Anatomy of honour-based violence

‘Honour’ as a social concept has different meanings from society to society. Within the modern-day individualistic society of the West, ‘honour’ is synonymous with integrity, with a person’s individual actions; however, within more communal cultures, ‘honour’ is a collective term, referring not simply to the social behaviour of one person, but of the collective behaviour of a family. Within ‘honour’ cultures, an individual is expected to be responsible for the behaviour of other members of his or her family, tribe, community, faith or other form of social identity grouping. This licensing of collective social control, when viewed within the context of patriarchal structures of family and marriage creates an intense form of oppression for women.

According to the former UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women:

“Honour is generally seen as residing in the bodies of women. Frameworks of ‘honour’, and its corollary ‘shame’, operate to control, direct and regulate women’s sexuality and freedom of movement by male members of the family. Women who fall in love, engage in extramarital relationships, seek a divorce, choose their own husbands are seen to transgress the boundaries of ‘appropriate’ (that is, socially sanctioned) sexual behaviour. ‘Regulation’ of such behaviour may in extreme cases involve horrific direct violence – including ‘honour’ killing...In these contexts, the rights of women (and girls) to control their own lives, to liberty and freedom of expression, association, movement and bodily integrity mean very little.” (Coomaraswamy 2005)

Women are forced to consider every aspect of their life from the perspective of their ‘honour’ as a quality which is felt to reflect both the entirety of their social worth and the reputations of the male members of their family. Male reputation is dependent upon female ‘honour’. Female ‘honour’ is passive in nature centring on qualities such as subordinacy, modesty and endurance, whereas male ‘honour’ is active and dynamic, centring on qualities such as self-assertion, dominance and social status. (Bourdieu 2001) Once female honour is ‘lost’ through any act which is considered ‘dishonouring’ in her society, there is no way it can be regained. Other members of her family may face pressure to take violent action which will restore their position in society. Male and family ‘honour’ is restored through violence, coercion or killing.

In some cases, an ‘honour’ killing may be a formal collective decision, made by a council of family members, who not only decide whether a girl or woman’s behaviour merits death, but may also plan how the murder will be committed and who will carry it out. Where this has occurred, the chances of the family ‘forgiving’ the insult to their ‘honour’ are slight, and a potential victim may need protection in perpetuity, particularly where the family can call upon an extended network of relatives, friends and associates to assist them.

Other ‘honour’ killings are less structured, but still carry the same collective pressure and the same motivation to police women’s behaviour, to demonstrate their commitment to patriarchal society, and to have a deterrent effect on other girls and women who may also be chafing against the restrictions which dominate their lives. In all cases, the control of women is paramount, who from puberty are judged to be hazardous to male society and so subject to restrictions in movement, dress and behaviour.

‘Honour’ killings result from a culture of ‘honour’ oppression and represent the only the most overt and brutal method of controlling and subordinating women within male-dominated ‘honour and shame’ societies. Men may also occasionally fall victim to ‘honour’ killings, but they are rarely killed by their own families, but by the relatives of a woman or girl who is believed to have been ‘dishonoured’ by the victim. However, men usually have greater bargaining power and may sometimes escape death by paying the other family off with money or women, or may be spared because their tribal or community connections, which would mean that a murder would result in further vendetta killings.

Violence against women, forming the majority of ‘honour’ killings, is universal, yet is by no means uniform. Through human history we can see forms of violence against women as different as the scold’s bridle and foot-binding playing their part in the history of women’s oppression. This huge variance does not, however, mean that it is impossible to establish trends, or make predictions.

Generally, societies which practise ‘honour’ killing are ‘classically patriarchal’ (Sev'er 1999); meaning that they are patrilineal, patrilocal, patrifocal and polygynous. Purna Sen further indicates characteristics of ‘honour’-based violence

• Gender relations that control and problematise women’s behaviours (especially women’s sexuality
• The role of women in policing and monitoring women’s behaviour
• Collective decisions regarding punishment, or in upholding the actions considered appropriate for the transgressions of those boundaries
• The potential for women’s participation in killings
• The ability to reclaim honour through forced compliance or killings
• State sanction of killings through recognition of honour as a motivation and mitigation. (Sen 2005)

ICAHK have spent five years in observing ‘honour’ crimes and ‘honour’ cultures around the world and believe that it is possible to sketch a paradigm of the sociocultural characteristics of ‘honour’ culture, useful for determining a society’s potential for engendering acts of ‘honour’-based violence.

