Women Left Behind: Migration,Agency,and the Pakistani Woman

Abstract

This article examines how migration impacts power dynamics and gender norms for women left behind living in rural Southern Punjab, Pakistan, a site where patriarchal customs and religion are interwoven to confine women’s mobility and agency. Based on qualitative interviews and focus groups with women left behind from 2015 through 2018, this article explores how local rural-to-urban male migration patterns impact the decision-making powers of women who are left behind and must make sense of the family structure and gender dynamics in their homes after their husbands’ exit. This study finds that in the absence of her migrant husband, a woman left behind is still subject to patriarchal norms and surveillance by the remaining in-laws, including other women. Citing specific examples from the field, I explain why women left behind remain close to the very families that confine and monitor their movement, and why, in some cases, women left behind turn a blind eye toward their husband’s second or third marriage. Through an examination of behind-the-scenes negotiations that women left behind make, I argue that women maintain for themselves at surface level the gendered expectations that patriarchy sets for them, but given the opportunity, they can negotiate and bargain their positionality in subtle ways without disrupting the status quo that could otherwise jeopardize their physical safety and social reputation (honor).

Keywords

migration women left behind Southern Punjab gender rural South Asia Pakistan Punjab

“I am not educated, and I do not live in the city [like you]. What will people say if I left this house? Who will protect me and my children?” These were the words that one of my respondents, Noreen, a woman left behind, told me when asked why a woman left behind remains with her in-laws, even if her in-laws and extended family confine and monitor her mobility in the absence of her migrant husband. Whereas a man can leave his home in rural Punjab, Pakistan, and move to a new place, a woman’s identity and security are tied to her husband and his family. In the event she is widowed or separates from her husband, she might return to her parents’ family.

In this article, I ask: How are the local, rural-to-urban migration patterns of men’s employment changing the everyday spaces for women left behind in rural Punjab? Specifically, do women in rural Southern Punjab acquire higher levels of decision-making power, mobility, and/or household resource allocation in the absence of their husbands who migrate to a city nearby? During fieldwork in Southern Punjab, Pakistan, from 2015 through 2018, I observed a distinct male migration pattern in ten rural settlements, four of which were in peri-urban settings. Men in these rural villages worked in nearby cities, mainly in construction. Financial constraints were the primary reason given by my respondents—the wives of migrant husbands left behind—for why their husbands moved. As one participant explained to me, “Baji kerna perta hai, kya kerein? Pesay toh wahan hee hain” (Sister, this [migration of my husband] has to be done, what else can we do? There is money out there [in the city where he works]).

I interviewed 25 women left behind (also referred to in the literature as left-behind women) both in one-on-one interviews and in two focus groups with five women each. In my sample, the longest a migrant husband was away was for three months at a time, though on average most male members were away from home slightly more than a month. All migration reported by women left behind was domestic, with the furthest distance at six hours by road. In some multifamily homes where two or more male members had emigrated, several women left behind were present in the same household. This extended family structure, known as a biradari (see Mumtaz and Salway 2005 for a more detailed discussion), is part of the unique context in which women left behind live. In contrast to the rapid family nuclearization that is happening in many parts of the world, including urban areas of Pakistan, in this context in-laws have a considerable physical presence and power over the women left behind.

In this article, I analyze three different elements of family structure that influence negotiation of power: (1) gender in relationship to private/public spheres; (2) polygamy; and (3) hierarchies among women. The power nexus women left behind navigate must account for extended family structures such as biradari to fully capture the shifting consequences of male-led migration from rural settings.

I further analyze how internal rural–urban male migration patterns impact women’s social positions in the absence of their husbands. My findings contribute to the context of gender relations and gendered expectations in rural Pakistan. I found that in the absence of the husband, the extended family generally maintained control, usually through another dominant male figure or, in some circumstances, a high-status woman (e.g., a mother-in-law). Patriarchy is entrenched within, and perpetuated by, families and extended networks (biradari). Although patriarchal control may usually reside with husbands, my analysis shows that men and high-status women in the biradari maintain patriarchal control, and how women left behind navigate with these limitations. My findings show how they experience constraints as well as possibilities they find for everyday resistances.

My findings also shed light on why women left behind remain close to the very families that confine and monitor their mobility, and, in some cases, why women left behind turn a blind eye to their husband’s second or third marriage in the aftermath of his migration. Because polygamy is allowed in Islam, one of the major concerns for most young women left behind is whether their husbands married a second or third wife in the new city. Yet, as Noreen described in the quotation above, women left behind find comfort knowing that they and their children are still “protected” from public scrutiny and moral shaming by living in their husband’s extended family. Extended families then become a simultaneous source of restriction as well as a resource: One must look at the interactions these women have with extended families beyond just “empowering” or “disempowering,” because they can be both. Thus, in this article, I demonstrate why “women left behind” is an important analytical category that offers a new understanding the way male migration impacts women’s lives and the households they live in.

