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Paper short abstract

The paper examines how educating girls and women could allow for overcoming the incessant and widely prevalent patriarchal-violence through altering attitudes in times when rural and urban divide is growing and patriarchy remains a social challenge with all its power hierarchies, in Punjab.

Paper long abstract

Violence-justifying-attitudes' constitute sticky harmful gender norms and provide a premise for violence-against-women, perpetuate gender-based inequalities and continue to disrupt social-justice and hinder equitable pathways to development. The situation is even worse in the Punjab region of Pakistan where the widening rural-urban divide is furthering disparities, while the cultural roots embedded in patriarchy lend to pervasive patriarchal-violence with all its complex power-hierarchies. More women than men justify and accept violence by men as a norm and for their social survival. This paper taps into the potential of Equal access to Education to shift the (negative) societal norms (UN, ADB, UNDP, 2019). In Punjab, only 28% of rural girls access high school despite 65% of the population living in rural areas. This paper, examines how education of both rural and urban men and women may allow significant reduction in acceptance of patriarchal violence with more pronounced

impact of education on attitudes of women than men at all primary, secondary and higher levels. Interestingly, despite rural marginalisation, rural women when educated exhibit as significant and somewhat symmetric patterns in their attitudes as urban women. The impact remains profound for women and grows with their education levels. Attitudes of men exhibit no change at primary and middle levels but are significant at the high-school level, lending to policy implications.