Family structure and marriage traditions

Extended families/‘tight’ knit communities

Many families in ‘honour’ societies are based around the extended family; even if these are not organised within an extended household but spread across smaller nuclear households. ‘Honour’ societies tend to have ‘tightly knit’ communities, whether in immigrant communities in the West or in villages or self-contained quarters within cities in many countries. The effect of this is to create a network of constant gossip and surveillance, where women’s ‘moral behaviour’ is the subject of constant scrutiny and interest and where the family or community take an active role in suppressing female autonomy and in supporting and encouraging violence against ‘offenders’ of their traditional codes of behaviour. The community may base their identity, and feel pride, in their ability to restrict women’s freedoms through conformity to traditional codes.

Arranged, forced and non-consensual marriage

All ‘honour’ cultures feature arranged marriage. This does not imply that all cultures where marriages are arranged are ones where potentially ‘honour’ killing may occur: rather that it violence at risk within cultures where the consent of the individuals is given less importance than the will of the parents and wider family and where marriage is considered to unite two families rather than two individuals. It may be considered acceptable within this context to force a spouse into marriage against their will in the interests of the wider family. It may also be the case that prospective spouses are not consulted and their consent is not sought. Young people may be unaware that consent to marriage is a basic human right protected by Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

At least half of ‘honour’ killings recorded in the UK, for example, relate in some way to forced or nonconsensual marriage: often a girl or young woman’s refusal to marry according to the family’s wishes will be responded to with violence or coercion.

Cousin marriage

Cousin marriage is a traditional method used within Muslim families to keep property within the male line and so to circumvent the Islamic requirement of partial inheritance for daughters. (Tillion 1983) Cousin marriage often co-occurs with ‘honour’ crimes as it requires individuals to marry in accordance with the requirements of elder members of the family regardless of their personal wishes. Where there is cross-cousin or exchange marriage, there may be reciprocal arrangements meaning that a divorce on one side may trigger a divorce on the other causing divisions and resentment within the family. In this situation, divorce will be cast as an offence ‘against honour’ in order to protect the interests of the family.

Child and early marriage

The existence of child marriages (where couples are ‘engaged’ as infants) is a clear indication of nonconsensual marriage as children are unable to consent. Marriage at a young age is also common in societies cleaving to the notion of ‘honour’: there is considered little need for girls to have an education when their life is expected to be restricted to domestic work and childbearing.

Early marriage is also favoured as a prophylactic against ‘dishonour’: girls married off in early adolescence or even before have little chance to form relationships of their own choosing and thereby ‘dishonour’ the family, or to reject a match chosen for them by the family.

‘Transactional’ marriage

Dowry or brideprice (or both) often form a part of marriage customs: this creates a transactional relationship whereby the groom and his family have a heightened expectation that the bride conforms to a highly patriarchal definition of feminine behavior in return for the money or status that the bride’s family gained through the marriage. It is a form of enlightened self-interest (Bourdieu 2001) for the bride’s family to ensure that she conforms without any deviation from patriarchal norms both to ensure that the family’s reputation for production of ‘honourable’ females remains unchallenged and the reputation of the family ‘brand’ remains positive.

Often, money gained through the marriage of one sibling is used to finance the marriage of another, meaning that this can cause serious problems within the family if it needs to be returned or is not forthcoming.

Patrilocal residence

Patrilocal residence means that a married couple join the household of the husband’s family and the wife is therefore isolated from her family; in some cases unable even to visit them without the permission of her husband or members of his family. The asymmetries created by this tradition can form part of the culture of ‘honour’: Family members may be less emotionally invested in daughters who will inevitably leave the household for another home; sons are preferred and favoured while girls may be neglected or abused.

In-laws who have little emotional connection with the new bride may resent her as an interloper, and abuse and exploit her, including encouraging her husband’s jealousy and insinuating gossip against her.

The bride assumes the role of representing her natal family and therefore her behaviour is felt to reflect upon them. She becomes a conduit for the relationship between two families and therefore is expected to uphold the marriage bargain made between them as her part of ‘family honour’.

Patrilineal descent

Systems which feature patrilineal descent (where heredity and the family name passes down the male line) means that males are heavily invested in insuring the parentage of their children. Within some cultures this leads to hypervigilance, insecurity and jealousy, over women as a way of monopolising and controlling their fertility. It can also instil a resistance to any concept of mother’s rights over their child: women who seek custody of their children after divorce may also be targeted in ‘honour’ killings.

