Queen Mary PhD Graduate authors new book on domestic violence in Pakistan
Dr Daanika Kamal (Lecturer in Law, Royal Holloway University of London) has published a new book titled Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of ‘Bad’ and ‘Mad’ Women. The book was published in May 2025 by Oxford University Press.
The book provides essential insights into the legal challenges surrounding domestic violence in Pakistan by reporting on the everyday lived realities of women victims and their interactions with the legal system in both criminal and family law contexts.
It is based on Dr Kamal’s PhD thesis, completed at the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London (2020-2023). Her project was funded by the HSS Principal’s Doctoral Research Studentship, and supervised by Dr Ruth Fletcher, Dr Jeffrey Kennedy and Dr Leila Ullrich.
About the book
Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through character allegations that label them as 'bad' women in need of control, or 'mad' women not to be trusted. Domestic Violence in Pakistan explores why the subjectivities of women victims are constructed in particular ways, and how these subjectivities are captured and negotiated in the Pakistani legal system.
Drawing on feminist poststructuralist accounts relating to the use of gendering strategies, and an analysis of over a hundred case files and judgements, seventy-two interviews, and court observations in three cities of Pakistan, this book shadows the experiences of women victims of domestic violence in criminal law and family law proceedings to capture and offer empirical insights relating to gendered subject formation in discursive spaces.
Domestic Violence in Pakistan has been published by Oxford University Press as part of the Clarendon Studies in Criminology series, edited under the auspices of three criminological centers: the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the London School of Economics, and the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford.
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