Four themes and two theories: a look at social change in Pakistan's Punjab

Abstract

People living in Pakistan's Punjab region, like people in other places around the world, are experiencing social and economic transition. Many of them are not faring well as this change occurs. The purpose of this research project is to assess the usefulness of modernization and socialist feminist theories for describing and explaining social change and rural poverty, based on observations of households in Pakistan's Punjab. The study incorporates survey data from 29 households in Pakistan's Punjab, and it focuses on four themes 1) the sexual division of labor, 2) people's changing expectations about dowry contents, 3) women's decisions regarding land inheritance and 4) the low status of females. Information from additional case studies is used to help interpret the Pakistani data and to provide perspectives on change processes and their effects on households and the people who live in them. Results of the analysis show that the two theories complement each other to some extent. Modernization theory is useful in understanding the importance of values to the persistence of dowry tradition. An understanding of modernization theory is also useful in explaining institutional lender policies that appear to affect the direction of social and economic change in the Punjab and elsewhere. Socialist feminists' discussions of production, reproduction and patriarchy are useful in understanding the persistence of the sexual division of labor and the low status of females. Theorists from both modernization and socialist feminist perspectives argue that people's increased access to resources will improve their prospects for attaining increased democratic participation, education and equality. Socialist feminists' studies show that women's control over resources in the family may increase their power over household decision making, and they argue that gender is an important variable in studies of the household, the economy and politics. Modernization theorists mostly ignore gender as a factor in social and economic change. Policy implications of this study are discussed in the final chapter.