ABSTRACT
This paper explores the cultural status of tribal women living in the Pakistan–Afghanistan borderland. Pakhtun tribes, a patriarchal and paternalistic society, practising tribal customs (Riwaj/Dastoor), inhabit this borderland. Owing to these tribal customs, the tribal Pakhtun society treats women much like property of their men. This essay focuses on how a tribal woman is socially discriminated by denying her certain fundamental rights. I discuss six tribal customs, by giving examples based on my field work, through which tribal women are treated as personal property by her male kin—father, brother, uncle or husband. These customs include shamilaat (denial of the right to inheritance in shared family’s and tribe’s property), miratah (declaring a woman as issueless in the absence of a male kin and thereby denying her property), rasnama/valver/khawara (bride-money), ghairat/nang (honour and pride), badala/swara (barter, as in getting father or brother a bride or as in exchange for settlement of dispute) and ghag (pronouncing the desire to marry a specific woman or in some cases to spite a family).