Women Left Behind: Literature Review

Why focus on women left behind and not on the migrant husbands? Making women visible for development projects, such as the polio eradication initiative in Pakistan where women are hired as community health workers, attests to how focusing just on men creates a blind spot to larger structures and mechanisms that affect those whom Kabeer (1994) calls the “unofficial actors of development” (Kabeer 1994, xi). Focusing only on men also treats unofficial actors as either not important or influential. The shift in development literature toward making women a visible category—called the Women in Development (WID) approach—has led to conversations and critiques, and consequently a focus on gender relations and norms to give a more accurate picture of on-the-ground structures and processes. Kabeer (1994, xii) describes this aptly:

The shift from “women” to “gender relations” as the key focus of analysis in development was an attempt by some feminist scholars and practitioners to bring the power relations between women and men into the picture. The problem with relying on “women” as the analytical category for addressing gender inequalities in development was that it led to a focus on women in isolation from the rest of their lives and from the relationships through which such inequalities were perpetuated.

Looking at relationships and structures beyond just using “men” and “women” as analytical categories calls attention to overlooked processes and actors. Unofficial actors, who previously may have been assumed to be powerless and/or without agency are brought front and center. This is a more accurate reflection of what happens on the ground. Kabeer (1994, 224) explains that “powerlessness suggests a total absence of power whereas, in reality, even those who appear to have very little power are still able to resist, to subvert and sometimes transform the conditions of their lives.”

Archambault (2010) critiques the label “women left behind” itself, arguing that it is problematic because its use encourages an assumption that women left behind do not stay behind out of choice. She cites the example of women left behind in rural Tanzania who stay behind to maintain ownership of the family-owned land, as well as maintaining social networks that are important especially for older women left behind. Although it is an important argument, this did not seem to be the case in Pakistan, where the cultural expectations of women and men are situated as “inside” and “outside” spheres. These are mapped onto their roles in migration as well, as the woman is expected to remain “inside” her house even when her husband moves. Additionally, “family” can mean more than just a nuclear family, and extends to parents, siblings, and their families, which would make it logistically difficult and expensive to have the entire family move with the migrant husband. Therefore, in rural Punjab, most women do not have the choice to go with their migrant husbands, especially if they have children and take care of the elderly in the biradari.

Hadi’s (2001) research in Bangladesh and Desai and Banerji’s (2008) and Sultana and Rehman’s (2014) research in Pakistan contend that women left behind are more likely to have a larger role in decision-making duties in the absence of her migrant husband, including finances (primarily remittances), as well as decisions about (left behind) children’s education and marriage. Others note that in the absence of the migrant husband, surveillance and control over women left behind is maintained by other family members. Further, they argue that any power women left behind gain in decision making or mobility is lost when the migrant husband visits home or moves back, as demonstrated in cases from Armenia and Guatemala (Menjívar and Agadjanian 2007), Mexico (McEvoy et al. 2012), China (Chuang 2016), and Nepal (Shattuck et al. 2019). Debnath and Selim’s (2009, 133) research in Bangladesh captures this well:

In cases where remittances were received by the in-laws (for instance, by the respondent’s father-in-law or mother-in-law), the left behind wife’s situation within the household (if she is living with her in-laws) did not change most of the time. . . . Interestingly, in certain cases even when the respondents themselves are receiving remittance and are the de facto household head, the migrant (husband) himself remains the primary decision maker for major decisions.

In this article, I prioritize women as the focal point to understand the social processes and changes in power in the aftermath of male migration. The examples here provide insight into why women living in patriarchal families in rural Southern Punjab must adopt covert ways of exercising agency, even when the patriarchal head to the family (the husband) migrates. The transfer of power from the husband to another male in the house or, in some situations, a mother-in-law, also depicts how patriarchy in rural areas complicates power, especially where women must maintain ties with a family for her and her children’s physical protection and social reputation or honor.

Contextualizing Patriarchy and Agency among Women Left Behind

Dominant patriarchal views are still omnipresent in most developing Muslim and South Asian countries, in households of migrant families, and particularly in rural Pakistan. Hegland (2010) contends that despite 28 percent of rural households in Tajikistan being headed by women, women are still subject to scrutiny for late marriages and are subject to abuse by in-laws and spouses after marriage.

A common concern a woman left behind has is the fidelity of her migrant husband. Menjívar and Agadjanian (2007) conclude that women left behind in both Guatemala and Armenia will give their husband a pass for infidelity, to maintain the inflow of remittances and to maintain their status of being a married woman. The women interviewed also note that it is in a man’s nature to cheat and, as long as they send money for their kids, the women do not have many options (Menjívar and Agadjanian 2007). Mexico is an exception, McEvoy et al. (2012) note, where there is an increased possibility of infidelity by women left behind when remittances are low.

