life without autonomy. Mahiwal is merely the prize at the finish line. Or Sassui, immortalized in Shah Jo Risalo and anchored to the Kech-Makran route in Balochistan. She walks barefoot across the blistering Thar Desert to find her kidnapped lover Punnhun. The entire Hero&#39;s Journey, the trials, the suffering, the confrontation with the antagonist, belongs to her.&nbsp; Punnhun sleeps. Sassui acts. When threatened with assault by a shepherd, she doesn&#39;t wait for rescue; she commands the earth itself to open and swallow her, protecting her agency through spiritual ascension. She is neither damsel nor deity, she is sovereign. These aren&#39;t anomalies. They&#39;re the rule. In Punjab&#39;s Jhang district, a tomb dated 1471 CE verifies the existence of Heer. In Waris Shah&#39;s epic, she doesn&#39;t weep silently when forced into marriage, she engages the Qazi in fierce theological debate, citing Islamic jurisprudence to argue that forced marriage violates divine law. She schools the clergy. Ranjha, meanwhile, is a passive flute-player content to herd her buffaloes. He is her disciple, not her savior. From the Pashtun highlands of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa comes Gul Makai, preserved in 17th-century prose manuscripts. This woman stops an inter-tribal war by wielding the Quran as rhetorical weapon. She forces an all-male Jirga (council) to submit to her interpretation of sacred text. Her agency is intellectual, theological, revolutionary. Malala Yousafzai didn&#39;t choose this name accidentally. Even the &quot;damsel&quot; archetype collapses. In Sindh&#39;s Sehwan region, Momal builds a palace rigged with lethal puzzles to test and reject male suitors. She controls the gaze, the space, the rules. In Balochistan&#39;s heroic age, Hani is forced to marry the powerful Mir Chakar Rind to save her true love. She refuses to consummate the marriage for thirty years by turning her body into an unconquerable fortress. Her &quot;no&quot; is more powerful than a king&#39;s armies. And then there&#39;s Durdana Chelmard from folk anthologies, the monster-slayer who dresses as &quot;the strength of forty men&quot; to kill the demon terrorizing her kingdom, not for glory, but because the men failed. She is Gretel defeating the witch while Hansel cowers in the cage. These Pakistani tales, with their documented tombs, 17th-century manuscripts, and centuries-old oral traditions, prove that female agency runs deep in human storytelling. Women swimming rivers. Women crossing deserts. Women debating scripture. Women slaying monsters. Not as exceptions. As archetypes. Perhaps the answer to writing strong women isn&#39;t innovation. Perhaps it&#39;s remembering what storytellers already knew five hundred years ago.

Culture

From Sindh's river-swimmers to Balochistan's warrior queens, verified Pakistani folktales feature women who debate clerics, cross deserts, and slay demons—while men wait passively as prizes.

Pakistan's folktales: Where strong women slay demons, men wait passively

PARIS:&nbsp;Thousands of protesters across France braved the cold on Saturday to express their anger over the persistence of violence against women and demand more public action and funds to combat the scourge. In Paris, crowds of demonstrators -- 50,000 according to organizers, 17,000 according to the police -- waved signs, chanted, danced and sang as they moved through the capital in the protests organized by the Greve feministe (Feminist Strike) collective of some 60 organizations. &ldquo;A man kills a woman every 2.5 days in France,&rdquo; read one placard distributed by the feminist collective NousToutes (All of us Women).<figure class="fr-media"><img src="https://paktv-assets-7d41fab8.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/d8643eab-513b-4cac-a05f-ce1f564629cc-France women protest1.jpg" alt="France women protest1.jpg" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><figcaption class="caption-cover-image text-sm text-gray-600 italic">PARIS: Protesters take part in a demonstration called by the French collective NousToutes (Us all) to protest against violence against women, at Place de La Republique in Paris, on November 22, 2025. -- Photo by AFP</figcaption></figure> &ldquo;Nine out of 10 victims know their rapist,&rdquo; read another. &lsquo;Loved without being abused&rsquo;&nbsp;&ldquo;It&#39;s 2025, is it still normal to count our dead women?&rdquo; said Sylvaine Grevin, president of the national femicide victims&#39; federation, whose sister was killed in 2017, ahead of the start of the Paris demonstration. Hundreds of protesters also gathered in the cold in other cities, creating crowds awash in purple -- a color linked to feminism. &ldquo;We have the right to be loved without being abused,&rdquo; said 20-year-old student Juliette in Lille in northern France. Intimate partner femicidesThe associations behind the protests are calling for the adoption of a comprehensive framework law against violence, along with a three-billion-euro budget ($3.5-billion) to implement it. They are also calling for improved education and funding for groups that support victims of violence. According to official figures published Thursday by MIPROF, a government organization tasked with protecting women from violence and fighting human trafficking, the number of intimate partner femicides rose by 11% between 2023 and 2024, with 107 women killed by their partner or ex-partner. &lsquo;Every two minutes&rsquo;&nbsp;A woman is a victim of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault every two minutes, and every 23 seconds of sexual harassment, indecent exposure, or the unsolicited sending of sexual content, according to MIPROF. The Women&#39;s Foundation rights group estimates the minimum annual budget the government should allocate to protecting victims of domestic, gender-based and sexual violence in France is 2.6 billion euros -- equivalent to 0.5% of the state budget.

Europe

A woman is a victim of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault every two minutes, and every 23 seconds of sexual harassment, indecent exposure, or the unsolicited sending of sexual content, according to MIPROF.

Articles tagged with "Feminism"

Pakistan's folktales: Where strong women slay demons, men wait passively

Thousands march in France to demand action on violence against women