Cultural

Patriarchal gender roles

Gender roles may be patriarchal; wives and daughters are expected to be subordinate, even servile, to their fathers and husbands, and even their own sons. Women’s role in life is ancillary: as a dutiful daughter, an obedient wife and a self-sacrificing mother. Women are not expected to show autonomy, but to work without complaint for their families or for their husbands, and to bear children for her husband’s family, especially sons.

Elders dominate younger members of the family who have little ability to determine their own lives. Young woman are disempowered both as women, and through their youth. A woman’s ‘honour’ is directly linked to her conformity to these traditional and very restrictive roles. Any perceived rebellion against these circumscriptions may be construed as a loss of ‘honour.’

Family ‘honour’ and control

The ideology of ‘honour’ is one which directly results from patriarchal gender roles, wherein conformity to these roles is demanded and a source of status and acceptance within the community; and where deviance is censured. For males, ‘honour’ is gained through exerting dominance and control over females and younger males, and lost through weakness and failure to control; it can be restored through violent and coercive acts. For females, ‘honour’ is preserved through subordinacy, obedience, chastity, endurance and virginity, and it may be lost through any autonomous acts, particularly those relating to sexuality, and cannot be restored.

‘Honour’ in this sense is often a social quality: it revolves around the public perception of the individuals more than their actual behaviour. Causing a scandal or gossip within the community is often the most significant aspect of an offense against ‘honour’. Ultimately, it is those with power within the family and the community (men and older women who have proved their internalisation of the ‘honour’ code through the policing of younger women) who decide what acts are ‘honourable’ or ‘dishonourable.’

Some actions which are strongly linked with ‘honour’-based violence are:

• Loss of virginity outside marriage
• Pre-marital pregnancy
• Infidelity
• Having unapproved relationships
• Refusing an arranged marriage
• Asking for divorce
• Asking for custody of children after divorce
• Leaving the family or marital home without permission
• Causing scandal or gossip in the community
• Falling victim to rape

Many of these relate either to loss of reputation as a virtuous and marriageable woman through autonomous behaviour such as having unapproved relationships or falling victim to rape, (which is often blamed upon the victim). Others relate more to a woman’s actions that jeopardise marriage agreements brokered between or within families, such as refusing arranged marriages or seeking divorce.

However, some cases of ‘honour’-based violence can be motivated by seemingly very trivial reasons: for laughing too loudly, looking out of the window, receiving a gift or using a public toilet.

Fetishisation of virginity

Virginity is a very significant feature of ‘honour’ culture, with the ‘white sheet’ test still forming a significant part of any marriage ceremony. Women who do not bleed upon their wedding night are ‘dishonoured’ (El-Saadawi 1980); they face being ‘returned’ to their parents who may then enact an ‘honour’ killing to redress the shame of the failed marriage which indicates their failure to control their relative.

Girls within ‘honour’ culture are taught that the hymen is the most important part of their body and that they must protect it at all costs. They may have restrictions on their movements and activities in order to protect the hymeneal membrane. There may be ‘virginity testing’ and hymen restoration services available from doctors. Women who are victims of rape may be forced to marry their aggressors to restore ‘honour’.

Violence against women

Cultures where ‘honour’ violence is practised will also tend to find other forms of violence against women socially acceptable. Domestic violence and violence against children may also be widespread and characterised as rightful ‘chastisement’, of which ‘honour’-based violence forms a specific subcategory.

‘Honour’ violence as licit

As ‘honour’-based violence is a method of enforcing compliance to community norms, it is often considered licit, and even demanded by the community. Community pressure is an important part of ‘honour’-based violence. Where ‘family honour’ is considered to make violence acceptable this can imply that:

• Community members may pressurize individuals and families to ‘clear their name’, through active pressure or through isolating members of a ‘dishonoured’ family until they have done so.
• Community members may regard ‘honour’ violence as a private matter for the family and so will not intervene in terms of protection or reporting; it is also the case that community members will retroactively erase the existence of an individual killed in an ‘honour’ killing in order to redeem the family from the memory of their ‘dishonour’ by acting as if the victim never lived.
• In some cases, a woman’s natal family bears the responsibility for carrying out an ‘honour’ killing; in others, this responsibility passes to her husband upon marriage. ‘Honour’ killings may be committed by fathers, husbands, uncles, brothers, cousins,sisters, mothers, aunts, paid killers or other members of the family or community.