Gender ideologies are usually preserved by the communities in the absence of the migrant husband. This is seen in cases from Egypt (Elbdawy and Roushdy 2009; Hoodfar 1996) and India (Desai and Banerji 2008). Iqbal, Iqbal, and Momzi (2014) note that in Pakistan, where another male is not available to take over after the departure of the migrant husband, a male guardian (or mahram) with whom marriage or intercourse is not allowed in Islam (usually a relative in the extended family network) is adopted into the family to compensate for the male absence. Such restructuring maintains the status quo of men’s power in the household and preserves gender patterns and ideologies (Elbdawy and Roushdy 2009; Hoodfar 1996).

Rashid (2013) adds that in Bangladesh, male migrants maintain a patriarchal hold on spouses over the phone, as is also seen among Moroccan migrant husbands (de Haas and van Rooij 2010) and those in rural Armenia and Guatemala (Menjívar and Agadjanian 2007). A husband’s decision-making powers, if not already in the hands of the next patriarchal head in the family, are transferred to his wife left behind only temporarily and often will be reclaimed upon his return home (de Haas and van Rooij 2010, 57; Debnath and Selim 2009, 133). Rashid (2013) found that in Bangladesh, women were instructed over the phone by their migrant husbands about decisions pertaining to debt, migration of sons or a daughter’s marriage. When the husband was unavailable, the women usually sought advice from other male members in the family (Rashid 2013, 894). One exception to this is in Lebanon, wherein women left behind are more likely to not share their income with their spouse if their migrant husbands stay out of the house for more than five years (Khalaf 2009, 114).

In addition to being monitored by husbands via phones, women left behind are also subject to surveillance and control by in-laws (Chuang 2016; Menjívar and Agadjanian 2007; Shattuck et al. 2019). Rashid (2013) hence cautions against oversimplifying increased visibility and mobility of women left behind in the absence of migrant husbands as empowerment. Particularly striking is de Haas and van Rooij’s (2010) observation that many women left behind found even the temporary increase in decision making burdensome. They explained this as possibly because women are afraid of being criticized by other community members as being too “manly” (de Haas and van Rooij 2010, 57). This is an important observation that demonstrates why women left behind may not want to demonstrate overt displays of agency even if they have the space and means to do so.

De Haas and van Rooij (2010) hence problematize what existing understandings of agency and, by extension, empowerment mean for women left behind in patriarchal societies. Applying Kandiyoti’s (1988) concept of a patriarchal bargain, wherein women strategize in dealing with different forms of patriarchy, de Haas and van Rooij (2010) argue that women avoid overtly challenging the status quo in their homes and society. Doing so would disrupt the gender patterns that maintain social relationships, which, if threatened, severely challenge women’s social status and well-being (Basu 1996; Kabeer 1997). According to Scott’s (1990) concept of hidden transcripts, people without overt decision-making powers have an off-stage script and mannerisms different from how they appear frontstage, around individuals who exert power and control. Chen’s (1983) work describes a similar strategy called “backstage influence,” in which women renegotiate power relations that are private and backstage. In the examples that follow, I show how women left behind use these tactics to negotiate space and power in rural Punjab.

Background

According to the Pakistan Economic Survey (PES 2017–18), agriculture is the largest contributing sector to Pakistan’s GDP at almost 19 percent, and employs 42 percent of the labor force (PES 2018–19). Punjab plays a crucial role in Pakistan’s agrarian economy, with 53 percent of Punjab’s land used for agricultural purposes (Punjab Development Statistics 2014). Despite its vital importance, the agricultural sector faces major challenges. The reasons for low returns to farmers—the high cost of production coupled with low investments in technological innovation, limited infrastructure, trade restrictions, and limited adoption of effective farming strategies—further pose challenges in increasing the rates of return (PES 2014–15; PES 2018–19). These problems make for limited employment opportunities. Urbanization is contributing to a growing population in the cities, as more and more people move from rural villages to nearby cities to work in the informal work sector. According to PES 2018–19, Punjab is the most populous province, and the population is moving toward urban centers to access better socioeconomic opportunities.

As in most developing countries (Chant 1992), migration in Pakistan is gendered. The division of men and women into the public and the private spheres (Chant 1992) enables men to leave their homes to make money, whereas women are expected to perform reproductive labor and care work at home. Rural areas in particular have strict purdah norms, such that women remain out of sight from men outside their extended family networks. Families are patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal (Jejeebhoy and Sathar 2001; Kabeer 1994). Kabeer’s (1994, 115) description fits well in describing South Asia broadly and Pakistan particularly:

Household structures [stretching from Northern Africa to Bangladesh] . . . are organized around cultural rules which focus on male responsibility for the protection and provisioning of women and children. The practices of female seclusion, matrilineal inheritance, and patrilocal residence interlock to produce corporately organized, patriarchal household forms. The social norms of male breadwinner/female dependent are reflected in men’s privileged, albeit class-differentiated, claims to material and labor opportunities.

