Valentine's Day in Pakistan  Though Valentine's Day in Pakistan is officially banned, and the Islamist orthodoxy has taken steps to obstruct celebrations, many Pakistanis celebrate the day's festivities. In recent years, youth and commercial establishments in Pakistan have supported Valentine's Day festivities and celebrating romantic friendship and love, as noted by journalists Asif Shahzad and Andrew Roche and Safia Bano, a philosophy lecturer. They note that youth in the country, where 60 percent of the population is below age 30 and half are under 18, are influenced more by global trends than traditions. Valentine's Day serves annually as a flash point of the culture war in Pakistan. Diaa Hadid says that it is a cause célèbre for religious hard-liners, affording conservatives a chance assert themselves as the caretakers of Islamic identity. On the other hand, with or without the moral policing, couples are finding ways to defy the ban and celebrate the event, supported by merchants who can increase their prices during the week preceding February 14th. Bano sees acceptance of the celebrations as a generational change indicating new cultural norms and a move toward love marriages. The Socio-religio-political Islamist antagonism and judicial overreach in Pakistan towards love and Valentine's Day in Pakistan is difficult for outsiders to comprehend. Technically, love is not "haram" (forbidden) in Islam, but gender segregation and gender mixing prohibitions stifle the freedom of Muslim women. Access to public spaces for women is severely constrained and conservative, rigid interpretations of Islam create limits on women's behavior. In the conservative view, women are not allowed to show their faces, not allowed to talk to unrelated men unless the communication is essential, and are unable to choose their own life partner, as that is a decision made by the head of the family. Women's freedom is scorned by conservatives and extremist institutions in Pakistani society. The focus is not simply to restrict women's free expression on a particular day, but rather to subjugate women to strengthen male dominance through their seclusion from public life. The complex rules of "purdah" (seclusion) which reinforce chastity and family honor, have led to socio-cultural disparities, in every aspect of women's lives. Lacking an understanding of their civil, legal, and political rights, women's opportunities for participation in society are limited and they are left vulnerable to exploitation, oppression, and abusive control by others without adequate recourse. In theory, under Islamic law in Pakistan, the marriage parties must consent to marriage, women must be sixteen years old, and a contract must be drawn, but few women are aware of these rights unless a male relative has informed them.