‘Thou art a witch!’: The media-influenced public backlash against Aurat March in Pakistan

Abstract

Pakistan’s Aurat March movement (2018 to present) is deemed to be a part of fourth-wave feminism. It raises awareness on numerous women’s rights and other social justice through its field activities and active social media campaigns. Since 2019, it has received unprecedented backlash, likely perpetrated by the Pakistani media, by the public, religious parties, and government. This paper explores how the media played a role in the misinterpreting the slogans displayed at Aurat March and, then, deliberately spread misinformation about the March, the manifestoes it published every year before the March, and its work for women’s rights, thus trivialising and maligning its work through sensationalism. Data was collected using purposive sampling method common in qualitative research and, subsequently, analysed using Michelle Lazar’s feminist critical discourse analysis model as a theoretical framework and Norman Fairclough’s 3-tier model as an analytical tool. Feminist theories related to transformative social change, women’s rights, and feminist resistance movements also informed the analysis. Three most controversial slogans of Aurat March were thoroughly analysed using Fairclough’s 3-tier model in the present study. This study highlights that these slogans were simply assertive, creative expressions of female rage against widespread global systemic gender-based oppression and violence that challenged patriarchy in Pakistan, resulting in an unprecedented violent public backlash.