The site of this study, rural Southern Punjab, has been described by Sathar and Kazi (2000) as the least developed compared with other provinces as well as the rest of Punjab. It has a high concentration of uneducated women, with limited access to health facilities and infrastructure (Sathar and Kazi 2000). The mobility of women in this region is also the lowest (Sathar and Kazi 2000). Given these conditions, we would expect women in this area to exhibit very low levels of agency and resistance as a result of conventional narratives about women and power. Yet, as this article highlights, women still exercise some agency, even within such limited circumstances.

Methods

This research took place in 10 rural and periurban settlements in Southern Punjab. I conducted qualitative interviews, focus groups, and participant observations in three separate rounds during the summer months of 2015, 2016, and 2018. Names have been changed to maintain the confidentiality of the participants. During these interviews, I spoke with 25 women both in one-on-one interviews and in two focus group interviews of five women each. Of the 25 women, I was able to do follow-up interviews with 15 participants in the second round of interviews and with 13 in the third round of interviews. Southern Punjab is characterized by more conservative norms, especially pertaining to women. Concerned friends and family members in main cities of Punjab like Lahore and Islamabad, repeatedly cited honor killings that have occurred in rural areas of Punjab to warn me against pursuing my research and/or to advise me to keep my head covered and not draw attention to myself.

No interviews were recorded because the women were visibly uncomfortable about speaking with a recorder in front of them. Hence, I relied primarily on fieldnotes and quickly scribbled down phrases, occasionally asking my interviewees to repeat themselves if I missed something. I also noted any observations such as voice intonations and mannerisms. These observations helped me recognize how women in the household are aware of how power is manifested in the household and how these women play a part as individuals, as a collective, and as outsiders (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995).

Questions were open ended and were asked to get a sense of what women did every day and the nature of their relationship with their relatives, especially with their mother-in-law, daughter(s), and husband. This was to get a sense of how women left behind thought of themselves as individuals and how they related to their larger family network (biradari). Follow-up interviews posited similar questions to track and reflect any changes in answers and/or situations of the participants over time. Specifically, I asked questions about whether the husbands were still living in nearby cities, any changes in the relationship a woman left behind had with her in-laws and/or migrant husband, and any changes to her employment status, including informal employment performed inside the house. Additionally, I asked open-ended questions to find out the challenges women left behind continually face and/or have resolved, to determine how their migrant husband’s absence affects their positionality in the household.

The women I met in these areas were home-based workers, primarily in charge of care work for the elderly and children, but also care of livestock and making of handicrafts. Women usually lived in a joint patrilineal/extended family system in which in-laws live either in the same house or nearby, and the women of the household usually shared household chores. During the day, when interviews were conducted, nonmigrant husbands worked in the fields close by.

For this article, my participants had husbands who moved away from their homes for work. Migrant husbands were reported by their wives left behind as living in nearby cities working primarily in construction or brick making. I used snowball sampling to find participants. In my sample, I did not meet any women whose husbands had traveled internationally, or even to another province. I was told that this was because the family did not have the resources to send the migrant husband abroad, citing the high expense of visas and air travel.

Most participants in my study were very poor to lower middle class, making barely enough to feed themselves and maintain makeshift homes or old structures (Table 1). Because the migrant husbands lived two to five hours away by bus or motorcycle, women left behind reported their husbands visited once every two weeks to once every three months, depending on the distance from work, available money to spend on travel, and/or ability to take time off work for national holidays.

Table 1:

Characteristics of women left behind

Variable	Data
Average age of a woman left behind (years)	26.58 (19–45)
Average age of migrant husband (years)	31.04 (18–57)
Setting	15 rural (60%) 10 peri-urban (40%)
Number of women in polygamous marriages	7 (28%)
Average ratio of women–men in the household (adults)	6:5
Average time migrant husband is away	43.46 days (range, 17–95)
Average number of hours by road^a for migrant husband	6.08 (range, 3–8)
Primary responsibilities of women left behind	Care work, embroidery, handicrafts, cooking, cleaning
Number of women left behind formally employed	3 (12%)

This was what the women left behind described. Migrant husbands may use a combination of public buses, motorcycles, and bicycles depending on how far they must travel.

Families within the same extended network usually lived close to each other. Subsequently, women gathered in a common area central to their houses, often in an open courtyard. They spent time knitting, cooking, and cleaning. This area was usually open, with no roof or carpeting, with a few manjis (woven-straw beds) put together for the older women to sit on and give orders to the younger married women and girls who worked around them. A hierarchy among women was prevalent. Often it was the oldest mother or mother-in-law who spoke to me first when welcoming me. It was also the older woman in the focus group who would answer most of the questions. This is common in the South Asian context and has been observed in Bangladesh (Debnath and Selim 2009) and even Nepal (Shattuck et al. 2019). Younger women, particularly daughters-in-law, felt more comfortable talking with me in private, in a different room away from their mothers-in-law.