Legal

Discriminatory laws

Many Middle Eastern countries have or have had laws which condone murders justified by ‘honour’ by granting the offenders reduced sentences. This indicates the social acceptability of ‘honour’ killings as well as allowing judges to give token sentences to killers. (Zuhur 2005)

Unofficial legal structures

Informal community legal structures, which are predominately controlled by elder males, tend to enforce patriarchal and traditional norms of behaviour. In some cases, these courts may themselves demand ‘honour’ killings as punishments to women and couples: they are also known to make compensation marriages, where girls and women are forced into marriages in order to redress a crime committed by another member of their family. (Khan 2006) More generally, community courts tend to seek resolution rather than justice, and therefore their judgements will always tend to favour the powerful over the powerless and thereby reinforce patriarchal values.

Social

Religion

Religion remains an important part in many people’s lives, not least in those societies for ‘honour’ based violence. A majority (but by no means all) of current known cases arise in Muslim cultures or sub-cultures, leading some to conclude that there must be textual backing for the practice, and that therefore an ‘honour’ killing is a religiously mandated murder. Although some ‘honour’ killers do justify their crimes by their religion, many others act in the name of tribal, caste, class, nationalist or other identities. An ‘honour’ killing, seen as an act of vigilante murder, has no support in the key Islamic texts, and similar crimes have been recorded in Hindu, Sikh, Druze, Yezidi and some Christian societies.

‘Honour’ killings are not distinct practices, but the most extreme outcome of a system of social organization which asserts control over women and girls. Certain interpretations of religion are used to justify practices such as non-consensual and child marriage, the control of women’s behaviour, and the structure of the patriarchal family; these feed into the culture of ‘honour’ even where violence or killing is religiously proscribed. The growth in extreme forms of religious fundamentalism can be viewed as forming part of a backlash against women’s increasing demands for autonomy and human rights, and is in many cases accompanied by rises in violence against women including ‘honour’-based violence. Many potential reforms which would lead to women’s greater autonomy and freedom from violence are stymied through the political influence of groups which purport to represent religion.

Tribalism

Tribal communities appear to be especially prone to ‘honour’-based violence, due to:

• Close knit tribal structures imply that constant surveillance and gossip are a strong part of everyday life.
• Tribal identity often has a basis in taking pride in the tribe’s ‘honour’ defined as its ability to control the women of the tribe.
• Tribes tend towards controlling marriage (through endogamy or exogamy); tribal leaders maintain power through creating alliances using marriage as a bond. Thus marital choice is limited and dissent from prospective spouses threatens the structure of the tribe, justifying ‘honour’-based violence to those with a vested interest in the status quo.

Corruption and collusion

Corruption in society can also mean that it is easier for a family to conceal a crime; it’s also the case that as ‘honour’ as a collective value it is often entrenched in society including the forces of law and order to the extent that they may actively collude in the act of violence or concealment of a crime.

Bassam al-Kady, Director of the Syrian Women’s Observatory also believes that within highly corrupt societies, for many men, routes to social prestige through personal achievement are impossible due to endemic corruption, which means that traditional ‘honour’ through controlling women is the only method of obtaining status which remains available to all men. It’s also the case that within corrupt societies, family connections are more important than in societies which are more meritocratic, which means that there is a higher motivation to gain status and power through family connections and marriage.

The reputation of the family in terms of the ‘honour’ of its women is essential for making advantageous matches.

Conflict and social upheaval

Conflict and social upheaval almost always impacts negatively upon women’s lives and status.

• Traditional values become resurgent as a way of keeping control within an unpredictable environment.
• Where the economy has collapsed, brideprice and dowry gain more significance as methods of gaining money. Marriage takes on a more transactional nature, leading to more child marriages and a higher importance for ‘honour’ as an index of marriageablity.
• Rapes committed as war crimes can lead to ‘honour’ killings.
• Higher levels of violence and lawlessness lead to a greater acceptability and ease in committing and concealing murders.
• Conflict causes stress and trauma within the whole population, increasing the likelihood of violent responses.
• Societies which have a shortfall of available males due to warfare or emigration may become competitive in asserting the ‘honour’ of their women in order to secure their marriage in a competitive environment.

References

• Coomaraswamy, and Sen in Honour: Crimes, Paradigms, and Violence Against Women
• Bourdieu, Masculine Domination
• Tillion, The Republic of Cousins: Women's Oppression in Mediterranean Society
• El Saadawi, The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World: 1
• Sev'er, Culture of Honour, Culture of Change: A feminist analysis of honor killings in rural Turkey
• Zuhur, Gender, sexuality and criminal laws in the Middle East and North Africa: A comparative study