LAHORE, 8 March 2007 (IRIN) - Even after 10
years of marriage, 30-year-old Kareema Bibi cannot predict how her husband Javed
Ahmed will treat her.
Photo:
Kamila Hyat/IRIN
Zubbaida (left), is one of the
many women married in watta satta exchanges in the rural areas of
Pakistan
Many days he is fine, but some days he
suddenly hits me or is verbally abusive, Kareema told IRIN. She links these
apparently irrational mood swings to developments in another household in the
Punjab town of Sheikhupura that of her older brother, Muhammad Sultan,
whose wife Aneesa, 27, is Javed's sister.
Whenever Aneesa
complains of mistreatment by her husband, my husband punishes me, she said.
The two couples were wed in a watta satta exchange. The
tradition, which literally means 'give and take', or 'throwing a stone' and
receiving something back, refers to the exchange of brides between families.
In watta satta, one brother and sister are married to another
pair from another family often close relatives. More rarely, an uncle-niece
pair, or two cousins, may be exchanged by one household but this is relatively
unusual, and practised only when siblings in the right age brackets are not
available.
About a third of all marriages in rural Pakistan are
carried out on a watta satta basis, according to research. The rate is higher in
some parts of the country, such as the southern Sindh province.
Bride Price
The tradition is intended
both to exert some control over the money a girl takes out of her own family on
marriage, and the amount that comes in with her brother's bride.
We can negotiate such matters equitably in cases of such marriages, and
avoid tensions over dowry and so on. Both sides agree to give equally, explained
Rubina Bibi, 45, whose eldest son and daughter got married in a watta satta
exchange two years ago. She is eager to arrange a similar exchange for her
younger children, also a girl and boy.
In Pakistan, a largely
conservative society of 158 million inhabitants, the woman's dowry is often an
immense financial burden for families.
However, while the tradition has
been criticised, some findings show it may not always work against the interests
of women.
A study conducted by the World Bank, entitled Bride
Exchange and Women's Welfare in Rural Pakistan, released early in 2007 and based
on a survey sample of 3,100 women in 171 villages in the Sindh and Punjab
provinces, said the practice helps reduce the probability of domestic
abuse.
The likelihood of marital discord is lower in watta satta
arrangements as compared to conventional marriages said the authors of the
paper, Hanan Jacoby and Ghazala Mansuri.
A married woman
returning to her own home as a result of marital discord is seen as deeply
dishonouring and it is thought the watta satta arrangement may help prevent
this.
Some women are happy to marry in this
fashion.
The arrangement brings our families closer, and
there is no tension over my visiting my parents since they are also the in-laws
of my husband's sister and she is there too living with them, Shaheena Kausar,
24, who lives in Shahdara in Lahore, told IRIN.
Suffering in
Silence
But rights activists, including Saira Ansari, in
charge of the women desk at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan,
disagree.
These marriages treat women as a commodity, and
tension within one household also affects the other. Sometimes women simply
suffer in silence to avoid their brother's marriage being affected, Ansari said.
Some watta satta arrangements have led to violence. In December
2006, in the southern town of Lodhran in the Punjab, an 18-year-old girl, Kausar
Bibi, who did not agree to the marriage, was kidnapped from her house by 10
people. The abductors included her older brother, who said that at the time of
his own marriage, it had been agreed his younger sister, when of age, would
marry his wife's brother.
Like other forced marriages, watta
satta exchanges would be banned if a new bill tabled in the National Assembly
becomes law. However, implementing laws has always proved harder in Pakistan
than devising them and ending a deeply engrained practice such as watta satta
may not prove easy in the prevailing social and cultural environment.