I gained access through a doctor I knew who works at a basic health unit (BHU), a publicly funded clinic serving nearby areas, primarily for basic health services including antenatal care. At the BHU, I asked to be introduced to any women left behind who lived nearby, after which I secured additional participants through snowball sampling. My identity as a woman born and raised in Punjab, Pakistan, until college also gave me the necessary access to speak with and be invited into women’s homes. Despite my best efforts to dress and speak as simply as possible, there were clear differences in class, especially through my Urdu accent, grammar, and mannerisms that were a product of private schooling in a large city in Punjab. During interviews, I would also reveal my occupation as a student, which I found helped my participants want to help me with my project even more.

I conducted interviews in Urdu and Punjabi and translated and transcribed the data from Urdu and Punjabi to English in Microsoft Word. For analysis, I used line-by-line and axial coding using the highlight and comment features. I also wrote memos to understand and draw out meanings in my findings and connect them to patterns found in existing research.

This research is part of a larger project on gender, agency, and power structures in Southern Punjab, Pakistan. I began researching women left behind after noticing and speaking with an unusually large number of women left behind while conducting interviews in my first round of fieldwork on female community health workers (Lady Health Workers) in rural Punjab (see Ahmed 2019). Started in 1994 by the Government of Pakistan, the Lady Health Workers Program provides primary health care services in their communities. Lady Health Workers are trained for 15 months and learn how to provide antenatal care and identifying symptoms to common illnesses. Lady Health Workers are also the frontline workers during the Polio Eradication Campaigns, wherein they go door to door to administer polio drops to children who are eligible, usually under the age of 5 (World Health Organization and Global Health Workforce Alliance 2008).

Empirical Findings and Analysis

Hidden Transcripts, Backstage Influence, and Everyday Resistances of Women Left behind in Rural Punjab

As mentioned earlier, families in rural Punjab are usually a tightly knit extended family network called a biradari (see Mumtaz and Salway 2005), such that most women were related to one another in more than one way. For example, Ansab, a 22-year-old woman left behind was her mother-in-law’s niece. In my interviews, I found the biradari to be an important social institution with prescribed gender norms and hierarchies that everyone I spoke with seemed to follow.

In three middle-class households, who were visibly better off in brick-and-mortar houses and some form of transport (two had motorcycles and another had a car), women of the house still gathered in a courtyard while instructing their workers to cook and clean. In these houses, I found most younger women more comfortable speaking with me in private than in front of their mothers-in-law. In the absence of a male migrant, households had a dominant male member, usually the father-in-law to the women left behind, who maintained the patriarchal control in the house and received the remittances directly. The father-in-law made important decisions about marriages in the biradari, permitting other male members to migrate, and is also responsible for protecting the family’s honor. This is done by maintaining strict control over the visibility and mobility of women in the family, to prevent any undesirable contact with men outside the household.

There was an exception to this pattern in three households, in which no male member was present in the immediate family. The mother-in-law who was the oldest family member assumed power in the absence of her son. Two other families had male members absent but were close to other households in the biradari, so the next oldest male member of the two families assumed power. As one male member recounted to me during his trip back home, “I am not worried about the women in the house. My brother lives in that field over there, and my father lives here. They are in charge of the women in my house while I am gone.”

In-laws, and especially women (mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, and co-wives [sautan] in polygamous marriages), are commonly seen as upholding gendered expectations over women left behind through surveillance in the absence of migrant men. This is similar to what Chuang (2016) found in rural China, wherein older women constrained women’s mobility, and also in Bangladesh by Debnath and Selim (2009).

In conversations with women left behind, I was told migrant husbands usually stayed in the cities unless they are fired and cannot find a job within a few months or until their savings run out. In other instances, if migrant husbands are injured or too old to do manual work, the baton is usually passed on the younger sons and/or younger male siblings. Thus, the power remains with a male member in the biradari in the household of a male migrant worker. This, along with the social and physical security of women tied to their families—particularly the male such as a husband after marriage, a father/brother before marriage, or a son if the husband dies—gives context as to why a woman left behind exercises agency with caution even when her husband moves to another city.

Women left behind navigate complex power hierarchies while their husbands are away from their homes, as well as when their husbands return. Agency thus can be temporary or fleeting, as Debnath and Selim (2009) point out. Women must adhere to gendered expectations that dictate how they must act as daughters-in-law and wives, especially in rural patriarchal spaces like Southern Punjab. These gendered expectations affect how women navigate relationships in the different spaces they are in, and how they handle issues such as polygamy and the internal hierarchies of power among women in the family.

