Post-legislative Domestic Violence Situation and Socio-cultural Status of Women in Punjab: An Objective Hermeneutics Analysis

Violence against Women (VAW) occurs in different societies in assorted ways in the world. It can be seen from the different lens starting from family structure to the workplaces of women. In Pakistan women experience violence from their own family members even after the promulgation of legislation at national as well as at provincial level. There is variety of existing literature which explains the prevalence of violence in different countries around the globe but mere to find the literature that shows the post-legislative status of women in a country.  This paper aims at describing the status of women after filing a case under the PPWAV Act, 2016 in Punjab. To explain and describe the said issue, the following study followed descriptive analysis and was based on qualitative social research methodology, followed by narrative approach. Relying on saturation of data, thirteen interviewees were interviewed for the said study. For analyzing the narratives, the objective hermeneutics as explained by flick (2014) was used to present data analysis. Major themes derived from the data were violence bringing women from four walls of the house, filing a case of domestic violence: violation of society values and Post case filed domestic problems. It is concluded that the said law does not harmonizes with the family values prevailing in Pakistani social structure hence is unable to eliminate the problem of domestic violence from Punjab.