Two days ago, I noted with some amusement a feminist, a retired women's studies professor no less, complaining vehemently about women who opt to raise a family rather than work for a paycheck, as modern feminism apparently requires they do. While Hirshman runs her campaign against women who opt to quit their jobs to raise their children, she appears nowhere in sight on this story from the Daily Telegraph about women choosing between marriage and work.

A village council in Pakistan has decreed that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed for refusing to honour childhood "marriages".

The women, who are cousins, were married in absentia by a mullah in their Punjabi village to illiterate sons of their family's enemies in 1996, when they were aged from six to 13.

The marriages were part of a compensation agreement ordered by the village council and reached at gunpoint after the father of one of the girls shot dead a family rival.

The rival families have now called in their "debt", demanding the marriages to the village men are fulfilled.

The case is becoming a cause célèbre in Pakistan, pitting tribal mores against a group of modern-minded, educated women. Amna Niazi, the eldest of the five at 22, is taking a degree in English literature, while both her sisters want to attend university.
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Speaking at their home in Sultanwala, a remote cotton and sugar-cane growing village, Amna said: "It is a great injustice that should be ended. Why should we pay for a crime committed by someone else? We will commit suicide if it happens. We would be treated like animals by them. Our misery would never end as this is just another way of using us as tools in the feud." None of the women has so far been able to marry as their childhood "marriages" hang over them.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the "barbaric custom of vani", - the tradition of handing over women to resolve disputes - and called on President Pervez Musharraf to enforce a ban.

Last year a three-year-old girl near Multan was betrothed to a 60-year-old man in a similar settlement. The case led to parliament passing a law banning vani and honour killings, but it has been widely ignored.
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Amna, who hopes to become an English lecturer, said: "We are proud of our father. Despite having little money, he has educated us and shown us that we must stand up in society and demand our rights."

She is studying at a college affiliated to the university of Lahore, while her sister Abida, 18, is applying to study medicine, and Sajida, 15, is still at secondary school.

The other girls, Assia, 20, and Fatima, 16, are the daughters of Mr Niazi's brothers.

"Only a few of my friends know about this," said Abida. "But those that do support us and say we are fighting for the oppressed women of Pakistan."