Women Left behind: Navigating Public/Private Spaces at Home and in the Workplace

Saima, a woman left behind and a housewife in her twenties, confided in me privately that she wanted to work outside the home, like her husband, to make money she could use without having to explain to her husband what she needed the money for. Yet her husband’s job in the city as a construction worker pays enough for her to not work. “There are times when my kids want me to buy them games, and I also want to buy clothes, but I do not want to get a lecture about my spending from my husband. If I had a [formal, paid] job, I could do what I wanted.” The expectation that women will stay at home is prevalent in the rural spaces of Southern Punjab and is supported by most women in my interviews, but not by Saima.

One possible reason that women support this restriction against paid employment is the danger women face in these rural patriarchal spaces for their physical safety and also their social reputation. Bushra, whose husband works as a carpet cleaner in a nearby city in Punjab, explains why she is happy that her husband makes enough money so that she does not have to leave her house:

I heard that a woman who used to go to people’s homes to teach kids in the neighborhood Qur’an was raped by one of her student’s older brother. Tell me, is that fair? And she was covered from head to toe with only her eyes showing. Her abaya [long cloak over clothes] was so long that it would drag on the floor and get messy when she would walk around. . . . No, why would I want to go outside if my husband makes money for my kids and me? I am grateful to Allah Almighty that I do not have to suffer the same unfortunate fate of other women who must leave the house.

The fear of being raped serves as a powerful tool to police women’s mobility and visibility. Gossip, especially regarding a woman’s infidelity, also jeopardizes a woman’s honor in her community and is hence taken very seriously. In most remote areas of rural Pakistan, infidelity justifies honor killings. McEvoy et al.’s (2012) work in Mexico discusses how a (working) left-behind woman’s increased mobility also increases her vulnerability to detrimental gossip, which causes an “overall erasure of any emancipatory effects men’s out-migration might have” (McEvoy et al. 2012, 384).

In my sample, only three women left behind held formal employment and worked outside the home. Faiza, a Family Welfare Worker employed by the Punjab Population Welfare Department, told me she joined the civil service after getting married. When I asked her whether she had to face many hurdles from her husband or in-laws to work, she replied, “ . . . Kerna perta hai. Zaroorat hai” (“I had to. I had to work out of necessity”). Financial hardships were cited as the number one reason why some women left behind went out to work, especially those who had the credentials, usually a “middle” (eighth-grade) or matric pass (tenth-grade) education. All three working women left behind, who had formal employment, were situated in peri-urban areas. In rural areas, however, patriarchal norms and expectations pervade. Women left behind usually stay in the house, performing informal labor such as cooking, cleaning, and care work for the elderly and children. This is similar to Debnath and Selim’s (2009) findings in Bangladesh, where left-behind women stay in the house, given the taboo of women being vulnerable to sexual advances by men, especially in the absence of their migrant husbands.

When they do formal, paid work, as was the case of three participants in my research, women left behind must also manage expectations of their in-laws and husbands by maintaining their roles as mothers, wives, and daughters-in-law. I observed all three women with formal employment expertly switch their tone of voice and body language from being assertive working women outside their homes to obedient daughters-in-law sidelined in the kitchen, listening attentively to their mothers-in-law.

On a few occasions, the oldest woman in the house, in the absence of her male family members, would approach me to sell the family-owned livestock. Most young left-behind women I met made handicrafts, including handmade fans, embroidery, and small storage boxes made out of fabric and recycled straws. These goods are sold to middlemen by an older woman or a male member by proxy. The middleman sells these handicrafts at a profit to customers and shops in a nearby city. Some left-behind women with cell phones gave me their phone numbers so I could order handicrafts from them directly, which would lead to higher profits by cutting out the middleman. Women who wanted to give me their numbers did so discreetly. All this is done besides, and comes second to, the gendered tasks expected of the women, including cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the young and old in the household. These gendered family tasks are usually done collectively with other women in the household, under the watch of their mother-in-law.

Families belonging to the Syed caste generally do not allow women to work, despite the possible need for money. As was explained to me by one participant, Syed families consider themselves the direct descendants of Prophet Mohammad and subsequently maintain stricter norms pertaining especially to the mobility and visibility of women. However, not all Syed women agree with this tradition. Zeenat, a middle-aged Syed woman whose husband is settled in a nearby big city remarked candidly, “Haan, mujhe pata hai hum Syed hain, magar aap dekhein, yeh auratein kaam ker kay apnay bachon ko perha rahi hain, [kya] hum yeh nai chahtay? Per kya kerein, majboor hain” (“Yes, I understand that we [she and other women in the household] are Syed, but do you see how these women that are working can contribute to their children’s education—do you think we don’t want that?”)

