Who is a responsible woman? Understanding the scope and characteristics of responsible womanhood amongst women in Karachi

Abstract In this paper, we will construct and analyze intersecting definitions of womanhood among middle‐class women living in Karachi, Pakistan. Women are agents of their lives and are not passive voices. In this paper, we present narratives of women who resist “societal” narratives of womanhood to live a life of their choosing. We found that participants often defined womanhood through a lens very similar to the Victorian womanhood enforced on people of the Indian subcontinent during British colonization. However, they then modified their relationship to what they called “responsible womanhood”—and whether they themselves were “responsible women”—through various calls toward their Islamic faith, tradition, or modernity depending on their own positionality and what decisions they were already making. The description of a “responsible woman” is a layered one with significant historical attachments. For women, especially in comparison with men, there is significant pressure as women are considered to be the “repository of family honor” and are expected to maintain harmony within the family. Our analysis shows that these interlocutors modify and adjust their definition of responsible womanhood in order to manage the burden of maintaining one's respectability status while negotiating other shifting norms of womanhood.