Zeenat was one of the very few women who expressed such a desire; other respondents thought working, especially outside the home, was a nuisance and/or a threat to their family’s izzat (honor). They cited the dangers of becoming sexually exploited by men or, as Bushra explained, worried about being accused of having an affair and becoming a social outcast. For many of my participants, staying inside the home to perform care work and informal labor such as handicrafts is not entirely experienced as a constraint because the women access financial resources from their husbands without having to jeopardize their social and physical safety. In this way, women seem to express discomfort becoming more visible or making decisions that could engender disapproval from the community, similar to what de Haas and Rooij (2010) had observed in their research.

Second Marriages and Growing Insecurities among Women Left Behind

Zahra, a 19-year-old woman, lives with her in-laws as well as her husband’s first wife and kids. Zahra’s husband works as a carpenter and visits on the weekends. Her father-in-law, too, works in a nearby city and comes home on the weekends. In the absence of both men in the family, a hierarchy exists with the mother-in-law at the top, the older first wife, and then Zahra. I observed this by noting who spoke to me in my interviews with the family, with the mother-in-law answering for her two daughters-in-law. The mother-in-law, Naseem, not only maintains a watchful eye over her daughters-in-law but also has more control over money and decisions on what to cook at home and setting prices for handicrafts and livestock in the absence of a dominant male figure.

The family sleeps outside on manjis [woven bed made of natural fibers], close to a river, with one makeshift room made of wood pillars with a roof constructed out of straw and flattened-out milk and juice cardboard cartons. Zahra offered to show me around the room, where she and I were alone. It was here that she felt comfortable to speak to me in confidence:

I got married to my husband because his first wife didn’t give him any sons. Every time he comes home, he tells me privately that he favors me more than her. He even gives me some money secretly for my own expenses.

Yet Zahra is aware of her circumstances and admits that she would have had a better life had she stayed in the city and not married into a family that lives in a rural setting. “If I have a daughter, I want her to become educated, so she is mobile and speaks well, like you. If I don’t have a son, I am afraid I will also be tossed aside and replaced with another.” Insecurity remains significant for most women left behind, especially those who fear their husbands might have remarried someone else where they migrated. Many women left behind who are not educated and/or live in conservative families do not have much choice but to follow the decisions of the male figures left in charge.

Whereas women are expected to remain loyal and devoted to their migrant husbands, the migrant husband can have affairs or even marry a second or third wife if he can afford to. Households that had two wives of the same migrant husband usually cited the first wife’s inability to have a child (or a boy) as the justification for the migrant husband’s second marriage. This speaks specifically to gendered expectations that are similarly experienced by women left behind in other geographical areas, as noted in the literature review section for Guatemala and Armenia (Menjívar and Agadjanian 2007).

Hierarchies among Women in the Household

Women left behind who are home-based workers must adhere to the power hierarchies within their family. Most of the left-behind women I spoke with congregate in one place every day to discuss their issues with other women in the family and their younger children. Here, women share each other’s problems and advise each other based on experience dealing with marital problems, the marriage of their children, budgeting for food and savings, and the like. For example, an older woman left behind advised her niece, whose husband moved four hours away to a big city: “Make nice with your in-laws at home. It will take you months—even years—before your husband sends you money directly. Do not cast any doubt on his fidelity; just leave it to God because He takes care of us all.”

Within these spaces, a hierarchy remains even in the absence of men. I observed this especially through the speaking order that women adopted when talking to me. As mentioned earlier, women in my sample usually gathered around the oldest woman, often the mother-in-law for women left behind, who occupied a seat at a higher level and/or in the center of the gathering. While conversations of younger women happen as they are fixing clothes, stitching, and/or washing pots and pans nearby, the oldest woman still decides who does what chore and when. Zahra remained silent in the presence of her mother-in-law and her husband’s first wife, as they both had higher status in the family. During focus group interviews, younger women would look up to and wait for the oldest woman to speak before answering questions. Yusra, a woman left behind, told me in private, “You see, I must make good with my in-laws. Both of them. When I’m around with my mother-in-law, I try to massage her legs and sit next to her to give her company. I don’t have much interaction with my father-in-law, but I always make him chai when I see him sitting outside.”

When asked why she must “make good” with her in-laws, she replied:

Of course, I do! My husband isn’t here; he lives in another city and sends money when he can. When he comes home for holidays, he will slip me some money sometimes for our toddler daughter but otherwise, I don’t get money. Kya keron? [What can I do?] The money will usually go to my in-laws and I must be on their good side, so I can gain their favor [and money] when I need help.

Women left behind are thus acutely aware of the power dynamics in the home upon the departure of their husbands, especially if their husbands do not send them money directly but send remittances to their in-laws. Some of those women told me in one-on-one interviews that they made an effort to be more agreeable to their mothers-in-law who assume and perpetuate power within the circle of women in the household. The most powerful woman is usually married to the patriarch. Hierarchies thus persist in everyday gatherings among women as they perform chores and share stories. Women left behind navigate these hierarchies to get the advice they need from older women with raising their children, while also building status and reputation of their own through the advice and experiences they share with others. As mentioned above, these hierarchies among women were amplified during focus group interviews, where the mothers-in-law dominated the conversations. In most cases, younger women left behind would find an excuse to speak to me privately, often by asking to show me around the house. Subsequently, I found one-on-one interviews with women left behind more candid, with more space to ask questions that could otherwise create a hostile or awkward environment, especially questions about the power dynamic inside the house.

As a way to disrupt this hierarchy behind the scenes, women left behind, including Saima, reported they had used secret phone calls and messages to their migrant husbands. It is especially important to get their husband’s attention without having to go through the biradari for discussions about money and children. This is necessary because a migrant husband usually sends remittances to his father or older brother/patriarch in the biradari, who then divides the money for the various demands of the family as a collective. By creating a direct link to her husband, a woman left behind can ask her husband to keep some money to give to her privately, which she can use for her children, especially for her daughters, as in the case of Zahra. Yet even in cases where women boasted about feeling heard and pampered by their migrant husbands, they still maintained the need to appease to their in-laws, noting that respect of elders is essential and that they did not want to upset their husband by misbehaving with his parents.

Conclusion

In this article, I highlight the factors that affect a woman’s positionality and agency in her home in rural Southern Punjab, in the absence of her migrant husband. Most of the women interviewed are witnesses to a transfer of power between the men in their household, in addition to the power hierarchy that exists among the women. In light of these power structures and gendered expectations, women left behind maintain gendered expectations of themselves as daughters-in-law and wives. In the absence of a migrant husband, a woman left behind is under the surveillance of her in-laws in rural Punjab, usually her mother-in-law, who is also overseen by the oldest patriarch in the house. In this way, a patriarchal power hierarchy is maintained even in the absence of the migrant husband.

The findings in this article add to previous research by focusing on how an extended family structure affects the way a woman left behind exercises her limited agency. The social and physical security of a woman left behind and her children are tied to the biradari, not just the migrant husband. This makes it difficult for her to exercise agency overtly even in her husband’s absence. Working outside the home is not seen as favorable for a woman left behind, given the threat to her physical safety from sexual exploitation or becoming victim to a scandal that can jeopardize her social reputation (honor). Subsequently, women left behind in my interviews see care work and informal labor in the house as a benefit and not just a constraint because by following the gendered norms they had access to financial resources from their husbands without having to jeopardize their reputation or physical safety.

Most women left behind must acknowledge and respect the hierarchy among other women in their household. Though this network of women can sometimes be a source of help, it is also a means to control and monitor women left behind. Thus, it is unsurprising that younger women left behind chose to reveal their inner desires and frustrations to me only in private conversations, instead of focus groups with other women in their household present. Most women I spoke to recognize that they have to continue to stay with their husbands and keep them happy even when they fear being replaced with another wife. Younger women left behind in my sample exercise subtle forms of agency such as making private phone calls to coax their husbands into sending them a separate remittance in secret.

Over time, older women left behind usually acquire slightly higher levels of social status, respect, and some control over certain household decisions such as what to cook, overseeing younger women’s chores, and negotiating or setting prices for livestock and handicraft in the temporary absence of a dominant male figure. Yet patriarchy remains entrenched in the family and community, as well as perpetuated by women in the household. These actions demonstrate why most women left behind are acutely aware of who maintains control over financial and other major decisions, including who can migrate and when, whether children can go to school, matrimonial decisions, and the like.

Women left behind with the qualifications to get formal employment might be able to gradually shift the power imbalance in their favor over time. However, I did not witness such shifts in the time I conducted my research. In my interviews, women left behind who had formal employment would switch from assertive working women outside the house to obedient daughters-in-law once they stepped inside the house. Others expressed reluctance to work outside, given the fears of being harassed, gossiped about, and/or other forms of policing by the community and family, including rape or even honor killings. It seems that unless the limited infrastructure and little access to schools are drastically changed through public policy and increased budget reallocation by the government, even this gradual shift in power is unlikely in the foreseeable future. For women left behind in very poor households in rural Southern Punjab, power resides within the extended family.

My findings speak to the larger context of gender relations and expectations in rural Pakistan. Patriarchy is entrenched within, and perpetuated by, families and extended networks (biradari). Despite the constraints from the family, as well as limitations due to a lack of infrastructure and access to health and educational facilities, women left behind still attempt to exercise agency through hidden transcripts and behind the scenes to influence their husbands and in-laws’ decisions to create better living conditions for themselves and their children.

Footnotes

Author’s Note:

I would like to thank Kemi Balogun and Michael Dreiling for their support and helpful suggestions. I would also like to thank the editor, Barbara Risman, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their detailed feedback.

ORCID iD

Sarah Ahmed

Sarah Ahmed is a doctoral student in the Sociology Department at the University of Oregon. Her research interests include gender, development, healthcare, rurality and qualitative methods.

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